By Eric Von Klinger for COIN WORLD

A high mintage does not always ensure that a coin is common, nor do low mintages necessarily equate with high prices.

Although they tend to learn these truisms early, today’s collectors might be astounded to find that standard catalogs relegated mintage figures to appendices until well into the latter part of the 20th century. The figures were generally ignored until Wayte Raymond’s Standard Catalog of United States Coins first appeared in the 1930s; the book copied U.S. Mint tables, which expressed amounts in dollar and cent totals rather than number of coins. A Guide Book of United States Coins (the “Red Book”) similarly partitioned mintages from valuations until the 1960s. Read Full Story

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