| Issue | Mintage | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1889-CC Morgan Dollar | 350,000 | The key Carson City date |
| 1893-S Morgan Dollar | 100,000 | THE key - lowest circulation mintage of any Morgan |
| 1894 Morgan Dollar | 110,000 | Second-lowest circulation mintage |
| 1895 Morgan Dollar | 880 | The King of the Morgans - no circulation strikes known |
| 1879-CC Morgan Dollar | 756,000 | Second-scarcest CC date |
| 1885-CC Morgan Dollar | 228,000 | Lowest-mintage CC date and the final coin struck before the Carson City Mint closed in November 1885 |
| 1893-O Morgan Dollar | 300,000 | Lowest New Orleans mintage in the series |
| 1903-O Morgan Dollar | 4,450,000 | The great pre-1962 rarity made common overnight by the Treasury bag release - the hoard story date |
| 1922 Peace Dollar (High Relief) | 35,401 | 35,401 struck in the original high relief before the design was lowered - nearly all were melted and only a handful of survivors are known |
| 1928 Peace Dollar | 360,649 | THE key date - the Pittman Act replacement quota was met and Philadelphia's output stopped at 360,649, the lowest circulation mintage of the series |
| 1934-S Peace Dollar | 1,011,000 | The condition key of the series - a modest mintage that went almost entirely into circulation, making mint state examples the great Peace dollar prize |
| 1964-D Peace Dollar | 316,076 | The ghost of the series - 316,076 were struck at Denver in 1965 bearing a 1964 date, then Congress rescinded the authorization and every coin was ordered melted |
| 1927-D Peace Dollar | 1,268,900 | The lowest-mintage Denver issue of the series |
| 1927-S Peace Dollar | 866,000 | The lowest-mintage San Francisco issue of the series |
| 1916-D Mercury Dime | 264,000 | THE key date of twentieth-century coinage - Denver's presses were pulled to other denominations partway through the year, and most of the tiny mintage circulated hard before anyone thought to save one |
| 1921 Mercury Dime | 1,230,000 | Struck in the depths of the 1921 depression while the mints ran flat out on Pittman Act dollar coinage - dimes were an afterthought that year |
| 1921-D Mercury Dime | 1,080,000 | The lowest-mintage Denver Mercury after the 1916-D, from the same starved year |
| 1926-S Mercury Dime | 1,520,000 | The lowest San Francisco mintage of the series and its third pillar key after the 1916-D and 1921 pair |
| 1947 Canadian Silver Dollar | 21,135 | The coin that lies about its own year on purpose - struck in 1948 with leftover 1947 dies while Canada waited for new masters from London, marked with a tiny maple leaf beside the date |
| 1948 Canadian Silver Dollar | 18,780 | The key to the entire series - India's independence forced ET IND IMP off the dies, the replacements arrived late, and only 18,780 dollars were struck all year |
| 1938 Canadian Silver Dollar | 90,304 | The scarcest pre-war date - a quiet key that surprises set builders |
| 1945 Canadian Silver Dollar | 38,391 | The wartime rarity - the second-lowest mintage of the series, struck while the Mint's capacity belonged to the war |
| 1947 Canadian Silver Dollar | 65,595 | One mintage, two sevens - the 65,595 pieces split between pointed 7 and blunt 7 varieties, with dot and repunched sub-varieties for the specialists |
| 1935 $25 (English) Bank of Canada Note | 140,000 | The Silver Jubilee note, issued 6 May 1935 - the first commemorative banknote the Bank of Canada ever produced, and the only $25 it ever issued |
| 1935 $25 (French) Bank of Canada Note | 20,000 | Twenty thousand printed - the Jubilee note in French is one of the smallest printages of any circulating Canadian note |
| 1935 $500 (English) Bank of Canada Note | 20,900 | Macdonald's first appearance on a banknote and the only $500 the Bank ever issued - roughly a dozen survivors are known against 20,900 printed |
| 1935 $500 (French) Bank of Canada Note | 5,000 | Five thousand printed and possibly none surviving - published references question whether a single French $500 still exists outside the Bank's records |
| 1935 $1 (French) Bank of Canada Note | 15,196,000 | Un dollar - the most affordable entry to the French series, printed at less than half the English rate for the only unilingual issue the Bank ever made |
| 1913-S Buffalo Nickel (Type 2) | 1,209,000 | The scarcest issue of the first year - a five-figure survivor count in high grade and a published record that cannot quite agree on its own digits |
| 1921-S Buffalo Nickel | 1,557,000 | The series skipped 1922 entirely, and this San Francisco issue closed the gap - heavily circulated on the west coast and prized with a full date |
| 1924-S Buffalo Nickel | 1,437,000 | |
| 1926-S Buffalo Nickel | 970,000 | The only sub-million Buffalo - 970,000 struck in the branch mints' worst quality-control era, released straight into circulation with nobody saving them |
| 1931-S Buffalo Nickel | 1,200,000 | The Depression-year issue - 1,200,000 struck and, unlike the 1926-S, hoarded from the start, which is why a low mintage did not become a high-grade rarity |
| 1918-D Buffalo Nickel | 8,362,000 | Home of the 1918/7-D overdate - a 1917 die repunched for wartime production, leaving a 7 ghosting under the 8 |
| 1937 $50 (Osborne-Towers) Bank of Canada Note | 100,000 | One hundred thousand printed of the orange fifty under the first signature pair - the third pillar of the Osborne rarities |
| 1937 $100 (Osborne-Towers) Bank of Canada Note | 70,000 | Seventy thousand printed - the Osborne hundred, Macdonald at centre, and the note that teaches the whole series: the signature, not the denomination, is where the rarity lives |
| 1937 $1000 (Osborne-Towers) Bank of Canada Note | 15,000 | Fifteen thousand printed - the key to the series, issued several years after the rest of the issue and still wearing the Osborne signature, with Laurier and the security allegory carried over from 1935 |
| 1937 $1 (Osborne-Towers) Bank of Canada Note | 50,000,000 | The first bilingual dollar - green, George VI at centre with English on his left and French on his right, and the note through which most Canadians met the new arrangement |
| 1916-S Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 508,000 | Half a million struck and the mintmark worn on the front of the coin, where the series kept it for barely a year |
| 1921 Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 246,000 | A quarter of a million halves in the year the Treasury sat on bags of unwanted 1920s - the postwar surplus wrote the mintage |
| 1921-D Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 208,000 | The lowest mintage of the entire series: 208,000, struck while the Pittman Act had the mints consumed with silver dollars |
| 1921-S Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 548,000 | Higher mintage than its 1921 siblings but the toughest of the trio in mint state - the coins were made, then worked |
| 1938-D Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 491,600 | Under half a million struck, and the whole hobby knew it immediately: rolls were hoarded at issue, so the mintage is rare and the coin is merely scarce |
| 1916 Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 608,000 | The debut year, mintmark on the obverse below the motto, and every 1916 is scarce by modern standards |
| 1919-D Walking Liberty Half Dollar | 1,165,000 | A million struck, nearly all of them worked to death: the hardest Walker of all to find in high grade |
| 1909-S Lincoln Wheat Cent (VDB) | 484,000 | The king of the series, and a key created by typography: San Francisco had struck 484,000 coins when the order came to remove the designer's initials, and no more were ever made |
| 1914-D Lincoln Wheat Cent | 1,193,000 | The key nobody noticed: Denver struck fifteen million cents the year before and twenty-two million the year after, and the hobby took a decade to realize what 1,193,000 meant |
| 1931-S Lincoln Wheat Cent | 866,000 | The second-lowest mintage of the series, and the cheapest lesson in the register: the Depression-era hobby saw the number coming and saved the coin by the roll, so the rarity never fully arrived |
| 1922-D Lincoln Wheat Cent | 7,160,000 | The only cents of 1922, from the only mint that struck any: Philadelphia and San Francisco made none, and worn Denver dies produced coins with no visible D, the famous ghost of the series |
| 1926-S Lincoln Wheat Cent | 4,550,000 | Modest mintage, murderous condition: common enough worn, and one of the hardest twentieth-century coins to find with full original red color |
| 1943 Lincoln Wheat Cent | 684,628,670 | The steel year: zinc-coated steel to free copper for the war, the only American circulation coin a magnet will pick up, and the famous coin everyone believes is rare at six hundred eighty-four million struck |
| 1954 $1000 (Devil's Face, Coyne-Towers) Bank of Canada Note | 30,000 | One prefix, one signature pair, and no Beattie printing at all |
| 1954 $5 (Devil's Face, Coyne-Towers, Asterisk Replacement) Bank of Canada Note | 2,400 | |
| 1954 $100 (Devil's Face, Beattie-Coyne) Bank of Canada Note | 679,644 | The smallest regular printage of the type after the thousand |
The record fills in one series at a time. Greyed series are on the checklist.
| Coin | Pure silver (troy oz) |
|---|---|
| Morgan / Peace Dollar | 0.7734 |
| Canadian Silver Dollar (1935–1967, 80%) | 0.600 |
| Washington Quarter (pre-1965) | 0.1808 |
| Mercury / Roosevelt Dime (pre-1965) | 0.0723 |
| Canadian Dollar (1935–1967) | 0.6000 |
We publish the silver content, not the melt value — multiply by today’s spot price yourself. The ounces never change; the price does.
MintageRecord is an encyclopedia of what government mints actually struck: the mintage figures, specifications, and the stories that make certain issues matter. No prices, no population snapshots, no listings feed — those change by the hour and belong elsewhere. Mintages are permanent public record, and a page written here is meant to read the same in ten years.