Roughly what percentage of bullion (and or proof) coins fresh from the various world mints would meet a 69/70 grading standard? Are these sort of grades rare, or is it just costly to have coins that have large mintages graded en mass?
You can checkout the population reports online for an idea of how many of the submitted coins get 69/70.
Perhaps, but my concern is that large quantities of coins are held by people who only hold them for bullion value and don't care about having them graded. Who knows how many excellent specimens might be in such collections? The proportion of coins reported to be graded 69 or 70 divided by the total mintage might be biased. If anyone has ever had a couple hundred coins graded (of the same type, chosen at random) we would have a very good idea of the proportion (at least for that coin type/mint).
Totally correct, so from that, you can only try to ascertain what was actually minted. Then you have a situation that a lot was minted and a lot was melted down too. Hence why I generally look for known low mintage stock. Such as Commemorative, varieties and larger coins. I don't think anyone can say for certain on actual mintages and what is actually left. So if a release says it is 2500 I can be pretty sure there are not a lot of them regardless. As for mintages of 200k while a tiny mintage who knows what is hidden so to speak.
Do some mints generally produce higher quality coins than others? Like I imagine the Canadian Mint would struggle to make high rating coins due to common milk spots?
Depends on what you call quality ? You are talking about a Bullion coin at the moment so strike should not be an issue in the sale, but you then want to Slab it. A Maple is a coin I would not even think of slabbing, Milk spots are a problem Yes. The only bullion in my mind I would look to slab is Chinese Coins and perhaps PM Lunars. Perth Mint, Pamp, Swisse would be a couple of brands that are considered quality products. The Andean Cat and relevant series are supposed to be the purest silver coins in the world. In the end unless it is Numismatic value you want. Mints will not matter. If you want to make money on numismatic coins you need to do A LOT of research.
Got it. I guess I was just curious about the variation in quality of the coins as they come out of the mints.
