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Earlier (June 30th, 2008), I created a post about the average age of coin. In my initial hypothesis, I felt that quarters would have the oldest average age since they were more coveted, and pennies would have the youngest average age, since they are most likely to be thrown out or forgotten about. In that original post I had a sample size of only 69 coins. Currently I have 155 coins. Lets see how the average age has changed over this time.

Quarters
Time 1: 17 coins, average mint date of 1995.18
Time 2: 46 coins, average mint date of 1995.70

Dime
Time 1: 18 coins, average mint date of 1994.39
Time 2: 27 coins, average mint date of 1994.33

Nickel
Time 1: 9 coins, average mint date of 1987.11
Time 2: 18 coins, average mint date of 1991.44

Penny
Time 1: 25 coins, average mint date of 1992.96
Time 2: 64 coins, average mint date of 1993.39

From this data it appears that all coin denominations are either staying relatively consistent, or increasing somewhat. Maybe once my sample size becomes large enough, it will start to resemble more of my hypothesis.

The average value of each coin is 10.2 cents. The year with the most coins is 2007 with 16 of the 155  (10.3%). I am sure that this data is somewhat boring to most people, but I find it fairly interesting. Maybe a number cruncher can come up with a little more interesting data than I did.

Ever since I started trying to go cash only I have naturally started to collect more and more coin. I thought that it might be an interesting experiment to see what the average age of each type of coin I come across is. My theory is that the more a coin is worth the older the average age will be. I think that pennies will have a relatively short longevity.

So far I have collected 69 coins over the past couple of weeks. I have calculated the average mint date for these coins to be 1993.12.

Here is a breakdown of each particular coin:

• Quarter 17 coins, average mint date 1995.18
• Dime 18 coins, average mint date 1994.39
• Nickel 9 coins, average mint date 1987.11
• Penny 25 coins, average mint date 1992.96

As you can see, my hypothesis is clearly wrong. Nickels and Pennies had the oldest average age of all my coins. This could be due to the fact that my sample size is so small. I will try and periodically update my coin count so that we can see what age of coins are circulating through my possession. In the end I think that I will be proven right.