This is a guide, based on personal observations and numerous reference guides of the general scarcity of all New Brunswick provincial silver coins.   During the early 1860's, before   Canada ( Upper  & Lower ) became a unified nation, there was provincial coinage.  The most interesting of these was the New Brunswick province coinage, five cent, ten cent and twenty cent all sterling siliver (92.5 Fine) At this time the United States of America was fighting a bloody, terrible civil war, during which there was a frightening coin shortage.  I have long believed that many persons living in border states with Canada faced with great economic uncertainty went north and acquired large quantities of early Canada silver provinicial coinage and then melted and/or hoarded these coins for silver bullion thus creating a general scarcity.  The rarest of the New Brunswick coins whould have to be the five center silvers being of smaller face value they must have been easier to obtain in numbers.  As a seller on Ebay and a person who attends many major coins shows a year, I can tell you that of all of Canada's beautiful early coinage, the New Brunswick silvers are truly the most scarce and desirable because they just didn't survive in any great numbers.  The catalog values and trends are very conservative at best and do not reflect how tough these coins are to find in any grade.

Thank you,

Danny  "Candacoinnut" JUNE 2006