What is more important? Yesterday word came that the uncirculated Lincoln commemorative silver dollar had sold out and also that the two-roll sets of 2009 Lincoln cents with the Birthplace reverse had also sold out.

I choose the cent sellout for three reasons.

The first is that despite the fact that there were some collectors who complained that the price was a rip-off at nearly 14 cents per coin ($8.95 plus $4.95 shipping equals $13.90 for 100 coins), others simply bought them and were glad to have the opportunity to do so.

The second reason is the sellout occurred in less than two weeks, the rolls having gone on sale March 13. This compares to the approximately six weeks that it has taken to reach the sellout point for the uncirculated Lincoln dollar. (The proof is close to a sellout, but not quite there yet.)

The third reason is I am surprised that there were only 100,000 two-roll sets available. I think other collectors will be, too, and that will focus their attention on the new design all the more.

Perhaps I should throw in a fourth reason, because this sellout sets us up for the release of the second of the four new reverse designs in May in a way that will keep us on the edge of our seats. There will be a group of collectors ready, willing and able to jump in to buy yet more two-roll sets. They might even snap these up quicker than the first two-roll set.

It is true that I have had a few more e-mails from lucky collectors who live in areas where the new coins are reaching circulation, but most of the country remains deprived of the new coins.

In fact, one desperate collector sent me a note that wanted to know why the Mint wasn’t retiring the old coinage and melting it down to make room for the new.

I personally haven’t been so focused on cents since about 1966. That seems to be true for others and that’s another good reason that the two-roll set sellout is more important than the commemorative sellout.

 That makes five reasons. If I made them funnier I could be on Letterman.

It could be hard times, or it could be just the next cycle, but people are scrambling to figure out the value of the numismatic items in their possession.

I have had an e-mail this week from someone who thinks he has a Continental dollar coin. I responded by telling him that he needed to have it authenticated because the odds of it being a copy are very high.

Another e-mail came in wanting to know the value of a miscellaneous group of coins. There were a few Morgan and Peace dollars, some pre-1965 silver coins that encompass Mercury dimes, Walking Liberty and Franklin half dollars, Washington quarters and a single Standing Liberty quarter from 1927.

In addition there were a few 40-percent silver half dollars from 1965-1969 and a parallel number of Washington quarters from the same period, probably indicating that they were saved in the mistaken belief that these too contained some silver as the half dollars of those years did.

There were also some Wheat-back cents and a couple of Buffalo nickels.

It is a typical accumulation of a type that was probably assembled in the middle 1960s as silver coins were disappearing from circulation.

While there was no great rarity among the coins listed, it certainly is nice to be able to tell the owner that the silver coins have a basic silver value of 9.5 times face value and the silver dollars are worth a little bit more than that.

These coins once sold won’t make the owner rich, but the proceeds might help bail out a stressed family budget for a week.

Selling the coins, though is a problem. The owner was not particularly close to a city with a coin dealer in it, so the trip to sell them will have to be piggybacked on another one, or the cost of travel will eat up much of the coins’ value. Could they be sold online? I suppose so, but that is something most casual inquirers are not keen on doing.

And, yes, and what did I mean about the next cycle at the beginning?

Well, over the years, there are the darnedest groupings of calls. If I get one type of inquiry, I usually get a small number of additional inquiries along the same line. Singleton questions are more unusual.

Why is that? Good question.

No wonder it is hard to find District of Columbia quarters. The final mintage figures for the first of the six designs of 2009 are well below the lowest mintages for the state quarter program.

A total of 172,400,000 Duke Ellington quarters were struck. The Philadelphia Mint total is 83,600,000 and the Denver Mint total is 88,800,000.

This is less than half the production total for the lowest mintages for state quarters.

The Denver output for the 2008 Oklahoma quarter was 194,600,000. The Philadelphia output for the 2004 Iowa quarter was 213,800,000 pieces. The P-mint 2002 Ohio output was 217,400,000 and the P-Mint Maine output in 2003 was 217,400,000.

Oklahoma’s quarter also had the lowest two-mint total of 416,600,000.

I cannot call 172 million D.C. coins scarce, exactly, but when coupled with the phenomenon of a backed-up banking system, it is no wonder so few people are seeing the new coins in their change and why all collectors are finding it so hard to get a roll or two in the regular way from their local banks.

Even more interesting, the Puerto Rico quarter is next to be released and its final mintage is even lower than the D.C. mintage.

Only a combined 139,000,000 were coined for Puerto Rico. Once again Philadelphia’s output was the lower of the two mints at 53,000,000 as compared to Denver’s 86,000,000.

It would appear that many more collectors than usual will find themselves dependent upon the collector sets and other offerings from the U.S. Mint to get any examples at all for their collections.

Puerto Rican bags and rolls will be put on sale on the Mint Web site on March 30.