Valuable, as in expensive, obviously requires a great deal of luck or money depending on how "valuable" a coin is, but there are some ways around this.
The Internet has made it much easier for people to instantly know the value of a coin that they find, meaning that it's become very difficult to find true bargains based on lack of knowledge. For instance, 50 years ago, someone putting away rolls of the newly-obsolete Wheat cents might have known that if they find a 1909-S or VDB that the coin is valuable, but back then, the value of things like the 1922 No D, 1931-S, 1914-D, etc. was not common knowledge outside of numismatic circles and at times not even within those. Because of this, you could still find those coins in
Wheat cent rolls at banks or that people had put away in their houses. Nowadays, everyone knows which Wheat cents are worth the most money, and so the odds of finding one of the more valuable Wheat cents in circulation, in a coin roll, or elsewhere is much lower than it once was.
A few suggestions,
- If you regularly shop at local businesses and are friendly with the staff, ask if they'd be willing to save any "weird" or "unusual" or "old" coins that they receive from customers throughout the day, and then offer to pay them a small "finders' fee" in exchange for helping you out; for instance, if one of my cashiers saves me a silver
Roosevelt dime, I'd give her a regular modern dime to keep the till even, and then a dollar extra as a tip for helping.
- Similar to the above, if you have good relationships with any local, small (not national chain) banks, the same method will work with tellers; build your friendships! The coin counting machines often have "reject trays" that catch silver, world coins, and other things.
- Set a budget every year for coins that you're comfortable with and put that money into savings. That could be anywhere from $10 to $100,000. At the end of the year, buy the nicest coin that catches your fancy and is within your budget. If you invest only $500 per year, and buy the nicest $500 coin you can every year, in 20 short years you'll have a $10,000 collection. If you invest $2,500 per year into coins, you'll have a bare-minimum $50k collection in 20 years. And unless something catastrophic happens, your $2,500 coin bought in year 1 will probably still be worth at least $2,500 in year 20, if not more. Seek out the advice of seasoned collectors, and it's possible to turn your $2,500 a year coin investment into much more than $50,000 after 20 years. You can also speed up the timetable of ownership on, say, a $500 a year budget by buying 5 $100 coins, or 10 $50 coins, or whatever suits you.
- Metal detecting can find valuable coins, particularly on the coasts, New England, the antebellum South, California and Colorado gold country, the silver and gold boomtowns of the west, etc. You'll curse every day the $1,500 you spent on your detector until the first time you pop a Fugio cent or a
Seated Liberty half dollar from the ground, and then you'll forget you ever paid for the detector to begin with. It's a lot of work: heat and cold, land owner permissions, digging and pinpointing and digging some more only to pull out a 5 year old quarter, but the great finds make up for the piles of pull tabs, square nails, and other junk. Be advised that even valuable coins don't come out of the ground mint, unless they're hoards or in containers, so that even if you do pull some truly valuable coins out of the ground, their value is likely to be mitigated somewhat by environmental damage, corrosion, porosity, and other issues that require professional conservation.
- If you are going to hunt coin rolls, focus on smaller banks, as above; a good place to start is in
Kennedy half dollar rolls. Most people know a silver dime or quarter when they see one, but the 40% silver 1965-1969
Kennedy half dollars are often missed. With modern bank equipment, the days of finding silver in coin rolls are mostly long gone, so banks that don't use auto-sorter/auto-counter machines are better targets for CRH. CRH is much better for finding mint error coins and circulated Proof coins.
- It's easier to know what coins are "valuable" if you specialize in a certain area. I know offhand what
Washington quarter dates and mintmarks are more valuable than others, because I specialize in that series; on the other hand, I couldn't tell you anything about Large Cents as far as which dates are more valuable than others, because I haven't studied it. Find a coin series or set that you enjoy collecting, that attracts you -- whether it's Wheat cents,
Barber coinage,
Seated Liberty coinage,
Mercury dimes, whatever -- and learn as much as you can about that series, and that way you'll recognize what is valuable and what is less so, just on sight. That, alone, gives you an advantage vs. an uninformed collector or dealer. There are plenty of people who can do this for many coin series and sets, but it takes years of practice and hands-on experience.
I'll say this in conclusion: finding valuable coins is like finding valuable diamonds. You can go to a jeweler and buy as nice of a diamond as you can afford, as often as you like; or you can go to Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas and dig in the dirt, looking for that once-in-a-lifetime 7.83-carat uncut stone down in the kimberlite layer. It's a trade-off of money and instant gratification vs. perseverance and gambling or luck. In much the same way, sure, I might find a 1909-S VDB
Wheat cent in a roll of coins if I spend enough time looking at rolls of coins, at a much lower cost than it would cost to obtain otherwise, but it's "easier" to buy one from a coin shop or at auction, albeit much more expensive.
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Posted 07/01/2015 11:12 am
