The One Set You May Still Build From Circulation All The Way To The 30's

Agreed.

There are few Jefferson nickels that are tough to find, but the 1950-D might be the toughest. Tough, but not impossible. Many have been found and reported here on CCF.

I completely agree.

I spent several years searching nickel rolls from my local bank and did indeed complete the entire Jefferson nickel series date & mm set at face value.

Takes a lot of patience - but it can be done. Here is my 2015 thread full of data when I completed the search at 320,800 nickels searched:


http://goccf.com/t/198187



I must admit I really enjoyed reading your posts on searching coin rolls. Surprisingly I am a math teacher and fully appreciate and commend you for such detailed statistics. That is a truly amazing story at least for me. Maybe you could figure out the statistical probability (not really) of finding someone as determined as you were and apparently still are. This is truly impressive and I mean that! This makes me want to see how much of the series I could complete. However one collection at a time.

A different approach:-

How becoming a small 's' silver stacker?
By that, I mean buying 90% dimes for a percentage x Face?

Some advantages to this strategy:
You get the greatest number of silver coins for each dollar invested,
You can can examine each of them them closely for a) die variations, and b) errors,
You can build a date / mm set,

If you end up with hundreds, or even thousands of them, you can pick out the very best of them for a higher level of numismatic investment.

You can always recycle some of the money you have invested by selling unwanted silver at multiple x face, at a time when the silver spot price is advantageous to you.

It is the journey, not the destination.

Searching nickels is better than pennies because the cent should have been long gone from circulation.

I've completed 3 sets of Jefferson nickels out of circulation (coin roll hunting) in the past five years and four sets in my lifetime.




Yup. 1939-D (3) and 1950-D (4) have been my toughest in approximately 1.375 million coins searched. The only other coin not to get to double-digits is the 1938-D (8).

Also, for those not in the know, the 2009 coins are tough to find for most of us, particularly the 2009-P. I've only found 99 examples to date.

Though not coin roll hunting, I found 2 1950-D nickels in a set of coins acquired recently. My eyes couldn't believe me. I found one of every date from 1938 through 1959 except the 38 mintmarked coins and a 39-D.

About Coinfrog's comment, IMHO you aren't really a collector if you are only concerned with how much the collectables are worth.
It's the history, the thrill of the hunt, that makes collecting valuable, not the monetary value of the coins themselves.
IMO if one was only really interested in making a profit in our society, they would take up real estate or the stock market.