How Have You Done?

I have probably earned about 5 cents an hour.

But I do this as a hobby, not to make money. I also do it while watching TV. It's more fun when my son is home.

In terms of value for money in time spent, I have found going through dealer's junk bins more comparatively profitable.

A problem with this approach is that you need to have wide ranging interests across the whole of numisamtics, for best advantage. Another problem is that you come a numismatic generalist, not a specialist, but that's OK if you are interested in the whole of numismatics.

My most profitable junk bin per item is in the $4-$20 price range.

I have done both, CRH'ing as well.

One of the factors that discouraged me from CRH'ing was that the banks in Australia are much more agressive against CRH'ers.

Its no good in the UK, the limit is 4 bags of change per day (deposit) and they only give change for business accounts (for which they charge) Besides that since about the 1990's there isn't too much to find except for the odd commemorative 50p or £2. Before this time I found some amazing coins in my pocket occasionally... like pre 1900's silver shillings.

It looks to me that CRHing has seen better days, even in the states people seem to have wised up and are unlikely to be dumping silver for face value on a regular basis.

Wish I had seen this thread first...


Sure. I search while in front of the TV watching a movie I have seen at least 20 times before cause nothing else is on TV and nothing else to do at that time, so I had free time. While my hands are full of coins, I have no free hand to smoke, so I have cut down on smoking the days I CRH (does increased health count as a value?), and I would check my pocket change anyway, but at the rate of turnover with pocket change, I would not have completed my State Quarter, 1965-2004 Roosevelt, 1965-2003 Jefferson, 1965-1998 Washington, etc folders.

I was going to have to get the money to buy groceries with anyway, and I was going to have to spend some for those groceries, so why not get and look coins and my cost per coin in my collection is face value.

Now, value of time spent? I was already doing nothing else anyway, so that value was 0. After buying folders, and other coin supplies I still have a profit, and a LOT of foreign coins I would have likely never even seen otherwise.

If I were to sell everything I ever found while CRH, I would recover the face value, plus enough extra to take my wife to dinner and a movie.

I'll echo the rest of the posts here. Roll hunting is a fun hobby, but barring the once-in-a-lifetime score, it's a pretty poor investment if you don't have a passion for it.

Less than $1/hr. It's a hobby, not a money maker. I'm far better off working an hour of overtime and buying silver than I am finding it CRHing. I CRH to put together booklets of various coin denominations to pass along to my kids because I believe by the time they're my age coins will be replaced with electronic money.

I roll hunt because I want to. It's what I do with the leftover hours in my day.

The day I decide to make an excel spreadsheet that shows a profit/loss vs time spent...is the day that my hobby turns into a 'job'.

I already have one job, I don't want another one.