It's Getting Hard To Find Nice Coins From The '70's And '80's.

This is only an issue if you find the modern stuff interesting. One can easily find clad coinage and honestly it's just not interesting. So worry about it if interests you, I'll pass though.

Would agree with @Ballyhoo that some interesting clad change turned up in 2020, but we seems to be back closer to "normal" now.

I used to out away a roll of the nicest coins I would find for pennies through quarters of each year back in the 70s.

Maybe its time to think about selling the rolls from each denomination? But the sad reality is that money has lost so much value over the years I would need to sell (for example) the roll of 1970 quarters for ~70.00 just to break even!

(Figures taken from inflationtool.com)

Wish I had put it into silver back then!

I've noticed this with my pocket change.

Always in the past the low turnover of cents assured new batches of piggy banks and change jars would be coming along with ten or twenty year old circulating cents but it appears more and more cents are either being discarded or not being redeemed.

Even such "easy" cents as the '66 are barely seen at all any longer.

A lot of coppers have been pulled out but these are mostly poor condition later dates. It's the zinc issues that are really being destroyed. Between zinc rot and people throwing them away it's a wonder any of these are left.

It seems almost every cent in a handful is gouged, rotted, cull, or stained any longer. Even the '21 cents are often non-collectible. People don't care because they think there are millions of mint sets when in actuality most of these sets are long gone through neglect and every cent in the survivors can be bad like the '68.

So much for the old theory that there are so many moderns they will be with us forever and nobody needs to collect them.

It's worse than most people imagine.

There are still BU rolls from 1955 to date and many of them (60%) are still in good shape. The problem is that many specific dates are bad and there are numerous dates after 1965 that barely exist in BU rolls because people quit saving them in '65. Then add in the vast destruction of mint sets and the attrition on coins in circulation and you'll find a lot of modern are not only rare in pristine condition but are difficult to find in any grade other than cull or worn out.

Clads aren't so bad except BU rolls are generally unavailable and the few surviving mint sets all have tarnished coins. This "tarnish" is removable in many cases but requires effort so people aren't doing it. Then the longer the tarnish stays on the less likely it can be successfully removed.

It all just goes to show that if you ignore coins for 65 years they might not be there when you go to look.

We've been discussing this for over a decade now. As expected, it's getting worse every year. I reckon at this point, nearly every single mint set produced has been looked over for anything worth saving. The best hope of finding anything good is still rolls and old change stashes. I don't think you'll find much in circulation worth keeping unless you get real lucky.

Mint sets are funny.

Most of the sets were sold to individuals who kept all or most of them. Over the years these original buyers or their heirs have just taken them to coin shops to dump. Without checking the sets most go to big wholesalers or are cut up for the cash register. The sets are checked and destroyed by the wholesalers. So as a rule checked sets are destroyed leaving the surviving sets unchecked. This has been changing a little in recent years since there are so few original buyers left and more people are looking for Gems and varieties and selling what's left. And there's the fact that many sets are tarnished and still going into the cash register.

The long and short of it is that there aren't many sets left, prices are far higher, and many sets on the market are still original but tarnished. Pristine original sets are by far the exception. Even well stored sets are tarnished for many dates.

There's no roll market for the clads other than halfs and dollars and the market for nickels is dysfunctional. There is small market for cents but so many cent rolls are tarnished that it retards these markets. If you offer bid for some of the expensive zincoln rolls you might get buried in corroded and rotted rolls without a single nice coin in the bunch. If you have a nice roll of something like the '93-D will you really want to sell it for $15 knowing that most rolls are corroded?

Even cents from mint sets are in some instances usually no good. '71-S cent can be especially bad.

I used to pick up wheat rolls cheap but by the time I went through a few and found no good coins at all I just sold them and let someone else take the risk last year.

Nobody knows what any of the moderns are really worth because there's no demand. People always used to say that if anyone ever wanted modern garbage they could just get it from circulation.

...But not any more.

Everyone always said that if anyone ever wanted to collect trash they could get it from mint sets.

...But not any more.

There are very few mint sets left and they are corroded because of half a century of neglect.

So my question is what are collectors going to do if they ever want to collect moderns?

I'd suggest they do it early or never because there just isn't any supply to speak of. Every coin shop has piles of buffalos but they won't have a 1975 nickel in any condition to sell and they won't have one in the cash register either (unless they just cut up a 1975 mint set).