Buying Vs Hunting Coins?

My advise is to define what amount of profit you are trying to make. If you are thinking of huge profit that coin is a once or twice in a lifetime event at best unless you have unlimited resources to buy coins. Remember that the person you purchase from likely knows the value and is also thinking profit.

If you plan to enjoy coin collecting or coin flipping you would have more fun using all means of obtaining coins. Always go for the dream but also always be prepared to accept many disappointments and set backs along the way. I suggest that you invest in a couple of good metal detectors and hit some old settlement sites, it is great fun, excersise and a much higher possibility of finding a real treasure coin that did not already have a mark-up to pay.

Anyway you choose to coin hunt is the right way as long as you have fun doing it.
and good luck.

It all depends on what you are looking for and the effort you want to expend. I can tell you with certainly that you will not get rich roll hunting. You might come out a little ahead unless you assign a money value to your time and then it will be a money loser for sure.

Hunting will provide limited results, with large amounts of looking you might come across the occasional silver dime, quarter or half dollar, but there is no way you are going to fill a book any time soon if ever.

Nickels will provide a pretty good chance of eventually filling a book or at least coming close on Jeffersons. There are a few hard to find issues that you may never find but you can come pretty close with a ton of searching.

Pennies are going to be pretty easy to collect all the circulation issues from the 50's on, older than that are getting pretty unusual to find in circulation or roll searching.

The biggest problem you are going to have is the acquisition and disposal of enough coins to actually find your targets. Most banks these days will not provide large amounts of coins without accounts and prior notice. To get rid of the chum is even harder. CoinStar will take them with either a 10% fee or by you getting a gift card for Apple or other retailer. Some banks still have coin machines for public or account holder use but these are getting pretty rare.

I've NEVER heard of that. The only gold coins found in rolls are those fake, seeded rolls on ebay.

Everybody on earth knows what gold is. The probability of someone putting a gold con in a roll by accident is nil. Any banks getting ahold of the gold coin will reject it by weight and scrap it. So, I wish you luck in finding gold in a roll.

It's all very simple. Only buy coins where you pay less than their face value.
This way you'll always be ahead.

I've had some success with buying bulk foreign coins from flea markets. I've gotten Canadian key dates, silver, and sometimes if you get a lot of one type of coin, you can sell it as a lot and recoup some of your money. I usually keep silver, pre 1940s, or designs I just genuinely enjoy from lots like this. You may even find some older US coins in lots like this as well.

I cannot help you there because profit is nowhere on my radar. The best I can say is try both and see which one gives you better success.

BTW there is at least one member on this forum who HAS found a gold coin while roll hunting, it was a Hungarian Forint

I was always told when I started, to buy fewer coins, but the best graded examples I could afford...did I go with that ? why, no way......I'm heading more that way,now, but it sure was fun buying all those "bargains" :)