Change From Your Local Coin Store

My favorite was getting proof Statehood Quarters as change.

I remember when I was around 12 going into a Kroger and buying some cello packs of baseball cards and the change was $.75...all three quarters received were bicentennials so I went back to the register and asked for change for a dollar and did this 4-5 times until I had all the quarters he had and collected 18 bicentennials that day. This would have been 1983-84, so it wasn't that they were that rare yet, it was just neat to find a run of beautiful coins at the time. The first 'dump' I ever found.

Very nice!

Back in the early 1990s when I was actively putting together my first serious coin collection, I frequented a coin shop in Colorado Springs from which I purchased a lot of that material.
On one occasion, the proprietor of the shop was counting back my change for a purchase I had made.
He ended the count with "....and one penny!"
The final coin he plopped into my hand was an 1847 large cent!
It was basically a cull coin because it had a large 'X' scratched across Liberty's face. If not for that defacement, it would have easily been a nice VF grade.
Nonetheless, I was thrilled to get that coin in change, and it became a treasured part of the collection.
Sadly, the Large Cent was sold along with the rest of the collection in 2002 to help finance our oldest daughter's college tuition.
Since then, I've been slowly building up my second collection.
Wish I'd held on to that old '47....