Different Ways To Fill Up Folders

I have a very old Jefferson set that I bought one coin for and two Lincoln Wheat cent folders that start in 1941 that are full from circulation.

Unfortunately, much of that information predates my oldest spreadsheets.

I can generalize and say that in my albums (which were started as folders), every cent, nickel, dime, and quarter issued for circulation between 1978 and 2001 came from circulation. This does not include any NIFC coins (proofs, mint set only, etc.).

After 2001 it became more difficult to find the D mint coins. With that, I have cheated on a few and those purchases are safely documented in the spreadsheet.

Anything dated before 1978 may have come from circulation or a purchase. I only have a smallish percentage of them documented. Some things I would just have to guess.

I don't really do roll hunting, on the account of general low availability of rolls in my country.

What does it count as when I buy a dollar's worth of assorted small coinage for face value (sometimes less, lately often for free) from a bunch of different grocery stores, sort them by date and try to slowly spend the common ones?

That said, for my (somewhat unofficial) non-ultra-rare date set, the coins were usually geniunely found in change (though I did have to look through some grocery store purchases for many of the 1 and 5 kopek coins, since by then they weren't that common in normal circulation*, and I ended up finding the last non-recent coin I needed - the 1 kopek 1999 - in someone's old change jar).


*) as was to be expected, since at that point 1 kopek would have been worth about 0.035 US cents