Is Coin Roll Hunting Really A Waste Of Time.

One of the best things I got out of my coin roll searching days was that I learned what was common and what was an unusual find. Take Jefferson nickels for example. Some people just search for pre 1960 Jeffersons, some just for key dates, hennings, RPM's, errors or War Nickels.
I came to the conclusion that a common as dirt 1964 D that was well struck with a few steps in AU or BU condition was a much scarcer find than a pre 60 nickel.
I kept a lot of more recent nickels that were unusually better or seldom seen too.

As noted, what's your intent. Then ability comes in to play, by that I mean ability to recognize what you see. To scope every single coin is indeed a waste of time, any error that you must be see Microscopically, has the same relative value as magnification factor...micro(little)! A DDO / DDR/RPM is really only valuable to a true collector of them, same as common processing errors( cracks, Cuds and cruds). They really hold only minimal value, in the real scope of things numismatic. Of course, they are "worth" what some may pay for them, but this isn't "standard" for there is no standard, all stated values are arbitrary anyway. As TNG said,
. Therein is the thrill of the hunt.

For straight silver stacking, it becomes the luck of the draw and "Location, location, location". Most all silver has indeed been pulled from circulation. What is seen is bank dumps of collections and hoards(Grandma's jar) being cashed in. It is "recirculated" silver. Highly unlikely that a coin has survived completely untouched from before, altho we would like to think so. I'd like to think that 1902 Barber dime in VF survived all those years, but believe me, it would have been a slick by now!

It is a waste of time if you think you are going to find a fortune in pre-1964 silver coins.

It is not a waste of time if you are searching for varieties and errors and if you enjoy the hunt

CRH is all about the thrill of the hunt; the rare monster box of all silver halves, dumped collection, or rare variety or error is all outweighed by the sheer time the hobby takes. I roll hunted for years during the peak of the economic crisis and mass dumping of change jars, and my total theoretical profits would amount to less than an extra weekend of working for minimum wage.

The thrill of unwrapping a solid roll of dateless Buffalo nickels or seeing a -64 in a pile of halves ought to be its own reward, with the "profit" as icing on the cake. When the thrill started to subside, I stopped hunting.

Still, I find CRH is like fishing, most of the time you catch sheephead and carp but every now and then you get a Steelhead or a Northern pike!

In just the past 2 weeks, I pulled 22 silver halves.......including a 1982 Commemorative Washington Half, a Franklin, and a Walker. These were all picked up randomly as I go into different banks every couple days and buy what few rolls they have. I did get 4 silvers just looking at the tellers change holder and seeing the silver edges.

Today, my 13 year old son got 1 roll of dimes from the bank, and pulled a 1964. He also bought a couple rolls of nickels during the past few weeks, and pulled 4 Buffaloes, and about 6 silver War Nickels.

Finding the Commemorative, Ben and Walker in random rolls led me to believe one of 2 things:

1) People are cashing in Grandpa's collection not knowing what they have

2) Sadly ===== and I hate to say it == But, people are probably stealing whatever they can to cash in to feed their opioid habit. The crisis is real bad in my local town, so I suspect that may be a primary contribution.

All of the rolls we picked up were hand rolled, and not machine rolled---so most likely they were brought into the bank from someone, and not any of the armored
coin services.

darn , I'm agreeing with both. Last week I was at my LCS and in comes a young girl with rolls of walkers and franklins - I so wanted to say I'de give here $7 apiece but she sat down with the owner of the shop and he convinced her they were only worth$5 apiece and she sold them all, and it was on a Friday - Drug money? Who knows but that was highway robbery! Never looked at dates just $5 for every coin she offered.