Hi ryurazu,
Ok, in my opinion, You'll likely have the same issue with the coin shop as you will with
ebay, they will give you mostly junk and just enough "cheap good stuff" to entice you, but the coin shop knows very well silver from clad, and good dates from bad dates, and conditions, and can sort through purchases quickly and sort the common from the less common. I'd say you get some silver dimes and quarters if its 12x or 13x face value tops, at least you have the silver.
1960s and onward is likely going to be "clad" meaning nothing before 1965 when silver was removed from dimes and quarters. if it's 1960s onward, it's not going to have wheat cents either those ended in 1959.
What a lot of people do is go to a bank and buy a $25.00 box of cents and go through that, or a $50 box of nickles or $100 box of dime, or a $500 box of quarters and search that, from circulation.
If you find something rare, that's where it could actually happen, and if you don't you've still done it for face value as long as you can find a no-fee place to get rid of the coins after you are done.
If you do that, nickels and cents are probably the most productive, there isn't much silver out there in dimes or quarters anymore, and if you do hunt silver, it's a grind just doing that to get somewhere, but people do get lucky from time to time.
As far as information, there were books, called
CherryPickers' Guide To Rare Die Varieties of
United States coins Vol. 1 and there's a vol. 2 also. this is a ton of information.
The books are pretty expensive, I think it's out of print now.
But this is where most people really hunting hardcore got their information from, and went from there.
there is just a ton of information, and no one place that has it all, but the
CherryPickers Guide has a whole lot.
I don't know half of what some people on here know and I am sure those people know someone they can say the exact same thing about. It's a constant learning process, and books and internet are the research tools. there's no real "cheat sheet" to learn it fast.
The place I started was "A Guide Book of
United States coins", get the newest edition available.
it's the cheapest entry point really, like 16 bucks and has info for all u.s. coin series. there's like the mintages and values, and the big, sought after varieties listed also to search for, it's easy to give you a few things to search for without it becoming overwhelming until you get acclimated.
I'd also suggest buying some cheap folders for cents, nickles dimes, quarters, whatever you are searching, for something else to do while searching coin after coin,.
I mean that's what I did when I started. A
Red Book for coins, some folders, a bank and $60.00 and got $30 in quarters, $15 in dimes, $10 in nickles, and $5 in cents. and start getting familiar with everything, worst case I'm out the $16 for the book, nothing for the coins, and about $3-$4 each for the folders, and your local coin shop likely will have some used for sale even cheaper that have been emptied.
I'd stick to cents as a beginner, get used folders from 1909 Lincoln cents to current from the coin shop for cheap, and start filling them from circulation finds, but I'd say the
Red Book will at least give you a couple things to look for as you fill in the folders, and search and get used to looking for differences and details.
Can't really get cheaper than that, coins at face value that you can turn back into the bank what you don't want for the same face value and get some new ones to look at.
You'll of course also want magnification probably, I've used a magnifying glass, to a jewelers loupe, to an app on my phone, Some use a computer microscope, I'll leave this area for someone else with a better understanding than I have, what I usually look for doesn't take much magnification to tell, but it is important when you are looking for a lot of the things in the
Cherry Pickers Guide.
some series, especially the older ones, it's just not going to happen from circulation very often. this is what those coin shop grab bags are good for, for the common dates of stuff you don't see in cirulation ever. From circulation, it may take a while but you could expect coins from the late 1800s, to today really, the older turn up less frequently, but the cent searchers will say they find a handful or more
Indian Head cents a year, the nickel searchers will say they find
Buffalo nickels and even some
Liberty nickels sometimes,
Mercury dimes from the dime searchers and an occasional
Barber dime, and quarter searchers can find silver quarters, maybe a standing liberty, maybe a barber even if you search enough.
Good luck and be blessed.
Posted 05/13/2020 9:13 pm
