Possible To Handpick An AU-Ms Collection Out Of Circulation?

You can come across them from time to time, last week I got a 1969s LMC in change it was in AU condition, nice red coloring too.

It would be possible but the longer you wait the harder it will be. I feel that you would have the most success with halves if you can find them.

In my opinion: Dimes, no prob... nickels, you can do pretty good.

And I put together sets of many BU silver Roosevelts from my dealer's junk silver bin

Do not wait on a clad era collection. Buy a box of pennies, quarters, dimes, nickels, and if you get lucky, odd amounts of halves. Make the best set you can this weekend. Next week begin accumulating mint 65 on cents through halves from the nearest dealer. Both local dealers I frequent give me the same caution: clad gem BU quarters and dimes, and odd nickels and pennies from the 60's on can be tough to find. Take the 1982 and 83 sets. Not a good example, you say? They made souvenir sets, so those are relatively tidy to find. Just in the last year those two sets are spiking, and now over a hundred. Most are broken up either P or D when you buy. On ebay there is a set from 56 on, proof included, for $180. If you don't want to wait years, that's a good buy. In my mind searching through hundreds of thousands of coins for a set that you can get for less than 200 seems a good deal to me. Of course, I STILL keep gem BU of the clad years, but I ain't gonna try to make a set from my finds. Dealers around here won't either. I will say I admire the fastidious collectors on this forum who make sets from finds, no matter what. They are true collectors. I am lazy and impatient. And my eyes are going. And I have carpal tunnel. And did I mention I was lazy? :)

Nickels are very do-able. Just takes time, but they're out there.

I agree with the others. It may take some time, but is doable and will be very rewarding to put together!

Awesome thanks for all the input everyone. I'll definitely buy a few boxes and get started. I'll probably buy a P-mint State Quarter collection off ebay as the P's are hard to find here in Houston.

AC

I'd like to tell you that you can do an AU/ Unc set of quarters but you most assuredly can not. You can't even come close. You can make a nice attractive set with nice well struck coins but it will be a major challenge just to get VF.

Surprisingly the key to the set is the '69-P. These just aren't found nice or often and if you do find a nice one it will usually be only Fine. I started my set in '97 so I'd know what was out there and it's mostly AU/ Unc but there arte still afew XF's in it and only recently found my last XF which was the '73-P. I got very lucky very early with the '69-P.

I strongly recommend seeking nicely made coins rather than merely the highest grade. These are much tougher nice than unworn and you'll have nearly as nice or nicer grades anyway in the long run.

I do dimes as well but have looked through only about 12,000 of these. I expected them to be easy but the mid-70's are murder. Dimes have a higher attrition so the low mintage older dates aren't seen and these tend to be well worn since dimes circulated faster in the '80's. I have three or four still that are only VF and one of these isn't even a nice VF.

Nickels should be much easier but might require extensive effort.

Cents are doable I'm told.

There has always been only one place to find gems; mint sets. You could find most of the dates in gem back inthe day but I'd have to go from bank to bank and city to city and I'd still not always find each date. Some of these were made extremely poorly in almost all cases. I'm quite proud of the gems I did find though.