Just started collecting about 6 months ago, I usually just search rolls of Lincoln cents from the bank. One thing that's been bugging me is why are they're so many listed errors for P cents and hardly any from the Denver mint? I live near Seattle, WA and I'm mainly looking for the '83, '84, '88, '94, - '07 errors. However my ratio of finding denver mintmarks to finding p mintmarks is about 10-1. So for example every ten 1983-D that I find, I'll find one 1983. Based on that, my chances of finding any of those errors are slim to none, which kind of discourages me. I guess what I'm asking is people that live on the west coast how do you acquire coins? I've been to a few local shops but they never have BU rolls with P mintmarks. Is eBay my only option or should I stick with roll searching and hope to get lucky? Thanks for your input.
If you are looking specifically for BU, you might try one of the advertisers in coin World or NN. They usually sell BU memorial rolls. If it doesn't matter much, you might put an ad in the "open section" to trade one box of west coast bank wrapped rolls for one box of bank wrapped rolls from the east coast. In the end it will just cost each the flat priority mail rate, all rest is at face. Spend what you don't keep. With the 2009 Lincoln types, I traded 10-20 rolls of BU to a person on the east coast for the "P" varieties. People on the east coast have the reverse problem. Jim
It might be an interesting subject to explore or do a poll. My first thought was that they would be mostly "P"., but a friend in Nebraska said he sees few "D" coins.
That's actually a great idea to trade boxes, thank you. I figured that people on the east coast would have the same problem, it just seems that 95% of Lincoln cent errors dated '80 - present, have the p mintmark. Its quite funny when I'm roll searching and I find for example a 1994, I drop everything, pick up my loupe and check it
