1966 found in a cash register

Just thought it was really pretty for being a 1966 and in a cash register at a gas station. It's not perfect but was just shining through the other pennies. Just wanted to show it off and see if anything was special about it?

 

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Cool find! My Birth year. that's all that is special about it. I've got a whole roll.

 

I think so too! Welcome to the wonderful and very addictive world of coin collecting!

 

Finding a 50 or 60 year old coin in circulation that still has luster is always fun. I tend to keep all the ones I find even though they aren't worth much, if anything.

Probably spent the last half-century in somebody's change jar.

 

These cents will crop up now and then because many were saved back then. Large numbers of rolls were set aside as “investments” and roll trading was very popular during the first part of the of the 1960s decade.

So many of these coins were saved that they never got much of a collector value. When I belonged to a club in the 1970s, BU rolls did not bring more than face value in the club auctions. Therefore their owners release them into circulation now and then.

 

Going back about 10 years, the retail stores I managed would send a driver to the bank to pickup change orders about twice per week.
It was common to receive UNC rolls from the 60s. They were busted open and gave out as change.
I remember going to coin shows years ago and you could buy common date UNC rolls for 60 cents per roll.

 

You have to love it when that shiny cent turns out to be nearly 60 years old! I really like these kinds of finds, nice job.

 

This is a remarkably tough date. It probably is really from a roll but few people realize just how few 1966 rolls were saved compared to earlier dates. Most of the few that were saved were spent back in the late-'60's. Its low price doesn't reflect its commonality but the near absence of demand.

While this coin is fairly common in SMS nice BU examples are elusive and 60 years of circulation has made this date hard to find anywhere at all.

 

I'm showing to have 23 UNC rolls of 1966 cent. I was cleaning out an old coin shop that closed in the 70s. I bought about a thousand rolls there at face value.

 

The common practice for coin dealers, dating back to probably the ‘20s, was to obtain rolls of new coins at face value or a little over and sell them as singles in the future years. Investors caught on to that strategy and started to save rolls in quantity in the early 1960s. “The Coindealer News Letter got its start at that time. Of course, after the investors did that, the supply was too big, and the prices were low.

 

Soon to be obsolete...

 

For the life of me I cannot find my birth year, 1.

 

Decent coin photog acumen, OP.

 

Sometimes you find one that still has luster on it. I got this 1971 metal detecting under some wood chips.

 

I swear, you go to the cleanest parks. You need to go to the older, more unkempt parks or ones less frequented now. Give it a try?
Where do you live again? What state?

 

Where I live all the parks have been cleaned out (I spoke with an old timer who was in a club with hundred of detectors and they have gone over every inch of ground out here), and the ground is like cement. I generally do playgrounds. But now that the elementary schools are all locked most of the good stuff is beyond my reach and it's not worth the gas and the batteries any more. No one was doing what I was doing and I scored big for 8-9 years.

 

It is remarkable that a bronze coin could be preserved like that under a pile of wood chips. My guess is that it must have been there for far less time than you have assumed.

 

I never assumed it was there for more than a very short time.
A recent drop.

 

Your cent was a year that was highly saved so it easy to understand why you received one in change. It’s always nice to find a date from longer ago that still has mint luster and is shiny. Welcome to CT.

 

I haven't even seen AU's in many many years.