I recently went to the bank to get my box of pennies, and when I got home discovered that I was given a box of 2020 BU's. I opened one roll to check it out (and they are beauties), but I wonder if I should maybe keep a couple of the rolls and send the rest back, or go through them, look for possible errors, and then recycle them. USA Coin Book Estimated Value of 2020 Lincoln Shield Penny is Worth $0.32 or more in Uncirculated (MS+) Mint Condition, but I wonder who would pay that. What would you do??
I'm not privy to the errors of this year's mintage. Or last year's. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or the year before. The chances of you having an error in there are far higher than pulling out an example that would be worthy of getting graded. I'm not even sure what the target is these days, is it MS67? MS68? But the question then is do you have the patience to sift through each and every one of those pennies with a loupe? If so, you are clearly a stronger Jedi than I could have ever possibly imagined. Here's what I say: take them to a bank that you never use and be done with those atrocities once and for all.
Keep 2 rolls, dump the rest. Time is money, and I say that as a dedicated CRH'er. In this case, it's fruitless, the mint will make 10 BILLION 2020 Zincolns. You possess 5000.
Those are tough questions. If you want to discover a possible new error I'd go through all of them; cherry picking the best ones in any event. When done I'd probably only keep a roll or two and dump the rest.
My opinion.... with the covid, restaurants and businesses are mostly shut down nationwide. The need for change just isn't there and not sure when things return to normal. Add to that bank lobbies being closed and making things difficult also. Now Denver and Philadelphia aren't shut down, but who knows how much they are producing at the moment or will produce this year? I know Philadelphia produced some bullion silver Eagles to help out with the West Point closure so this had to have taken some time from circulation production I'd think. We had less of a situation in 2009-2012ish, the economy wasn't nearly this affected and there's some difficulties finding BU coins of all denominations in those date ranges, the 2009 p+d nickel and d-dime I think, some of the 2012 state park quarters, the 2011s aren't easy either. I would say if you can afford to do it and you have the opportunity in front of you, set aside a couple rolls of the nicest ones for 2020. worst case you can always turn them in a couple years from now if it doesn't pan out. I don't know when they will lower production but I'd say they will lower production at some point being a safe bet. If I were able to get new 2020 coins from the bank right now I'd be setting the best aside in all denominations going through the rolls and selecting the prettiest and putting up a couple coin tube of each On the chance there's a semi key or key date or just a condition rarity that appears during this period of time.
It doesn't matter, but you should know that your "initial wrappers" did not come from the Mint. The Mint ships the pennies in ballistic bags that weigh 1,000 lbs. to subcontractors who roll and box the coins for delivery to the FRB's. ~ Chris
Here's a video of the process of minting cents. They get marked and dinged as soon as they exit the press.