So the mint sells both bags and rolls (at a premium I believe ) It seems to me the bagged coins would be pretty banged up by the time I received them, also the machine that rolls coins must cause a little damage once in a while. So which method would get you the cleanest (awesomest) coins ?
IMHO I would say bags... Even though some (if not a lot) of them are banged up you may find better coinage in there
When I was actively submitting coins to NGC for grading, I always bought the bags from the US Mint. When it comes to business strikes, a grade of MS68 will generally sell for $150 or more. And, I came up with dozens of them! I would usually submit 50 or more coins of the same date/mintmark at a time. All you need is a dozen or so to come back MS68, and you will make a nice profit over and above the purchase price and cost of submission.
Rolls i would rather go to my banks and CRH customer wrapped rolls having a better chance of unexpected coins in them,silver,older coins e.t.c.
See if you can get them individually-wrapped. My mints are individually-wrapped and there aren't no marks on none of them.
They both are dumped into a bin when minted, then hauled to who ever divides them either into a machine that feeds them into the smaller bags or a machine that counts out 40 or 50 and wraps them. The major difference that I can think of is that bagged coins get jostled around together in shipping while the rolled coins are only exposed on the end pieces.
Good input by the group. I'd advocate for the bags over the rolls. I suppose that rolled coinage could yield a better grade than MS68, but I wouldn't count on it (NOTE: I've not searched Mint bags or rolls). I would also offer that the occasional run of off-center cents that are obround/broadstrikes might be more likely be found in bags.
It will be very hard to get a 69 or 70 from business strike coins in any packaging. Mint set coins rarely go above a 67 from talking with dealers in my LCC.
