I tried a few and got nothing special in all of them. There are a lot of rolls on Ebay with VDB ends - you'll most likely end up with the common non-S 1909 VDB. Unless an end coin is one I want I gave up on getting these. I recently got one with a 1922 weak D showing on one end, and I ended up with a nice "no visible D" coin (Die Pair 3 unfortunately, but it fills a space in the album), and my winning roll bid was low. If you're just starting out it's a good way of getting some coins, but there's sure no guarantee you'll get that 1909 S VDB. It's possible, but the odds are against it. In my opinion, even if the seller hasn't searched the coins, someone in the past probably has. Anyway, that's just my experience, and you might just end up happily surprised.
They are not unsearched, they are set up for people to believe that they are. If you found a roll with a 'VDB' on the end, would you sell it for 9 bucks (or whatever) on ebay, or would you tear it open to see if there was an 's' on the other side. Anybody in their right mind would look at it. These are scams.
Unfortunately we can talk about this subject until we turn blue in the face. Lots of new collectors are always curious about these mystery rolls.
well, you never really know? it is possible that it is unsearched. my Grandmother is coming up this summer and i cant wait because she is giving me most of her coins. and one of the things she is giving me is an unsearched roll of merc's, she got it when she was little from a bank and she never opened it. she was born in the 40's. cant wait to look through those!!!
The rolls on ebay are made up by the seller. They buy old-style paper rolls (on ebay) seed the ends of the rolls while putting common coins in the middle, use their roll crimper, age the paper, and sell them for 100x to 500x face value to people who think they are going to find something fantastic. You'll do far better buying rolls for face value from the grocery stores or banks than giving these guys your hard earned cash for crap.
yes, but still, its possible someone doesnt know/care what they have except its old so lets see what we can get for it. doesnt happen very often but it does. take my Grandmother for example, doesnt know a thing about coins, couldnt tell a shield nickel from a buffalo nickel if she saw it. to her its five cents. she was getting ready to take the dimes and use them, luckly i told her not to.
These guys aren't your grandmother. They have a business where the sell seeded rolls for an incredible profit. They've been doing this since ebay started and about once every month or so someone comes on here asking about unsearched rolls and everyone of them is told the same thing but they go ahead and have to find out themselves. It's your choice whether to give away your $50 to one of these sellers or go to the bank and get a hundred rolls of cents and find a treasure at face value. At least you'll get your money back when you return the searched rolls from the bank. You'll never get your money back from a ebay unsearched roll. There's a thread here on Coin Talk that members use to show what they found coin roll hunting. Check it out and see what incredible finds you can get in bank rolls. http://www.cointalk.com/t10176/
yes i see what you are saying and i agree. thats why just about every day i buy 5 - 10 dollars worth of pennies thinking about going to try halfs for once. the banks rolls sit for a while.
That's the way to do it! There's oldies to be found at the banks. You never know when someone's Grandmother will turn in a few rolls of Merc dimes.
Sometimes, if you go to the sellers feedback and go to their feedback as a buyer you can see the exact coins they've bought to put in the ends. It's interesting also, I've seen that a couple of these sellers were also at one time purchasers of these kind of rolls. I guess they finally figured out that they were being taken to the cleaners so they decided to get in on the act.
