Hey folks, I was over at my parents place for the holidays and my dad had found some jars (say around 4 gallons worth) of pennies (ok fine, cents! :yes from when my mom and him roll searched decades ago. There won't be any wheats but I'm not sure if they pulled anything more than that. So from glancing at them, there is going to be a good number of BU/MS coins (say 10% of them?) and most I think are going to be from 1965-1975. My brief questions : Would it be worth sorting through / pulling the good looking coins from these jars? Are there any key/semikey dates / errors from these years by chance? Or should we just forget them for another couple decades when a MS 1965 will more probably be worth something? I know more about ancient Romans than US cents and I am just a beginner at Romans so just checking for them. Thanks! Geoff
Absolutely worth going through. There are several key varieties that can be found, a couple that come to mind are the 1972 Doubled Die and 1969-S Doubled Die. Make sure you have a decent magnifier if you want to consider doing this, some of them can be hard to see with just the naked eye.
I appreciate these lists of varieties and welcome more... Also, what about say a MS BU 1967, 1975, etc.? Are those kind worth setting aside or no? There will probably be dozens of that type in there.
Keep in mind that there were no Mint Sets produced for 1965-1967, so all BU Lincoln's from these years should be carefully scrutinized. Chris
Erm I'm going to totally show off my lack of modern coin knowledge here...The dates 1967/1975 were just chosen randomly as examples. Knowing that BU means brilliant uncirculated, I assumed this meant MS and shiny (<-----ducks) / with great luster? Or is BU just for proofs? What I meant by MS BU is definitely not proofs. I meant the coins that look uncirculated, nice and red, and very shiny to the eye. That make you say Wow! That sure is a nice shiny penny! (<------- ducks again). Yes I'm trolling but not really. My question is genuine - as to whether the nice RD MS coins from common dates from 1960-1975 are worth pulling in addition to any varieties/errors.
If the cent is red and full of luster, I would say its worth keeping. Also any toned cents are worth setting aside too. So get the jar out, set aside a loupe and light, and start digging through those jars. Oh and this site may prove to be useful too, though it may not list everything it sure does give a lot of info. link
