Hi fellow CRH. This did not copy without the bold letters so please ignore them. This post should not be considered a letter of discouragement; rather an opinion based on many years of experience. Therefore, please consider it to be a friendly reminder to new collectors who have joined this forum. A majority of older collectors, numismatists, and professionals involved with coins got their start or developed an interest in coins by a gift or by looking at pocket change as one of the main ways to fill holes in coin folders. Some of them have become the famous numismatists of the past and present. The practice of looking in pocket change or bank-rolled coins for interesting or valuable specimens still goes on today by folks of all ages. Unfortunately, I don't think the "pickings" are as great as they were many decades ago. With the rise of credit cards, there does not seem to be as many coins in circulation or in my change dish anymore. Additionally, precious metal has been removed from our coins so a CRH will not get rich looking for silver. Banks are the source of newly issued coins. They also receive coins deposited from circulation. I believe most serious CRH obtain their coins directly from these banks where other serious CRH haunt. My advice is to have fun and learn about the neat little things you'll be looking for and finding on your coins. It may even turn you into a numismatist. The learning is free, the coins you’ll find are virtually free and will always (at least until digital currency) be spending money at face value. Enjoy the "thrill- of-the-hunt" and the health benefits of a relaxing hobby you can engage in with friends and relatives. There are “treasures” out there to be found; however, please keep this in the back of your mind that the chances of finding anything "worth" more than a few bucks to another CRH are several million to one! BTW, I am also a CRH. I have hundreds of dollars of saved change, waiting for me to search, that are not accruing any interest at a bank. Lots of it has been passed down from my father, another CRH who died before he could check it out. After all, I'm a dreamer just as others who think they may find a 1958/58 or 1969/69 Lincoln cent in one of the jugs. I think all CRH can appreciate that dream. Hey, this week I found a BU Lincoln Cent with die chips on the shield.Keep looking and GOOD LUCK!
Great post! If you want to get rid of the random bold text, you can edit your post, select all the text, and hit the "remove formatting" button, the one that looks like this: It's near the right end of the toolbar up above the edit window. Thanks for the post!
Great post. Good advice to all. Having collected for 75 years I find it difficult to accept the fact that I don't have change to look at everyday.
Folks have to remember that the huge volumes of coinage produced in modern times dwarfs the mintage figures of those ‘golden’ years. Even if folks weren’t plucking wheatbacks and silver from circulation, those early years/finds would become rarer and rarer with each passing year. For me, this is why variety hunting has added to our hobby in that a CRH enthusiast is far more likely to find variety/error coins of equal or greater value. I always recommend to CRH enthusiasts that they might consider broadening their scope. But to each their own. Do whatever kind of CRH event that suits your time and interest. No wrong way to do a CRH event by that standard.
Someone asked the question a while back in a different post "why do collectors need high magnification and microscopes?" Perhaps this subject is directly related to the CRH, old collectors and coins in the wild have dried up. Therefore, what we have to look for is errors and varieties. And we need better tools to do that. That is all I have left to search for and I have the equipment to help me.
I'm 30 years behind as a collector, and I wish I had the eyes that I had when I started. Now, a good pair of reader glasses, a magnifying lamp, and a microscope make up for the difference. A bit more tedious, but certainly manageable.
The higher the magnification we use the more careful we must be in judging errors and variations. The rarest coins coming from the mint are those that are perfect.
The more the coin is magnified the more errors you will find. Coins that are graded and slabbed as a 70 will so become errors if enough magnification is used. If you can’t see it with a 10x, it’s not worth your time.
I disagree. Otherwise, perhaps you and I are using "Mint error" differently. A knowledgeable collector can see any minor Mint imperfection (not usually considered a mint error except for "micro" Dbl'ed dies) with a 5X hand lens. Now, you can set any PERSONAL STANDARDS YOU WISH for your MS-70. REAL, 100% perfect coins exist at magnifications well over 10X - especially in the SE series.
What I’m saying is is that people CRH. And they spot a little anomaly on the coin. Then I tend to magnify it 200, 300 or 500 times or more. Then it becomes an error, at least to them, and no matter what you say you can’t convince them otherwise.
