Bank Rolls of Wheat Coins

Okay, don't judge, O ye of many coins. I have been lurking around on eBay, looking for wheat penny lots. And I have a question. Auctions of old bank rolls of wheat pennies-- how does it happen that ALL those coins are wheat pennies? Unless they were rolled in a year before memorial cents were made, but even that is unknowable, just by looking at the roll, right?

And if you can answer that question, then this one is my follow-up: why do sellers brag about "tight" rolls??

 

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I guess they are bragging about the roll being tight because then you "know that the seller hasn't opened them". But it's just a sales pitch. I have bought a roll of wheat pennies rolled up supposedly in the 1940's, but of course, it turned out to be a gimmik. I got a 1956 penny in worn down condition, and I got no coins worth over 70 cents. In fact, the best coin was a 1930 s in xf condition. The oldest coin was 1919. I bought the roll for 30 dollars. Lesson learned.

 

Those “bank rolls” is rolls of coins that have been searched already and then reroll and sold. You waste your money on those “unsearched rolls”. I have bought them and found a pretty good 1909 vdb one time and maybe you’ll get a Indian head every now and then. Somebody has gone threw them already 90% of the time.

 

The term "unsearched" can mean just about anything. I always wonder how many times the coins in these "rolls" were in other rolls over the past decades that were searched and rerolled.

 

I have more luck purchasing bulk cents from a LCS. They do not have time or people to search them. There will always be a lot of 40's & 50's. I do find cents from the teens, 20's & 30's.

 

Not many people are happy when they buy these type of roles from ebay.
Buying from a local shop should cost less for about the same thing.
I believe that 99% of all wheat cents have been searched.

 

I purchased a bag of pennies that were sold as unserched but weren't in rolls and had mostly 40s 50s. I did find a 1953D that I thought might be worth something so I went to a local coin shop and asked him about it. The D wasn't positioned between the 9 and 5 like most, it was right under the 5. I thought it was a mint error but I found out from this guy it was a rim error and not worth anymore than the .15 to .19 cent

 

If such pennies are supposedly "unsearched", how do they know they're all wheats? I once bought 5 rolls of "unsearched" wheats. None of them were worth more than about 50 cents. The only saving grace is that there was one BU 1955-P in the bunch. Everything else was common fodder. Not nearly worth what I paid for it. Another time I bought a supposedly unsearched roll at a flea market. It had a 1944-D in it that someone tried to alter the date to make it look like a 1914-D. It was very easy to spot. The old saying, "Caveat emptor" applies here.

 

I have found 4 or 5 over the years that were altered to look like 14D.

 

THEY ARE A S C A M DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR LINE OF B.S.

 

Yeah, it was easy to spot because they had done a poor job of altering the 4 and of course it had the VDB on the shoulder where the real 1914-D has none.

 

100% OF THE TIME, AND PLANTED COINS TO GET YOU TO ORDER MORE!

 

This is the answer. I helped a friend liquidate his deceased fathers collection. One of the items was a huge jar of wheats that was so heavy I used a hand truck to get it out. My local dealer weighed them and paid my buddy .035 each based on weight. He then put them in one pound bags and sold them at .05 each based on weight. He didn’t look at a single cent in that jar...... Shop owners aren’t motivated by fifty cent coins which is what the bulk of nice wheats may be worth. It doesn’t make sense for a shop owner to look at each cent. His time is better spent on fifty dollar coins. So yes, your best shot at getting true unsearched wheats is from a shop owner.

 

A lot of these bulk wheat cent lots are comprised of coins that were sought out and removed from circulation in the 1960's and early 1970's. One way to tell with coins that were removed from this era if they haven't been heavily filtered is you will often find wheats from the 1910's that are very worn and smooth.

It would make sense that these coins were allowed to freely circulate throughout the '50's but then removed in the years that followed thereafter.

You can say right from the start going back over 50 years the majority of these kinds of coins have technically already been searched. With this in mind, it makes sense that these lots typically don't exhibit post-1958 cents in them like one may be initially inclined to expect.

With that said, if you're curious, want to have a bit of fun, and can find some rolls that purport to be unsearched and aren't terribly expensive, go ahead and buy a few. Just don't expect to find keys or anything all that exceptional.

 

They've all been searched. Just buy all the Wheat Cents you can and then roll them and then you have nothing but Wheat Ear rolls.

 

My first time was the last time! Live and learn...

 

What is LCS?

 

Local coin shop. Your neighborhood coin dealer.

 

I thought it was Lincoln Cent Store

 

I searched 200 rolls in 1957 ( my mom was a bank mgr) and I filled the entire 1909-1940 Lincoln book in one day, except for the 14d and 24d! Those were unsearched rolls! On ebay you are giving away your money and wasting your time.