Pardon the new guy but... I'm curious if there is much interest in this forum in coin roll hunting? A quick search didn't reveal many posts. I'm working on a coin hunting project and would like to discuss various sources of good coin rolls. Currently I use boxes purchased from local banks (cents for now) with moderate success. I contacted CoinStar thinking they would be a great source of general circulation coins but they won't deal with the public. Any experienced hunters want to share their experiences?
Get in good with your bank tellers, it means schmoozing, like bringing gift cards for lunch, etc. Mine save me stuff like older FRN's, Ikes, silver halves, USN's etc. My most recent major acquisition was just after I came back from my hiatus in Ukraine for a couple of months, $300 face in old hundreds, $20's, $10's from the 1934-1950 series notes. I have a deal with one bank that I call early Monday morning before they ship off $50 bags of cents to the Fed, they give me the option to buy them and search them first. Some of the larger banks are kind of stinky with their policies, but we have some local banks here that have been around since the 1890's and have only 2-3 branches that are very friendly and accomodating.
schmoozing is good! Another approach that I've heard that has potential is to try small towns banks anytime you are passing through as they tend to recirculate coins more than larger banks that tend to ship/receive coin order according to current supply/demand. I'm curious if there is any potential in estate sales/auctions.
Small town banks in out of the way places are the bomb, I have managed several rolls of BU Ikes in a small bank near Lake Tahoe a few years ago.
I wouldn't worry to much about coinstar coins unless you hunt for varietes. You could find wheats and older nickels perhaps, but the coinstar machines reject silver, so won't find any there. The small town banks are good sources and I have a bank here in town that I go to every week and get a few rolls. I just started slow and got to know the tellers. Now they really have my back and look for rolls and coins for me.
I'm definitely going to try small town banks. Right now I rely on getting large quantities (well, by the box) so I'll be curious how much I can get at a time. One of the things I do is track the years of the individual cents so I can get a sense of what are actually good sources based on the average year, etc of the coins from a source.
It was a small town back where I got three rolls of halves that were solid silver. Walkers, Franklins and a few kenedys. They were even nice enough to write silver on the rolls :kewl:. the teller kind of winked at me and told me those were the last half dollar rolls they had.
There is a thread called Roll Searchers Post Your Results....check that out. I get my coins from banks, so far, the small town ones have not been good to me, but I'll keep trying.
