Best denomination for return on time investment?

I've never calculated return on time investment for CRH in the different denominations but I probably could if I had a mind to. Since it'd be far easier to tap the knowledge of those who have done this in the past, here I am.

Simple question: which denomination yields the best monetary return for the invested time searching?

Thus far it seems like quarters should have that distinction, as even AU varieties of 1999 through present coins show being worth $0.35 or more in the Red Book. (Naturally, what they'd really sell for is a different thing entirely. I know not what that is.) I've found dimes to be the biggest duds, though they have the interesting distinction of being the most likely to have extras in the rolls. Nickels yield very few "keepers", though they seem to bring more valuable keepers than pennies. Pennies have always been my favorite, but truly valuable keepers are few and far between. (Sure, one can always keep the pre-1981's for copper value, but the question becomes, who buys supplies of copper pennies? I haven't looked yet.)

And I haven't been able to search enough halves to have a guess, because it seems like nobody has them around here.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

No one pays 35 cents for quarters you can find in circulation unless they are in another country or someplace they are very hard to find. I think the closest you can ever get to that is someone selling P or D mint marks to people on the other side of the country, but many people like to find it themselves.

 

Financially speaking, coin roll hunting is a waste of time. You drive around to banks, (spending money on gas) to pickup and drop off coins. It’s very time consuming and most of the time, you will only get a few nice finds, worth a few bucks on average. If you’re trying to make money, get a job. It is fun though, if you are a coin collector.

 

Its not my money(yet)and I enjoy it greatly but if your goal is to get rich fast which many think don't do it.

 

Nobody likes having a job, so why support the idea? This whole idea of people "having jobs" is extremely recent, in the vast timeline of human history. We didn't evolve for it, nobody really likes it no matter what reasons they parrot for going along with it, and it's time for the systemic experiment based upon this idea to be deemed a failure.

But where CRH is concerned, it's definitely fun. I've been doing it since my teenage years. I'm just wondering what might generate the best finds. I'm not worried about driving around to banks, because I very rarely go out of my way to hit a bank. I drive so much anyway that it's pretty well a given that a branch of a bank where I have an account will be in the vicinity of where I'm headed for other purposes. Even if money isn't a consideration, we all look for cool finds, and I'd like to know what people's experiences have been with, let's say, "cool finds per unit time invested" even if "increase in dollar value per unit time invested" is considered negligible.

 

Its not a job if you love what you do.

If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it.

 

Unfortunately this current climate is building a generation of ( no need to workers ) as unemployment checks seem to be worth more than an actual job. What people seem to forget is that the money that’s being spent on them ( the unemployed ) is actually earned by the rest of the population working and paying taxes.

 

Seems really hard to get my hands on them. Earlier this month one of my banks practically begged me to take 43 rolls of halves off their hands because they'd been sitting on them for months. I didn't have enough cash on me plus money in that account to take them all, so I took what I could and planned to return the next morning for the rest. I returned, and someone else had bought all the rest. I have not found a single roll of halves at any bank I've hit since.

But it was fun when I got them. I hit three proofs and some that weren't released for circulation. Alas, no silver.

Oh, I never said I oppose work. Everyone enjoys some kind of work, and I've met no counterexample to that in all my years. I'm not sure I agree with you about how it's necessary to do things we don't want to do, to survive. Watch what people do on vacation - they hunt, fish, camp, build, hike in nature, you name it. Our true nature hasn't been destroyed yet.

I agree with you about that "parasitism" thing, and I'd augment it by saying "if one manages to get others to do that work for them without compensation that reflects the actual value of the work to the person being worked for, it's parasitism".

Then the problem is the low-paying crappy jobs, not unemployment benefits, which, even with the COVID $300 boost, balance out at a paltry $30,000 per year, meaning that if your job paid more than that, you aren't getting as much on unemployment (to say nothing about the job-related benefits you're no longer getting, if you had any). And what a lot of people don't know is that much of this money you're talking about is basically being created out of thin air. Check out "modern monetary theory" and "fractional reserve banking" to get an idea of what I mean.

From a numismatist's perspective, consider this. The government can't possibly know how much physical money is out there. There is no master record of which serial numbers of paper money have been destroyed due to poor condition, and even if there were, it would not account for the money destroyed by people and the money saved indefinitely by people. Though coins have no serial numbers, still there's no way to know what's out there. Do we know how many 1909-S VDBs are out there? Nope. We know how many were minted, and all we can say is, "the number out there today is less than or equal to the mintage".

You think the "coin shortage" stuff is BS? I kind of agree, but if we were all to try to cash in our bank accounts and investment accounts and what not, to get cash, we'd find out very quickly just what a cash shortage there really is in this country.

Money is an illusion, and therefore anything built upon money as a basis is an illusion. People ought not quibble about the virtues of an illusion; we'd do much better to join together and finally put some clothes on the emperor.

By the way, I don't mind the side discussion. It's my thread, after all...

 

Halves give the best rate of return because of the 40%ers that nobody seems to know about. After that, I would say banknotes.

But don't order from the bank. Make friends with the tellers and have them hold customer deposits of half dollars and any older notes for you. Seems to exponentially increase the likeliness of finding something good. Back when I was ordering boxes of halves I found like 1 coin per box. With customer deposits being held for me on halves, I have found entire rolls of 1964 and 40%ers. Plenty of banknotes as far back as 1934. I got an XF+ $10 1934 silver certificate this way. A set of 1950 FRNs up to $100 in VG. Some 1934 FRNs. A few $5 US notes. All for face.

 

the coin shortage is a logistic problem rather than a physical coin shortage problem. Getting staff to do what you class as menial jobs at the moment is proving difficult as they are being enabled to live a somewhat free lifestyle at the expense of the taxpayer ( which inevitably will be payed back via higher taxes in the not too distant future ) I would rather receive $30k a year knowing I have worked hard for it and contributed to a working society than get given it and have no structure in my everyday life. There are more vacancies for jobs at the moment compared to applicants and unfortunately this is not due explicitly to Covid but more to a certain mindset that has been slowly building up over a number of years and the pandemic has just given those people the opportunity to attempt to embrace it. Anyway back to the main topic, I hunt through coins everyday and prefer a variety as you never know what you might find of value weather monetary, historic or just a coin i like the look of. I find silver most weeks looking through dimes and recently halves but rarely find quarters pre 65 from the bank so I get those from my local shops where I’ve had more luck. Good luck with the hunt

 

All denominations are roughly the same, they all have their coins to find and any one can be productive as any other really. the exception might be with quarters in 2019-2020 and West Point Mint marks which were a sweet transition for a coin hunter to make and cash in on if they were so inclined to do so.

If I were doing it to make money under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be doing it at all. you'd probably be better served cherry picking a coin shop and flipping the purchases than roll hunting in my opinion. Redbook is kind of nonsense. they put a value on everything, but a lot of the common stuff just won't sell especially moderns.

That said I think, like in the case of the Ws, occasionally an opportunity arises to go whole hog on coin roll hunting a certain series. but generally speaking, my results hunting are never like the Youtubers. Sure I make a hit here or there over the course of a year, but it's never going to replace my actual job, even with the W quarters, the money wasn't enough to pay the bills, and even with dimes, quarters and halfs, silver is to few and far between and you'd probably be better served panning gold or silver, and looking in rolls of coins. meh, I'm not trying to discourage you from hunting, just telling you, it's not a career and if you did it as much as you needed to to be profitable, it's all you would be doing and nothing else with your time. So I think it's best kept as a hobby. people that actually try to do it to pay the bills are searching 16 hours a day usually a husband and wife team, and with the off 8 hours, getting more coin to search or getting rid of searched coin, and listing finds for sale and trying to sell them off.. it's a lot more than a full time job to get profitable at it.

 

CRH is for fun and enjoyment, not profit.

 

I searched a nearly full box of halves today (48 machine-wrapped rolls) and got only one really good coin - a 2003D (NIFC). No silver at all.

Making friends with tellers is one thing but I would imagine that another is finding a teller who doesn't care about numismatics. I guarandamntee ya that if I were a teller or any other bank employee who was privy to types of deposits, I'd be swapping for anything good. I did it constantly as a cashier.

I class no work as menial work. Menial jobs exist, but there is a difference. I'll happily shovel poop on my own land, and I do. (I'm a wannabe farmer who farms more and more every year.) But if I were shoveling poop for wages, that's a menial job, if for no other reason than because it ain't being well-compensated. (I'd shovel poop for good wages and benefits.)

And as for contributing to a working society, I do agree with you there. I firmly believe everyone wants that. We just don't all want the kind of society we have. That's why so many people refuse to work. This society doesn't work for all people, and we can do better.

I've never had any luck with dimes except for the one time I cherry-picked a silver one from the tan tray in front of the teller, and except for getting 51 in a roll a bunch of times. This last time, 3 rolls, didn't find one I felt like keeping. I'm on 63 rolls of halves without one single silver.

Is there really that much money in flipping coin shop finds? Pardon my ignorance if that's what this is, but don't coin shop owners have a vested interest in knowing the most that their offerings will sell for, and selling them for that amount?

I'm not intending to make CRH a career, but if I'm going to do it, I may as well maximize my chances of finding good stuff. It's a dopamine hit when I find something uncommonly valuable, even if I never sell the stuff.

I think that stuff is a bunch of crap, myself. "Forty-three rolls in and I found a 1909-S VDB! And it's AU! OHMYGOD!" Yeah, sure you did. And even if some of the videos are accurate, they're like movies - they don't show the slog through all of the unproductive batches to get the good hit. I imagine the people record the unproductive batches, but don't post the videos.

Then maybe my question ought to be what is most fun and enjoyable. I like hitting wheaties and older in penny rolls, as well as old MS Memorials. Nickels - I like hitting 2009's and anything before 1960. Dimes - I guess I was never into them much, but silver raises my heart rate. Quarters - Silver, AU/MS <1990, W, 2009-2012. Halves - there are so many low mintage dates, but of course I'd love to find silver, NIFCs, and recent circulation dates. (Unfortunately, rolls of halves are mostly common 1970's dates in somewhat worn condition. I haven't even hit a single MS from prior to the 1990's.)

Historically I always did pennies. They're certainly the cheapest. I just wondered if anyone ever did any figuring. It seems that the answer is no, so maybe that job will fall to me. I'll post my results if/when I do it.

 

Ihave done Pennies, nickels,quarters and halves. I enjoy quarters the most and pull a lot of nice varieties and BU/AU out of every box.Nickels were fun too. I have pulled many a War Nickel and some nice DATED Buffalo nickels. Always a thrill to find. Quarters are hard for silver......Halves are GREAT when you get a good batch with silver. Few and far between though. I have been through many a skunk box before lucking into a treasure box,
Some of my best coin roll hunts have been customer wrapped rolls from the banks.I have hit a collection dump 3 times now! I LOVE it when that happens! Read the Coin Roll Hunters finds thread and see which denominations show up the most.