Basic questions. What kind of desk lights do people recomend for looking at coins? What kind of loups do you recomend? Were are the cheapest sources of various coin wrappers including the rarer half and dollar coins? The cheapest I found in 15 mins of searching were at shoplet.com but they didn't ship my complete order! I have never gotten any from the banks for free but I should probably start doing this. Does anyone buy mint bags of coins looking for stuff? If you search bank rolls whats your basic pattern of working? For example I selected a bank to drops stuff off in and get coins from everywhere else. Actualy It's a bit more complicated as I drop off dimes and nickels at one branch and quarters and pennies in another. I spend as much of the bigger stuff as I can (halves, dollars) etc. I used to put a lot of coins into the free coin counter machines in my CU but they told me I did too much! I still use them a bit but less volume. Thanks. Neill.
It's an extremely complicated flow chart but most everything can be summarized fairly briefly. You need a good, bright incandescent light. 100W is usually enough but I prefer an indirect 500W buld (quartz) toward the front and a 100W bulb behind. To look for gems it is very straight forward and you need no magnification. Whether checking a roll or a bag, you can generally tell right away if there will be any gems. Few die pairs are represented in original rolls and if they're all bad then there won't be any gems. You'll often have to look at every coin but you can go very fast if you sweep them off the table as they are rejected. For dates with known varieties, I'll usually spot check everything first with a glass. Even dramatic varieties can get hard to see after you look at a lot of coins or if you've never actually seen one before. With the glass try to identify the various die combinations and keep looking until you've found a few of each then double check them all to see if there are any unreported varieties. If you don't find anything here then the odds of finding something in the bag are poor. If it's a very rare variety then you'll probably want to check each coin but this will slow the search greatly. Wash your hands well or wear gloves. Pick up a bunch of the heads side up coins so they are in a stack in your hand. Hold a glass in the other hand and scan them. If you slide them off your hand directly into the rejects it will go much faster. Don't get discouraged because there will be a lot of rejects and it's getting much harder to find unreported varieties since the coins are checked better and the mint doesn't make as many. Gems can be extremely elusive but they are out there. For many dates you might consider checking mint sets for gems since some are nearly impossible in rolls or bags.
Incandescent - regular light bulbs. GE Reveal bulbs are the best in my opinion. Bosch & Lomb 5x You answered your own question - the bank.
Have any of you tried the new "Ott-Lite"? Purchased one a couple of months ago and it has been fairly good for this purpose (In my oppinion). Just wondering if anyone else had tried to use one of these lights.
I'm not sure what the Reveal bulbs output is, but the ott-lite comes in at least three different wattages. Their 13 watt bulb is equivalent to a regular 75 incandescent bulb. They also have a 18 watt and a 24 watt bulb. The one I'm using has the 24 watt bulb and is also marked "true-color". For what it's worth, it seems to be working fine for these old tired eyes, and I can see as much as needed.
What I should have said: Is the color balance of the Ott lights similar to that of the GE Reveal bulbs, which also claim to be "true color"? With their low wattage the Ott lights seem to be a form of flourescent, where the Reveals are incandescent.
Bottom line is that both types of bulbs produce the full light spectrum found in natural light. They're both good
