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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 31045, member: 68&quot;]It&#039;s an extremely complicated flow chart but most everything can be summarized fairly briefly.&nbsp; You need a good, bright incandescent light.</p><p>100W is usually enough but I prefer an indirect 500W buld (quartz) toward the front and a 100W bulb behind.&nbsp; To look for gems it is very straight forward and you need no magnification.&nbsp; Whether checking a roll or a bag, you can generally tell right away if there will be any gems.&nbsp; Few die pairs are represented in original rolls and if they&#039;re all bad then there won&#039;t be any gems.&nbsp; You&#039;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.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>For dates with known varieties, I&#039;ll usually spot check everything first with a glass.&nbsp; Even dramatic varieties can get hard to see after you look at a lot of coins or if you&#039;ve never actually seen one before.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>With the glass try to identify the various die combinations and keep looking until you&#039;ve found a few of each then double check them all to see if there are any unreported varieties.&nbsp; If you don&#039;t find anything here then the odds of finding something in the bag are poor.&nbsp; If it&#039;s a very rare variety then you&#039;ll probably want to check each coin but this will slow the search greatly.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Wash your hands well or wear gloves.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Don&#039;t get discouraged because there will be a lot of rejects and it&#039;s getting much harder to find unreported varieties since the coins are checked better and the mint doesn&#039;t make as many.&nbsp; Gems can be extremely elusive but they are out there.&nbsp; For many dates you might consider checking mint sets for gems since some are nearly impossible in rolls or bags.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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