My current coin project is taking 4 large size 5lb coffee cans of my late fathers wheatback penny collection (pile) and sorting them into coin tubes by date. I'm noticing some very interesting trends, after pulling out maybe a 1000 coin sample of the pennies from the 1940's I have come up with 7 full rolls of 1944-P and (1) single solitary 1949-D. Amazingly I haven't come up with a single -S cent. Generally I'm finding his pennies in the the following ratio's -P (100 coins) -D (10 coins) -S (0 Coins) Do you think this is regional in that he collected from pocket change (Indiana). Or do you think he was crafty and buried the good stuff in the back yard? (Depression babies hmm) ..
Many of the early pennies minted have low mintages for the S mint making them a lot more difficult to find. Then there is the location situation. If you live in the Mid West or the East the chances of finding S mints in the old days was also less likely. Even back in the 50's and 60's when I was just getting interesting in coin collecting I noticed the lack of S mint coins. The spreading of that information also made hoarding of S mint coins when found a thing many of us all did back then. That's one of he reasons the 1931S is so cheap. Many of us hoarding that coin as fast as they hit the streets. At o;ne time I had a roll of them but slowly traded them off. I still remember a dealer way, way back some time ago saying how lucky everyone around him is because he has a lot of S mint pennies. Keep looking. You never can tell what is at the bottom. When I was a kid I used to go the bank and buy a $50 dollar bag of pennies and came up with the same thing you are now.
I think I'm getting down to the good stuff.. he had half a roll of circulated 1909-P pennies. Probably not worth much, but it made my heart go pitter-patter
