Interesting thing happened to me on the way to work this morning. I stopped off at the gas station to fill up the car and get a coffee. The cashier inside knows me because I go to this particular station all the time for fuel and coffee. He also knows that I look at all my change for old coins and whatnot. This morning he gave me an envelop full of wheat pennies and said that he had cracked open this roll of pennies earlier and noticed that all of them were wheat pennies. So he put them all inside the envelop and saved them to give to me when I stopped in next time. All are circulated obviously. Interesting however is they all bear the San Francisco mint mark. All 50 pennies are between 1950 and 1957, with most being 52, 53, and 54. Only about 10% of them are before and after those three years. When I get home after work tonight I'll take a closer look at them. Besides the double 1955, is there any specific year & error(s) I should be looking for?
Personally I sort my "extra" wheat cents for eventually selling them to a coin shop by decade, mintmark, ect. as the teens and 20s are worth more than the 40s and 50s, the S mint marks are a bit more valuable also. Do the sorting so the shop doesn't have to and they pay a bit more for them. Makes complete sense to me someone else would do it, although how the gas station got it is the only real mystery.
1950-S Repunched Mint Mark (RPM). 1951 Proof Doubled Die Obverse. 1951-D Doubled Die Obverse. 1955 Doubled die (DUH!). 1955-D Stamped over a horizontal D. 1955-P No VDB. 1955-P Lincoln Wheat Cent Double Die cent. 1956-D D Stamped over a D mint mark. Cheers
I took a look at each one of them last night. Nothing special about any of them except one has the mint mark (s) touching the number 5 in the date. I've not seen that before, but understandably since they apparently were putting the mint marks on the dies by hand back then, correct? A few I found had chips in the dates (common). Outside of that, nothing stand out. Interesting that all of the pennies in the roll were minted in San Francisco. Old circulation wear. Probably sitting in someone's drawer for decades and then rolled and brought to the bank. The guy who gave them to me said that his boss had gone to the bank and bought a bunch of rolls to all coins (dimes, quarters, nickels and pennies) to replenish the coins on hand for change. One of the penny rolls so happened to be all wheat pennies. I just find it fascinating that they were all minted in San Francisco.
