What's your most memorable find while roll searching?

I have several possibilities from when I searched rolls and sacks "back in the day." I mostly looked through cent rolls, so my number 1 find would have to be the first 1909-S Lincoln cent. I saw the obverse first, which raised the question: Would I find the VDB initials on the reverse? Find number 2 is probably my first 1914-D. I'll save find #3 for later.

 

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Those are great finds, Mike! My top 2 are a 1915 gold Ducat in a nickel roll and a 1939 Henning Nickel.

 

Back in ~2004 I bought a few BU 56-D Wheat Rolls on eBay, and they had 3-5 1956-D&S OMM#1 in them. The OMM was fairly new at that time, so I was very happy as they were valued in the price guides at $150-$300 each. I ended up buying some more rolls from same seller, and ultimately acquired ~40 rolls at a fairly good price. These were OBW rolls from a San Francisco, CA bank. I sent in several coins for grading (that's a story on its own) and they came back mostly 65RD and a few 66RD, nice coins. I listed a couple on eBay, and found an enthusiastic buyer. He ended up contacting me about more of them, and I sold him 20 coins for ~$5k. I still have quite a few of the coins, and even a few unopened OBW rolls. Those rolls also contained several RPM#4 each, which are quite rare on their own. So I guess those 56-D rolls produced my most memorable finds...so far.

 

How do you tell a Henning from a regular nickel? I've got a bunch of 39s I've found CRH and would like to check.

 

There are several ways actually. @JCro57 is our resident expert, but there is plenty of information here at Coin Talk and on the internet. Use the Search tool here at CT to get a list of threads to explore - "A Search is a terrible thing to waste."...at least I think that's how the commercial used to go. ;-) PM me if you like and I'll give you the details on how I approached it. And...1939 is a good date to look for a couple of other key varieties. It was a good year!!

 

These are them....

 

Okay. Thank you so much for the info. Really appreciate it!

 

The Henning details are very mushy, and many have a bad R in Pluribus, and
they weigh (heavy?) But there are different years and different details
because of the different dies.

 

I'm a bit surprised that more people haven't responded to this thread. Surely, any roll searchers must find something worthwhile every now and then or they wouldn't keep searching. Well, I said in my first posting that I had another find that I would mention. It was a 1924-S Lincoln in AU+ condition. This is not a rare coin by any means and even today it isn't worth a lot, but I thought it was a nice coin when I found it and still think it is one of my better finds. For one thing, the coin is the Goiter Neck variety, which I believe was a Red Book variety back in the late 50s when I retrieved it from a bunch of rolls. Here's what David Lange wrote about the coin in his 1996 book, The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents: "The only other variety known for this issue is the so-called 'goiter' variety. This consists of a raised, bar-shaped lump at Lincoln's neck. . . . Attaining some popularity during the 1930s . . ., this variety reappeared in print sporadically through the mid 1960s, when interest in coin collecting in general began to wane. Today, it carries no premium value and is considered fairly common." The current wholesale value is $65, and its PCGS value is $85. Not bad for a penny, right? Of course, I've had it for 64 years!

 

Terrific find, Mike! I recall a few years back someone found a 1924 D. That caused quite a stir!! I CRHed in the late 70s and early 80s with my brother. We were just hoarding LWCs back then. We didn’t even know what we had. I stopped collecting during college (golf too) and only got back into collecting about 10 years ago. I CRHed with the kids but I was shocked how few LWCs were to be had. I had not considered how time and LMC and LSC production. It only made me wish I started collecting sooner.

That said, I went through the hoard and to my surprise, my brother and I found a number of LWCs with mintages under 10M. Those coins were there for a period. Only now, scarcity is the name of the game.

 

I found a few 1924-Ds "back in the day." I grew up in a region of the country that got more coins from the Denver mint than from the other 2 so I found lots of coins such as the 32-D and even the 33-D. Great fun while it lasted.

 

In my neck of the woods getting other than Philly is a fine event

 

I was a kid back in 1971-72. My buddy and I would exchange $.50 for a cent roll, or if we were rich that week, maybe a buck for a couple of cent rolls. One of those CRH's turned up a full roll of 1943 steel cents. Obviously nothing of great value other than the thrill of opening up the roll to find it filled with 50 steel cents. I do remember the rush I felt. It was intoxicating.

 

Did you have a chance to go back? One day I heard a waitress open a roll of quarters to dump into the till. I heard the silver from behind the grill. I claimed them. Being the cook, I had the key to the strong box so walking to get more change, I claimed any silver there.

Bottomline: 4 rolls of silver and one roll of UNC 1965 (which went into the till).

 

I have done a fair amount of roll hunting, but I don't have a single coin that was "just amazing." Around 2010, I got six rolls of halves from the bank that were solid 40% silver (1965-1969). I had one dime box that contained 11 silver dimes. My oldest penny was a G-4 1881 Indian head penny. My nicest wheat cent find was a 1909 VDB (posted somewhere on this site). I also found an EF/AU 1916 D wheat cent. In nickels, I have found a type 1 1913 buffalo, 12+ V nickels, and everything but the 1950 D Jefferson. I could mention a wide variety of errors.
I don't have anything very notable to post. I have roll hunted from around 2008 until 2022 (and a tiny bit since).

 

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