I thought I'd share my search statistics with all you other coin hunting enthusiasts. I have to admit, I have grown quite fond of buying $50 bags of pennies and hunting wheats! and other goodies associated in penny circulation. Of course my goal is to search 1,000,000 pennies, which should take a couple years. After that, I'll go for 5,000,000 which should take near a lifetime, hehe :hail: I have yet to strike gold - but I have found some interesting stuff. Here goes. Since 11/28/2005 (When I started) I have searched 52,500 pennies. I have done pretty good about going to way different banks so I don't end up searching the same rolls and bags. Of that number, I found 163 Wheats (The best was a 1910, several teens, 20s and 30s. Mostly 40s and 50s, although one was a steel penny. Amazing that was in circulation! hehe. One Indian Head penny - 1905 but in extremely rough shape. We're talking G-4 type of status. My son found it and I let him keep it. 4 foreign pieces not including Canada of course. Hehe I got an Australian Nickel, which is silver in color, how that ever was passed off as a penny is beyond me, a Barbados Penny, a Belgie (I"m thinking Belgium? Perhaps) 50 Centimes piece and Panama Penny. I also found one of those Kennedy Stamped Pennies ... I used to have one with a card long ago showing the similarities in assasinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. 2 CUD pennies, one not so great, but the other a 1969 S CUD that turned out pretty good. Last but not least, a very beat up dime, that passed as a penny, that I put in the bank as a dime. Call me a dork, but I made 10 times face value in one hit hehehe So all in all, it probably was not all that profitable for my work, but I had a lot of fun and my kids helped me find the goodies. My Wheat Hunting Percentage is a mere - .3105% which is nothing to brag about, but now I have an idea that roughly every $3.00 to $3.50 in pennies I find a Wheatback Penny - which isn't the worst odds in the world I suppose. It is a lot of fun and I hope to bag a big one, one of these years, like a 1909 S or a 1924 ... Perhaps a Double Die error? Only time will tell. I'll continue these statistics when I hit the next 50,000 and see where it goes from there. I'm open to any feedback Esky
I like the stats that you have. I have done stuff like that, but not as much as you of course have done. Once in a while I'll go to the bank and buy $10 in pennies and I might get 3-5 wheats. I think I'm up to 31 wheats and have bought 9000=$90 in cent rolls. Keep up the hunting and hope you find gold!
Ok, now I'm curious enough to count my own wheaties and come back to you with what I got from a year and a half at a cash register in a busy store while I was job searching. I'll be back with the stats.
Ok I have a total of 250 wheaties all found in circulation, i.e. all in people’s pocket change. The earliest three I have are 1909, 1910, and 1911. I have a steel penny, some twenties, and thirties but most are forties and fifties. One thing found that was really interesting is that on the east coast where I lived the majority of my wheaties are all from the Pennsylvania mint with the least amount coming from San Francisco. My other finds from people’s change includes about 5 buffalo nickels, 4 silver Roosevelt dimes, 3 silver Washington quarters, and 1 1902 V nickel (yes, still in circulation). I did find various interesting Canadian coins too.
I have searched about 200$ in cents so far, where do you find the bags?? I can get 25$ boxes from Bank of america, but nobody has bags in southern california. It seems there is some sort of centralized coin place that all the banks send to and get from as all the boxes are the same. I just found a 1905 indian in about good condition. and I found a 1911 in F or XF condition, which replaced the one in my dansco book actually. other then that I found about 100 wheat cents all in the 40s and 50s , no earler except for the 11 and the 05 looking for the fun ones also.
It's good to see a lot of fellow Wheaty Hunters! heheh About the $50 bags - I have run into some banks that only sell the $25 box of pennies that you had referred to. It's amazing how MEAN some banks are and how NICE others are. One bank in particular absolutely refuses to count my pennies and are quite hostile about it. They won't even offer me a service fee, they flat out won't do it, which is quite a shame because they actually have one of the fastest machines around to count coins. Absolutely LAZY is what they are, but I can't really do anything about that hehehe ... The other bank, one of the tellers is extremely friendly. She collected pennies with her mother in the old Whitman books long ago... She will go as far as to save the bags of pennies for me and put my name on them for pickup!! Now that's SERVICE!! hehehe ... How this bank gets the bags of pennies is that they are just counted from the change machine in change that people routinely bring in (The best for us Wheat Hunters). The machine sorts everything, and then there are several bags below for each denomination. I think most of these machines are similar and when the machine counts that there are $50 in pennies, it stops and the penny bag has to be changed. Having a telller that watches the bags for me, is extremely a good bonus because she knows the bags I have brought in and sends them out to the central place that rolls them. I think they all get those $25 boxes of pennies, but I do say that you may not want to buy too many of those at one time or one bank frequently, because those boxes cost the bank money - rolling fees and paper fees. That's why bags work great and actually SMART bank tellers and NOT lazy ones should really be more than happy to do that for you as it requires very little work and certainly does not cost the bank anything in terms of fees, other than the teller's labor, which for the most part is negligable. I have been asked to not do more than say $15 at lunchtime because of the busy time of the bank (I live in a small town) but for the most part, MOST banks will cooperate with the coin collectors. If you're going to a bank for the first time, it might be best to talk to the manager or head teller and let them know right away what you want and ask them if it's possible and how they would like it done. If you're really polite 99% of the time they will spell out a process or accept your ideas and let ALL the tellers know how it will go. If you leave it up to a mere teller to decide each time instead, you could have problems, because one teller might be polite and the other rude. If you go to the manager right away and ask them what is the best way to do it, if you get a grumbly teller later, you always have the manager to rely on for the final say. Also, DO NOT feel embarrassed to go get coins. To heck with them if they don't like it. Be polite and as nice as possible, but get the coins and search them. I know a lady who was a bank teller for 5 years and she said it's really no big deal to do that in the course of a day for a bank teller. If you do one bag per week or every other week that is hardly an inconvenience or cost to the bank! But again, it's best to go to the manager right away if you plan on doing it long term because then you can set up a relationship that is favorable and you may get lucky if some good stuff ever comes in. I know a guy who works well with a credit union in a different town and surprisingly he got a phone call from them. The teller told him that some old guy cashed in 45,000 wheat pennies all at once and she wanted to know if he wanted them. He bought every one!!! :bow: LOL ... Why can't I get that lucky! lol Hope the info helps... Keep up the good work Wheat Hunters ... Let me know what you find!!! Esky
OK, all you researchers and statisticians. I got one for you. I would like to know the nature and distribution of bacteria, viruses, and molds on circulating coinage. Surely, one of you has access to a microbiologist with some petrie dishes and time on her hands. I have always been hesitant to handle a large numbers of circulated coins or paper. They have got to be filthy. My wife used to bring home great bags of junk jewelery from Goodwill stores. Each cost from $10 to $20 dollars at the time. She and my pre-teen daughter would rummage through the old stuff looking for keepers. My wife indeed found several remarkable pieces over the years, including a complete strand of pink pearls with an estimated street value of $1,500.00. Point being, that my wife and daughter went through a serious decontamination procedure after examining junk items on the living room floor. IMO, it was an advisable process.
Very interesting reply QuickDog - All I can say is that yes, there has to be some dirt coming off those babies, because sometimes my fingers get a black coating of dirt and it takes a little scrubbing to come off. This is very similar to shoving nickels in a machine at the casino, the mere quantity produces a lot of dirt and grime. As for bacteria - Well, I'm not a doctor or a biologist, but I can't believe that handling money even in large quantities would make someone ill. I mean, washing ones hands should be good enough - if it wasn't I'm sure there would be some awful loud warnings that would have been sounded long ago. The one thing I do know about bacterias and viruses, is that they don't last too long out on their own. Meaning, metals are just not the best places for them to thrive - they have their prime environments and a coin is NOT it. For the most part, too cold. Molds, actually most molds are harmless - so again I'm not really overly worried and also, molds don't usually hang around coins, it just isn't the right place for them. Yeah, there are some candy coated pennies and we're talking large volume here so anything is possible, but for the most part, even the most disgusting of pennies is actually pretty durable when it comes to bacteria and germs. I'm sure some of the pennies I have handled have been in sewers, or touched in the most disgusting manner (Use your own imagination ... hehehe I'm sure it's a sick thought that is probably true concerning where a penny has been.) ... but I'm not afraid to get sick if that penny has been away from that environment for any length of time. I wouldn't recommend putting the coins in one's own mouth or anything like that, but I must say, my opinion is that if someone washes their hands sufficiently, they probably will not get sick. There are far greater worries such as buffets at restaurants that people should worry about rather than handling money. Esky
Ya'll are going to have to get AJ to tell you about finding that 1914-D cent in change last year. Speedy
Bacteria on Coins and Currency Hi All, according to: http://www.varietynickels.com/trivialcoinfacts.htm A study of American coins and currency revealed the presence of bacteria, including staphylococcus, E. coli, and klebsiella, on 18 percent of the coins and 7 percent of the bills. I don't know how accurate that is. I'm still alive after 40 years of roll searching and millions of coins searched Bill
Wow - That's pretty high for diseases! hehe 18% ... But - I still think if a person washes their hands in a solid manner - they will be fine. And I must say, until I'm bedridden I'm not stopping lol :desk: And even then if I'm bedridden, I may need something to do! hehe Esky
The best I have found in years of searching was an AU58 1942/1 Mercury Dime. Found it in a cookie jar actually of a friend on my EEEK. Mother-in-law... I recently sent it in to ANAC just to verify it was genuine. And it came back OK! I did find a 1914D Lincoln in circulation back in the early 70's. Still watching for that 1972 DD Lincoln, no such luck.. (YET)... Oh if only I had saved all my change from when I was a youngin.. sighhhhhhh
I've been doing the $50 bag of penny thing for about 30 to 40 years now. I've found that the best thing to do is open a savings account with the minimum at several banks where you want to get the bags of pennies. I have one bank where I have an account where I take them all back after going through them. If you have an account at a bank you should never get refused any request or charge for getting or depositing the pennies. I never have. I've filled 10 Whitman Classic Albums almost all from that process. I just about completed 2 albums of Indian Cents and a pile of things like slugs, Canadian cents, counterfeit cents, etc. Also I've accumulated 6 boxes of error coins all in 2x2 holders. If you go through those pennies and also have a book called "Looking Through Lincoln's" you will find numerous coins that are errors that you would have never noticed before. There are 2 editions of that book out and they contain hundreds of photos of Lincoln errors. If you don't want to spend the money on that book you may want to check out their web site. It's coppercoins.com. One more thing is I look at the bank building. If it looks old or has been around for a long time there is a better chance of getting something good that has been in their vaults for a long time. I've actually found over the years that there is a better chance of finding good coins in a large city than in small towns. Appears in small towns the same money keeps circulating I think.
You still get bags??? around here the FED and the banks all use boxes and they roll the coins to get out any errors....so its not much fun searching for errors like Broadstruck or off center... Speedy
