Coin Collecting

Recently I've become interested in collecting coins.  Someone on Youtube had a video about buying boxes of half dollars at the bank and searching them for silver coins.  They said they had made $20,000 doing that.  Oh?  

So I went to the bank and bought a box of half dollars.  I haven't even finished "hunting" through it yet.  Opening that many coin rolls is a lot of work.  And inspecting the coins.  Well, just to find silver isn't that hard, because most of the coins are only clad coins and it's obvious on the sides of the coin that they aren't silver.  So one holds the roll up and and looks at the side.  On rare occasions people have even found whole rolls of silver coins.  One wonders how that happened.  I suppose someone who wasn't observant happened upon a bunch of silver half dollars, possibly by inheritance, and didn't know they were valuable.  So they went to the bank and exchanged them for face value.   Anyway, what most people do is take the regular coins back to the bank and buy a new box of half dollars, after they have removed the "keepers."

Then I had a new idea.  Get a box of nickels.  So I've been hunting for rare nickels in my nickel box.  It really is slow going and I guess you have to have a fascination for coins.  But I do, so I been examining my coins.  

Reverse of a 2004 commemorative coin

What is a valuable nickel?  Well, everyone know that buffalo nickels are rare these days.  But surprisingly some of the recent nickels are valuable too.  One of them is the 2009 P or D, (Philadelphia or Denver mint).  After 2008 the country was in a swivet about the market crash and minted drastically less coins in 2009.  So far I've found three of these coins.  Those would be keepers.  Some of the commemorative coins are rare too.  People like to collect them and they need that one special coin to complete their collection.  Some of the 2004 coins are rare for this reason.  Older coins are valuable.  How old?  Really about 1930s and 1940s.  Some of the 1950s and 1960s.  One will find a 1964 nickel and check eBay to see what others are asking for them.  They will say, "Proof," and "BU," "full steps," "error," and such odd things.  Full steps is the steps on Monticello on the reverse side.  BU is brilliantly uncirculated.  Error is a minting error that makes the coin rare. Proof?  I forget.  

One of the things I like about nickels is that nickels are the only US coin made of a valuable metal anymore.  The nickel in a US nickel is worth 7-8¢ just for the metal.  So right away your nickel box is worth more than you paid for it.  Suppose you bought two nickel boxes for $400.  Each contains 50 $2 rolls.  That would be 2000 nickels.  Times 3¢ is $60 of value above what you paid.  I don't think that will last much longer.  And the nickels minted today are still made of nickel, unlike pennies which are not copper anymore since the value of copper went up.  

Speaking of pennies, I have also kept a few wheat pennies I found in my change.  It's been several years since I've found a wheat penny though.  A friend of mine was in their yard and turned over a rock.  Beneath it was a penny from the Civil War era.  

I'll let you know if I find something worth more than a dollar.