Finds from 01-08-2009

[GMan00001]

Searched through

1 - $500 bag of dimes
1 - $100 bag of nickels
1 - $50 bag of pennies

In the dimes
-----------------
1 pre-1965 Roosevelt (1962-D)

2 Canadian (1971, 1978)

In the nickels
----------------
1 - 1942-S War Nickel
1 - 1955 <---- needed for my roll of this variety

22 other pre-1960 Jefferson (1940, 1940-S, 1941, 1946, 1946-D(2), 1946-S, 1948-D, 1949(2), 1951-D, 1952, 1952-D, 1953-S, 1957-D(2), 1958-D(3), 1959-D(3))

2 Canadian (1991, 1995)

1 Penny


In the pennies
-----------------
17 wheat pennies (1939, 1940, 1940-D, 1941-D, 1942, 1943-S, 1944(2), 1944-D, 1946(2), 1950-D, 1953-D, 1956-D, 1957-D(2), 1958)

30 Canadian (1963, 1964, 1971, 1972, 1973(3), 1975(2), 1978, 1979, 1981(4), 1982, 1983, 1986(2), 1991(3), 1993, 1994, 1995(2), 1998, 2000, 2001, 2006)

2 Quarters
2 Dimes
1 Nickel

Note: the 1943-S was the only wheat variety after 1933 that I didn't find in 2008.

 

[treasurefiend]

Sweet, too bad you didn't find more dimes!!!

 

[golden silver]

Gman I have to say I admire all of the coins you go through. Most of us concentrate on one type or another but you are well rounded. You must have found a ton of great stuff over the years. Do you find it difficult keeping up with this variety? Just wondering.

-Golden Silver

 

[crazyjarhead]

Looks like you did well on the nickles

 

[GMan00001]

Gman I have to say I admire all of the coins you go through. Most of us concentrate on one type or another but you are well rounded. You must have found a ton of great stuff over the years. Do you find it difficult keeping up with this variety? Just wondering.

-Golden Silver

For most of my efforts I stop at a few branches of my main pickup banks and just get whatever they have off the coin machine so what I get is largely driven by what's available. Since they rarely get halves (as in I have gotten about $1500 in halves between my pickup branches in 2 years), I pretty only much only do halves when doing a road trip (also something that banks are glad to get rid of even without an account) or when I decide to order a box. And I skip most bags of quarters (randomly pick one up just to do it) and to date all bags of small dollars.

As far finding it difficult to keep up with the variety...no not at all (at least not for the original pickup and search). My collection is not focused in one area, but intended to over all denominations/types. Some areas get more attention just because of what I pick up. The only part I find difficult is keeping up with the integration into my collection. The searching and stockpiling is easy....I am way behind on the inventorying... I just was looking at my "collection room" the other night and realizing I had a lot of work to do to "catch up" with updating my main spreadsheet with what exactly I have in my collection....I have multiple bags of coins I have kept over the past couple years that I just haven't found time to inventory. Most are extras, canadians, foreign coins, common pre-1960 nickels, or other low priority coins, but still I only get the inventory process occasionally when my searching amount is light. For example, around XMas I had some extra time and started inventorying the wheat pennies I had picked up in the last 7 or 8 months of last year....(around 2000-3000 of them) to fill my roll set for wheaties. Got as far as separating them into groups (pre-40's, 40's from Philly, 40's from Denver, 50's from Philly, 50's from Denver, and 40's and 50's from San Fran) and then processing the pre-40's (the small amount). probably 5-8 hours left to get through the rest.

A few other examples....
* I also have a half dollar box full of 1982 coins to go through to separate out copper vs. zinc so I can get a roll of the various varieties of that year. Very time consuming process by hand.
* Have a casino cup full 1974 pennies to separate out the large date vs. small date (a minimally advertised variety that most people don't even know exists so no extra value, but I want a roll of each variety and need to look at each coin under magnification to determine which is which).
* multiple bags of canadian pennies to start a roll set when I finally have time to sort them out...Canadian nickels, dimes, and quaters too..just only a bag or so of nickels and less dimes and quarters.

 

[Narthoniel]

Sounds like you need a part time helper to keep up with your obsession! Or maybe this is your full time job, and you have a part time job to pay the bills. Your statistics are crazy!!

 

[GMan00001]

Sounds like you need a part time helper to keep up with your obsession! Or maybe this is your full time job, and you have a part time job to pay the bills. Your statistics are crazy!!

I have two pint size part time helpers, but they aren't so interested most of the time, so I usually end up going it alone. It looks like I do a lot, but really I am pretty efficient about it....I figured it out last year that worked out to maybe 8-10 hours a week or so average including buying, searching, stats, and dumping (and all road trips). This is far from my full time job (which I have had a number of people tell me I work too much...) if I had more to search, I could easily fit a lot more in I just don't spend the time driving around all over to get it and like to do other things with my free time as well (playing with my kids, going out drinking/socializing til the wee hours of the morning, working out, etc.)

Here's a breakdown that I don't think is too far off.
Last year I searched the following totals:
1221242 pennies = 244.2484 bags of $50
301529 nickels = 75.38225 bags of $200
420335 dimes = 42.0335 bags of $1000
47749 quarters = 11.93725 bags of $1000
15196 halves = 15.196 bags of $500
740 dollars = 0.74 bags of $1000

Each bag takes me approx the following amount of time to search and get stats for (on average)
pennies = 35 minutes
nickels = 65 minutes
dimes = 75 minutes (edge search only)
quarters = 25 minutes (edge search only)
halves = 45 minutes (full date and error search)
dollars = 45 minutes (guess at the time don't do enough to matter)

if you multiply each denomation by its corresponding time...thats approx. 17,616 minutes. Now I am probably a little low...so I'll round it up to 20,000 minutes.

My 2 main pickup stops are right on my route to work and I stop once a week so typically 5 minutes each or 10 minutes a week * 52 weeks = 520 minutes.
I'll double that to 1,000 just because I picked up some stuff elsewhere and drove there. Now add my "infamous" road trips at maybe 1 per month and 10 hours each...=10*60*12=7200 minutes. (I really didn't spend that much time on road trips last year)....anywho total pickup time = 8,200 minutes.

dumping time
2 minutes per $50 bag of pennies, $200 bag of nickels, or $1000 in quarters and 3 minutes per $1000 in dimes or $500 in halves...assuming everything I searched was dumped and using the numbers from above my dump time would be approximately 834 minutes (round to 1,000 minutes). Now I also have to add driving time to and from the dump bank. My typical dump is about 2 bags full (what I can carry in one trip in to the bank) so $200 in pennies or $100 in pennies and $400 in nickels.. or something like that. Which I am estimating was 97 driving trips to the bank last year (now most of these were either on my way to lunch or my way to or from work, but I will still use 10 minutes extra driving per stop average just to round high. This works out to 970 minutes...round up to 1,000 minutes.

So
pickup = 8,200 minutes (mainly road trip time if taken)
search = 20,000 minutes
dump = 2,000 minutes

That's 30,200 minutes. Now to get to my weekly average divide by 52 weeks in a year and 60 minutes in an hour....approximately 9.68 hours per week and that was rounding everything high and being conservative. That doesn't include time spent on the forum reading posts and the tracking list....that's just spare time whenever it fits in.


oh, and as I have mentioned somewhere on this board before...I am a software engineer as my full time job (actually electrical engineer by degree)...

 

[golden silver]

I AM OUT OF BREATH GMAN. WOW. THAT IS NUTS. THANKS FOR SHARING. I have one other question since you search alot of bags. Don't most coin counters reject silver coins? How is that you find any silver? Or is there certain machines that don't?


-Golden Silver

 

[GMan00001]

I AM OUT OF BREATH GMAN. WOW. THAT IS NUTS. THANKS FOR SHARING. I have one other question since you search alot of bags. Don't most coin counters reject silver coins? How is that you find any silver? Or is there certain machines that don't?


-Golden Silver

Most boxes get run through a coin machine at some point too, so if all coin machines rejected silver box searchers wouldn't find any silver either.

As far as most rejecting silver, not that i know of. I have heard rumors that some do or can be set to, but I have yet to witness one that did. Shoot my bags are also always loaded with Canadian change, but I am constantly told how the machine rejects all those too....