Has anyone really become good at searching Nickels that they can edge search?

[SFBayArea]

I don't do nickels and I've only done one nickel box in my life. No war nickels in that box but one corroded buffalo.

Has anyone here been so good with spotting War Nickels based on rims that they can edge search a box of clear wrap nickels? Just curious if there is a faster way of searching them other than looking at each and every coin?

I don't care that much about dateless Buffalos or pre-1960 ones and would prefer to get the War Nickels out quickly if possible. I know they mostly have a dirty grimmy look on their rims. I'm thinking most likely not but thought I'd still throw it out there.

 

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[ImpurestStewart]

Not all of them are worn so to speak. Better to just date check. An AU war nickel looks just like a freshly minted one. I am thinking about doing more nickel boxes myself.

 

[SFBayArea]

I'm only pondering this as a last resort if everything one day dries up. You know since every year, new clad coins get minted and so the odds get smaller and smaller. I don't know of many people that do search nickels so I figure it to be the last resort.

 

[ImpurestStewart]

Are halves still bad in your area SF? I would'nt give up hope just yet.

 

[SFBayArea]

Are halves still bad in your area SF? I would'nt give up hope just yet.

I still do halves but it's either feast or famine. Typically it's skunks with boxes that will make up for it. Strange. I wish that it was more consistent. Like I'll get 3 skunks in a row and then one box will have 4 keepers. It's been like that for the last month. January was not good. Although, I did get a good box last week with 7 keepers and 3 coins in one roll. It was a Brinks style box and all the keepers were found on the top row and the bottom row had nothing but my own marked coins. I was shocked. Needless to say the other two in the batch of 3 were skunks. I keep track of the stats and since 3 years ago, there has been a steady decline in what one would find per box so I was thinking that one day or maybe not, the odds would be tough.

 

[GMan00001]

Edge searching nickels is not an exact science.

I have on occasion asked a teller at a bank that has an armored service that provides nickel rolls in coin condoms to see their rolls of nickels and pick out the ones that look like they contain war nickels and buy those rolls. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Also, as already mentioned, AU war nickels do not have that off color that most worn ones do, so you will miss some if you only edge search.

 

[conleytheking]

You can see a dingy edge and hope it's somethig but date checking is the way to go.
I have a war nickel in my book ...looks like it was just struck. Full steps and all. No dirty edge there.

 

[SFBayArea]

You can see a dingy edge and hope it's somethig but date checking is the way to go.
I have a war nickel in my book ...looks like it was just struck. Full steps and all. No dirty edge there.

Guess there is no quick way to do it. That's what I thought all along. I guess one could create a Ryedale for them and sort that way. You would be missing buffalos if that's what one wants. Well perhaps, I'll do quarters if it gets bad. What would you say you average per nickel box? One War Nickel per box?

 

[conleytheking]

Most boxes I've done gave had 2 wars a buff! Not too bad.
I had one that had 50+ war nickels. It was amazing.

I do dump the coins not a table and just look quickly
If it's face down...you can tell if it's war from the mint mark,..and face up...date check.
It works for me!
And anytime I see a D on the back....I flip looking for the 1950D. No luck yet.

 

[SFBayArea]

Most boxes I've done gave had 2 wars a buff! Not too bad.
I had one that had 50+ war nickels. It was amazing.

I do dump the coins not a table and just look quickly
If it's face down...you can tell if it's war from the mint mark,..and face up...date check.
It works for me!
And anytime I see a D on the back....I flip looking for the 1950D. No luck yet.

50+ War Nickels? Dream nickel box..Wow.. 2 Wars per box is decent. If you can do 4 boxes of nickels in an hour, you'd be getting minimum wage. Well, of course I tell myself that too when I do a box of dimes. LOL

Seems like they are the last untapped resource for CRHing. I figure to give it a try at some point. I don't have any war nickels from CRHing so what not? I did get one from a gas station when someone turned in a bunch of nickels on the counter. I spotted the one war nickel from far away. I swapped the station attendant for it right away. The Indian gas station attendant was all confused about it.

 

[conleytheking]

Yeah it was a dream box...but I don't want to feel like a liar...it want a real box.
I had went and bought 20 dollar in nickels...and found like 2 I'm each roll. so I went back every day and bought 30 worth...over about 4 days...I had gotten them all. And other CWRs.
It was amazing though.
And yea I have started doing dimes myself. I can't fun many halves. but I try.

 

[BuffaloBoy]

Many dirty nickel edges turn out to be either from the lower 60s or the 80s and 90s... I get clear wrapped nickels, there is no way possible of doing an accurate, or even a semi-accurate edge check, it is quicker to scan each coin for 1/2 second. HH

 

[sagittarius98]

You can see a dingy edge and hope it's somethig but date checking is the way to go.
I have a war nickel in my book ...looks like it was just struck. Full steps and all. No dirty edge there.

Guess there is no quick way to do it. That's what I thought all along. I guess one could create a Ryedale for them and sort that way. You would be missing buffalos if that's what one wants. Well perhaps, I'll do quarters if it gets bad. What would you say you average per nickel box? One War Nickel per box?

I believe that that a war nickel reads off very close to a normal nickel, so a sorter would not be effective.

 

[Farchaus2k]

I do 5 boxes of nickels a week (give or take 1 or 2) and have been for about 5 months now. Unfortunately there is still no way to accurately edge search them without missing something. I've found some AU and BU Buffalo Nickels and War Nickles that would have easily been missed if I was edge searching only. Likewise I've found hundreds of 1964's that looked corroded and dingy enough to be a War or Buffalo just by the appearance of the edges.

 

[AGBlex]

i've picked my self a few war nickels from teller trays by lookin at the rim

 

[madwest]

I believe that that a war nickel reads off very close to a normal nickel, so a sorter would not be effective.

Confirmed. I spent a great deal of time trying to tune the comparator to find the Ag war nickel - with no success.

I use to get nickels religiously and found an average of 2-3 Ag-Alloy war nickels per $200 bag. It just took too long and was too tedious for me to search so I stopped doing the 0.05's.

 

[SFBayArea]

Ok.. I decided to do a box of nickels today. Got a ton of buffalos, the 2005-D kind of course.. no old ones

No War Nickels. Got a few to fill space nickel album spaces that I haven't touched in a while. Did see some 40's issues but dumped them all back other than the two to fill the album space. I did get one 2009 Canada Nickel which isn't made of nickel.

It was really agonizing. It was a chore and the amount of time doing it is not worth it. I'll probably do another box of them next year when I get the itch again. For now, I'd rather do a box of quarters with clear wrap any day. Half way through, I was thinking of just not doing the rest of the box but I ploughed through. Upon initial inspection, I didn't see any Nickels with War Nickel like dark rims so I thought it would be a skunk. I suppose if I was doing it again, I would only open the rolls with rims that have the War Nickel look. Meaning I will never get AU ones or Buffalos.

Doing this box is equivalent to doing a box of paper wrapped dimes. I don't know how some people here can do a paper wrapped rolls of dimes. Oh well. Oh and the box shorted me by a nickel too.

 

[sagittarius98]

I did get one 2009 Canada Nickel which isn't made of nickel.

It would have been better if it was an American 2009 nickel. Have only found 2 so far.

 

[brendan1414]

I would say that 80% of the war nickels you would find would have a darker edge, but about only 10% of dirty edged nickels are war nickels. if you see a dirty one, open the roll and check those for war, if not then dont. I have "predicted" a nickel to be a war before i opened the roll, but this is pretty rare, and pretty often that i guess to! hope that makes sense, i would rather date search, but i think edge searching for those slightly miscolored ones could work!

 

[MIhunter]

My last nickel box had two war nickels (1943P & 1944P) and a 1907 V nickel (cond:good).
Edge checking only I would have missed the V nickel! If you want to edge check, get some dimes, quarters or halves.

If you want to check nickels fast and don't mind missing 1938, 1939, 1950 and 1955, you can open the roll on to the table and quickly check the back for the mint marks. Only checking the front from the year if you see a mint mark. You will find the V nickels, Buffs, war nickels and most of the key date Jeffersons (1938 D&S, 1939 D&S, 1950D etc). It is faster than a true date check.