Its official: Im burned out on hunting pennies

ringding · Sep 23, 2008

Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

I went through a lot of pennies this summer - $25+ per week and now I am burned out. Don't misunderstand, I found lots of cool stuff like wheaties and an Indian head. I just don't feel motivated to search anymore. Even after the indian head. I still want to hunt halves, but it takes more cabbage to support that hobby.

klava · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

Easy to burn yourself out. Take soem time off. Once cold weather hits you may feel up to it again. You could always try to do some nickels as a change. Doesnt take a whole lot more money to search them and you can make soem cool finds.

-K

TxTim · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

ringding said:
I went through a lot of pennies this summer - $25+ per week and now I am burned out. Don't misunderstand, I found lots of cool stuff like wheaties and an Indian head. I just don't feel motivated to search anymore. Even after the indian head. I still want to hunt halves, but it takes more cabbage to support that hobby.

$25 a week? A lot?
I thought $75 a day was under average.... :tard:

BBcardsRI · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

$75 a day without a machine would leave me with no job, no time for school, and no social life.

Maybe I just do them really slow? I don't even look for errors or anything like that.

~Dave

GPURS · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

$25 a week

? What did you do the other 6 days

.. Gpurs..

springcypress · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

I'm not sure why but I'm not a big fan of CRHing cents. I think it might be that I find them harder to search through with any sort of speed. They're darker which makes the dates harder for me to make out. The writing on them is smaller which also makes them harder to make out. And I also think they get a little dirtier than the clads. It usually takes me around 4 solid hours to search through a box of pennies.

Nickels on the other hand I find to be a blast. On average you find older coins, a little silver, and the occasional super strong strike. Unlike halves where skunks are fairly common, I've never searched through a box of nickels where I didn't find at least 15 that I wanted to keep whether they be silver, pre 60, or Full Stepped. A box of nickels usually takes me about 2 hours to sort out the keepers.

GMan00001 · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

BBcardsRI said:
$75 a day without a machine would leave me with no job, no time for school, and no social life.

Maybe I just do them really slow? I don't even look for errors or anything like that.

~Dave

$75 in pennies...by hand that's like 45 minutes...(unless of course you are looking for copper...then add what...maybe 15-30 minutes)

BBcardsRI · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

Three boxes of pennies in like 45 minutes? Thats what... 3-4 rolls a minute non-stop for the better part of an hour? MAYBE if you are damn fast and are only checking backs...

I assumed this included copper... which wouldn't be the case with kind of sustained volume. I've just always kept the copper personally because I did such small volume... a couple boxes here and there at a time.

It would be A LOT more than an additional 15 minutes though to weed out the coppers. Checking backs and reading EACH date is a HUGE difference and would up the time substantially. Not to mention the addition piles for the 82's and perhaps canadian if keeping the 98% and 95% seperate... plus weighing the 82's...

I should have timed myself when I was still doing them...

~Dave

GMan00001 · Sep 23, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

BBcardsRI said:
Three boxes of pennies in like 45 minutes? Thats what... 3-4 rolls a minute non-stop for the better part of an hour? MAYBE if you are damn fast and are only checking backs...

I assumed this included copper... which wouldn't be the case with kind of sustained volume. I've just always kept the copper personally because I did such small volume... a couple boxes here and there at a time.

It would be A LOT more than an additional 15 minutes though to weed out the coppers. Checking backs and reading EACH date is a HUGE difference and would up the time substantially. Not to mention the addition piles for the 82's and perhaps canadian if keeping the 98% and 95% seperate... plus weighing the 82's...

I should have timed myself when I was still doing them...

~Dave

I do the $50 bags of pennies in 30 minutes...sometimes slightly less, but I only pick out the wheats, Canadians, foreigns, the occasional coin that catches my eye, proofs, and about half of the S-mint and early date memorial pennies.

Granted I don't turn each one over anymore. I either read the date or just look at the reverse. So I read about half the dates. To pick approx half the coppers from that.. wouldn't take much additional time...hmm.. I wonder. I think I'll check how much extra time on my next bag (but I won't pick out the '82s...just too much work for the gain).

I think I'll do two time tests...one checking all dates and pulling the copper and one only doing whatever side is face up.

Lucky me.. I picked up 2 bags of pennies today..no need to wait.

GMan00001 · Sep 24, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

GMan00001 said:
I think I'll do two time tests...one checking all dates and pulling the copper and one only doing whatever side is face up.

Well..I did the one $50 bag with doing only whatever side is up...took 45 minutes for $50 worth.

BBcardsRI · Sep 24, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

Curious to see the time difference for flipping each coin to the date side and then checking them.

Keep us posted.

Btw... you are missing a key factor though.

You search bags... I was talking about boxes.

For the box you need to rip open 50 rip and tear rolls per $25. So thats 100 rolls you need to rip open and dump out per $50 searched before you can even start to date check. It adds on...

~Dave

JD4x4 · Sep 25, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

I'm curious to hear your time for flipping them. What was it?

$50 in 45 minutes equates to 1.8 per second. Very impressive. My home brew sorter with hopper is theoretically limited to the max speed of the comparitor which is 7 per second. The best we've done so far just sorting coppers in wrapped rolls is $25 in 20 minutes. And that's not really even looking at the coins.

buffhunter · Sep 25, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

my daughter (9 years old) does $25.00 pulling all coppers and separating the 82 for later weighing in about 4 hours. While she does one box of pennies, i can do 5-6 boxes of halves even checking for dates.

JD - do I read your post right? you made a sorter that separates pennies - copper from zinc?

JD4x4 · Sep 26, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

buffhunter said:
JD - do I read your post right? you made a sorter that separates pennies - copper from zinc?

Yes, using a coin comparator and a hopper bought on eBay. You need some mechanical & fabrication skills, but can be done for sweat equity & about $90 (or less). I need to tidy up the feed from the hopper to the comparitor to eliminate some jams but I did a box of pennies last night in about 30 minutes, including breaking the rolls into the hopper (biggest bottle neck).

TxTim · Sep 26, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

buffhunter said:
my daughter (9 years old) does $25.00 pulling all coppers and separating the 82 for later weighing in about 4 hours. While she does one box of pennies, i can do 5-6 boxes of halves even checking for dates.

JD - do I read your post right? you made a sorter that separates pennies - copper from zinc?

Get a Ryedale if you're serious about cleaning copper.
My model rips through 18,000 per hour.

GMan00001 · Sep 27, 2008

Re: Its official: I'm burned out on hunting pennies

BBcardsRI said:
Curious to see the time difference for flipping each coin to the date side and then checking them.

Keep us posted.

Btw... you are missing a key factor though.

You search bags... I was talking about boxes.

For the box you need to rip open 50 rip and tear rolls per $25. So thats 100 rolls you need to rip open and dump out per $50 searched before you can even start to date check. It adds on...

~Dave

Just did the other bag this morning..flipping over all the coins to read the dates and pulling all copper...took 80 minutes...

Based on the results of my test, I would use the "don't flip over" method and pull half the copper and do twice the volume. You'll end up with an equivalent amount of copper (roughly) and twice as many wheats in roughly the same amount of time. You also double your odds of getting a big score of wheaties.