Searching rolls of coins has been a favorite activity for collectors young and old for decades. The thrill of the hunt entices collectors with the possibility of valuable silver, errors, varieties or even filling in that last slot in an album. While each roll searcher has their own motives when it comes to roll searching, every hunt begins with the same question, “Which denomination is right for me?”
The most common rolls usually come sorted by denomination from an armored car service in 1C, 5C, 10C, 25C denominations with 50C and $1 rolls being harder to come by.
Let’s start with 1C rolls. Searching rolls of cents can be a lot of fun and even quite rewarding. At 50 cents a roll, you can do a lot of searching with a minimal investment. Finding Wheat cents in rolls is a relatively common occurrence and many times you an earlier date cent may appear. While searching through 1C rolls, you may want to use a loupe which will take a lot of strain off your eyes if you plan on looking for varieties and RPM’s. When searching through rolls of cents, I would advise wearing a pair of cotton gloves due to the fact that many of the cents in the rolls will be very dirty and the grime from the coins can soil exposed skin quite fast and leave a nasty smell behind.
Rolls of nickels are typically overlooked when it comes to roll searching, but nickel rolls commonly contain many earlier date coins from the 40’s and the 50’s. Nickel rolls are also a good choice for roll searchers because of the frequently overlooked wartime nickels. Wartime nickels contain 35% and are dated from 1942 through 1945. Wartime nickels will have a large D, P or S located over the dome of Monticello on the reverse of the coin.
There’s not much to say about searching through rolls of dimes. A roll costs $5.00 and contains 50 coins. Rarely will you ever come across a silver dime (Pre 1965) and because of the size of the coin, can be difficult to search for varieties. If you plan on searching rolls of dimes be prepared to not find much of anything.
For the new roll searcher, quarter rolls are a good starting off point. Quarters today possess very diverse reverse images that are perfect for starting a set of filling up a folder. The larger size of the quarter allows for greater variety searching.
The elusive half dollar roll, just the thought conjures up images of piles of silver in the minds of hungry roll searches. While half dollar rolls are known to contain 90% silver coins dated 1964 and 40% silver coins dated 1965-1969, rolls are quite hard to come by. My best advice for procuring these rolls is to stop by your local bank and ask them to order you a box. Boxes of half dollars primarily come in $500 or $1000 amounts so searching these coins can be costly. As for returning unwanted coins, you can stop by a local TD Bank branch and use their free coin counter or roll them back up yourself, but I prefer the former. I’ve been told stories of roll searches coming across dozens of silver half dollars, so if you like finding silver, searching half dollars are for you!
Basically the only type of dollar coin roll that you will be able to search is the modern small dollar, usually Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea or the Presidential Dollar series. I highly doubt a bank will have a roll of large dollars sitting around, but if you are able to pick one up do so immediately as you just hit the jackpot if the roll contains Morgan or Peace dollars. Even if the roll contains Eisenhower dollars, it’s still a fun find!
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