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i was trying to sell some pennies, and was asked about how i sort.


i have two cottage cheese container lids that nest just right.

so i break a roll onto two sets of these. ie 25 each tray.

pull the copper, flip, look at that side. discard zn.

basic. but easy. i sort in 10.00 increments for my statistics.then into 100 for my reports.


now, how they are sorted.

i have a plastic container with ''nickel tubes'' in it. i place the copper found in the sorting

into this breakdown.

it holds three in the first row, and middle row, two in the back row.

left most is 1960-67, then 75-81 'd'', then 75-81 'p; ,, middle is 73-4, 82, odds--1959, wheat, cdn. , back

row is 68-72, and 'cull' d,

okay, 10.00 is done. now i count each breakdown. onto the trays.

then resort to the following.

60-1-3 d,,, 62 + 64D, 64-67 p

68-72 go to p, d, s,

73-4 i just pull the s, so the p-d are combined

75-81 are d put into one jar,

75-81 p into another.

82 i do not pull anything, so it is culls, copper and zinc.

as i resort each of these, i pull the culls/dirty/scratched into its own bin.

one other [odd] that i do, is ''nice'' ie coins that still have some 'shine' to them.

wheats i hold until i get a bunch. then. i do them by year and mm.

cdn, 90-97, 82-89, 79-80, 65-78, the 67 doves go in their own stack,
53-64,

odds, foreign , stamped ,dimes, etc

Pics Please... or this aint so....

For about a year I slowy hand sorted and examined every coin's date and mint mark. After filling a few Whittman books and gathering a stockpile of AU coins for 1959+, I'm hand sorting with a much faster method:

I open a roll on a big old mouse pad (deadens sound, bouncing and roll-aways). First I slide off the obvious zincs (like shields) and obvious coppers before any flipping. Then start reading dates and flipping as necessary.

-- I slide the zincs off to the left into a pile.
-- 59-81 coppers get slid off the pad forward (later rolled and boxed for storage).
-- 82's, 09's, wheats, canadas, etc. I slide off to the right to divide up accordingly later on.

A roll takes less than a minute once you get in the groove. But I often go slower just because I really enjoy the sorting process.

I just pour a big pile out on the floor. Then I pick up a handful and go through every coin, throwing the zincs in the zinc pile one by one, and dumping the remaining (copper) coins in my hand into the copper pile. Sometimes I separate 82s, sometimes I just throw them in the zinc pile. i don't keep 2009s anymore; haven't in like 6 months. Of course the Wheats I keep separate, and Canadians as well (to later be separated into copper and zinc/steel, although I keep both). I also have recently begun keeping ugly Abrahams aside to be melted (I hope soon!) and 1960s and 1970 S's to check for small dates later.

Dump a bag in the counter running tight tolerances, and pull out the culls.
Dimes and small foreign stuff go out the reject hole with the trash
Dump the counted coins into a white tub under a lamp and scan for good stuff while feeding the Ryedale
Zincs go straight back into the counter to be bagged for the bank
Rerun with a copper accept, and inspect the rejects for early wheats, Canadians, etc.
Coppers get fed a handful at a time back into the white tub where I can scan for anything I missed the first time.
After each handful, they're added to the hoard where they get counted into $50 bags.

As a handsorter, it is rare that I ever have to look at the dates of pennies to know whether or not they're copper or zinc -- after having been experienced at this for over three years, it's quite evident when pennies are copper or not based on their metallic appearance and die quality. Granted, with some 1982s I have to scan them closely or perform an authenticity check on a hard surface, but for most pennies I can breeze through at several pennies a second. Instead of dumping pennies out onto the floor or in a bucket, I just hold the roll in one hand and dump out the contents into the other, then after disposing of the wrapper I distribute the contents into each hand equally. I hold in my hands the ones that are zinc and allow the coppers to drop using my fingers. The zincolns go straight to my dump bags from my hands after I'm through with that roll's sort.

It's a very efficient process, if I do say so myself.

By the way, I much, much prefer the clear plastic rolls because they just require a little bend in the middle to open up successfully. The damn NF String paper ones require tearing at the little triangles at the edge of the paper wrapping, and it's much more difficult and time-sucking to do this.

Romalae for the NF String rolls I've been using a DULL box cutter to score the paper tube lightly then it just snaps in half and all the coins fall out. Score lightly as to not scratch the coins.