The Future Canadian Vacation Project

[hammerrob]

This is the latest edition of the following two threads:

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33042

http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=29255

Here's a quick summary. For the past few years my son and I sort the following weekly:

2 rolls of pennies
2 rolls of nickels
2 rolls of dimes

Along the way we're saving the copper and trying to fill two Dansco albums for Nickels and Dimes. We take the dumps to TD Bank, and being the helpful guys that we are, we clean off the magnet for them. We usually find something interesting on the magnet, especially Canadian coins.

This past summer we took a family vacation that included time in Vancouver, BC where we cashed them in. We had over $150 in Canadian, which we put to work at a restaurant and a couple gift shops. That $150C is a better return then we'll probably ever make on any of the copper we're stacking.

We've had such a good time doing this that we've kept it going, even though we really have no idea when or if we'll ever make it back to Canada.

Some good folks on the prior threads said they enjoyed following our weekly updates so we're going to start them up again. Each week we summarize our sorting and TD Bank Penny Arcade results, and share pictures of our good finds.

So, this week was decent for sorting, but not much of a week at the Penny Arcade:

Sorting take: 25 cents / 25% ........ Nickels - 1946, sent back to the sorter

Penny Arcade take: $.00 Canadian, 5 Eurocents, 1 Thai Bhat, 1 Dime US (a little bent .. a quick hammer job should get it through the sorter next week)

Find of Week: Thai Bhat. I'm pretty sure we highlighted one of these in the past, but is truly our most interesting find this week:

[plus1hdcp]

Glad to see this thread

[hammerrob]

This week was good sorting, and OK at the Penny Arcade, got back on the board for Canadian:

Sorting take: 34 cents / 34% ........ Nickels - Undated Buffalo! 56D, sent back to the sorter

Penny Arcade take: $.50 Canadian, Aruba 25 Cents, United Arab Emirates 1 Dirham, 43S Steel Cent-we found our first 43S a couple weeks ago, now another 2 weeks later!

Find of Week: The Buffalo nickel wins this week, this is the third one ever. Too bad no date:

[hammerrob]

Better week sorting than at the Penny Arcade, but no complaints:

Sorting take: 26 cents / 26% including a 41 wheat and 64 Canadian ........ Nickels - 56D, second week in a row ......... Dimes - Panama Un Decimo - really unusual sorting find

Penny Arcade take: $.50 Canadian (same as last week), India - 2 Rupees, 12 Eurocents

Find of Week: Has to be the Panama 2008 Un Decimo:

[hammerrob]

Another better week sorting than at the Penny Arcade:

Sorting take: 18 cents / 18% including a 37 wheat (one of the most common, but pre-1940!) ........ Nickels - 53 sent back to sorter, GB 1993 20 Pence

Penny Arcade take: $.11 Canadian

Find of Week: The 7-sided GB 20 Pence .. weird coin to find in a nickel roll:

[hammerrob]

Skunked at the Penny Arcade, but sorting came through with another interesting find this week:

Sorting take: 24 cents / 24% including a 53d wheat ........ Nickels - Proof 1990S, 1949 sent back to sorter

Penny Arcade take: Zilch!

Find of Week: Proof 1990S, a bit circulated. We are filling a Dansco album for Jefferson Nickels which includes the proof coins, never imagined we'd start filling those holes!:

[plus1hdcp]

Nice find on the proof

[hammerrob]

Back on track at the Penny Arcade, and sorting came through yet again:

Sorting take: 24 cents / 24% including a 35 wheat (pre-40!), Canada 2002 ........ Nickels - 1952S (didn't have this one yet!), 1948 sent back to sorter

Penny Arcade take: Canada $1.20, Columbia 50 Pesos, Thai Bhat, India 2 Rupees, Egypt 25 Piastres

Find of Week: Egypt 25 Piastres, this is one that we had to do a little research on to figure out what the heck it was. Anything that requires research becomes the find of the week. Year is 2010, which also required research:

[hammerrob]

We were out of town last week, so didn't sort or post last week. This week kind of dissappointing:

Sorting take: 21 cents / 21% including 55, 57D wheats, Canada 79 ........ Nickels - 1947 sent back to sorter

Penny Arcade take: Canada $0, New Zealand 20 Cents

Find of Week: The coin is kind of cool ... included picture of what Wikipedia calls the 'Spanish Flower' edge milling:

[hammerrob]

Sorting was uneventful, but it was a good week at the sorter for a change.

Sorting take: 22 cents / 22% including Canada 75

Penny Arcade take: Canada $.80, Bahamas 1Cent, Mexico 3 Pesos, 7 Eurocents, Aruba 10 Cents, Dominican Republic 25 Centaurs, 1French Franc

Find of Week: French Franc replaced by Euro for 15 years now :

[plus1hdcp]

You certainly find a nice share of foreign coins. I guess they are mostly from the penny arcade. I am limited to what is found in rolls.

[hammerrob]

Yeah, the foreign coins are almost always from the Penny Arcade. These posts would usually be pretty boring if we only posted what we find sorting!

[hammerrob]

We were out of town for Thanksgiving so we skipped last week. This week was good for sorting but we were shut out again at the Penny Arcade.

Sorting take: 33 cents / 33% including 1955 Wheat... Nickels -, dateless Buffalo, 54D sent back to the sorter.

Penny Arcade take: Skunked!

Find of Week: Dateless Buffalo, we had one of these just a couple weeks ago.. things like this seem to come in streaks:

[hammerrob]

Sorting continues to be good, and the Penny Arcade take pretty poor.

Sorting take: 21 cents / 21% including 88 and 99 Canadian... Nickels -,57 58D sent back to the sorter..... Dimes - 53S!!

Penny Arcade take: 10 Cents Canadian. 1Israel Shekel, 25 Centimeters Philippines

Find of Week: 53S dime. Silver is rare enough, but SF mintage, too!

[hammerrob]

For the very few coins we sort each week, our luck lately has been awesome. The good luck continues this week. Penny Arcade was better than than the last couple weeks, but not much better.

Sorting take: 30 cents / 30% including 1945... Nickels - 41, 47, 48 (all sent back to sorter), 36 Buffalo

Penny Arcade take: 35 Cents Canadian . 2 Eurocents, GB 5 Pence, 1 Thai Bhat

Find of Week: 1936 Buffalo.. with readable date!

[hammerrob]

With days off this week from school / work for Christmas we made it a double week

Trip1:

Sorting take: 12 cents / 12% including 1945... Nickels - 41, 47D, 49, 54D, 58D, 59 (all sent back to sorter)..... Dimes - 56

Penny Arcade take: 15 Cents Canadian, Nicaragua 2 Cordobas, Ecuador 15 Centavos, Philippines 25 Sentimo

Find of Week: 1956 Dime, a rare silver find for us

Trip2:

Sorting take: 24 cents / 24%.... Nickels - 1940

Penny Arcade take: 60 Cents Canadian, Ukraine 5 Kopiyok, GB 2 pennies, 2 Eurocents

Find of Week: Ukraine 5 Kopiyok. We had to do a bit of Internet searching to find this one:

[plus1hdcp]

Nice find on the 56

[hammerrob]

We posted last week using my cellphone and forgot to reduce the photo size .. yeech. Anyway, we started off the new year with the Penny Arcade being a bit more interesting than the sorting.

Sorting take: 31 cents / 31% including 1945, 1949


Penny Arcade take: 66 Cents Canadian, Brazil 5 Centavos, Ecuador 5 Centavos, Thai Bhat (these are coming up more and more often), India Rupee, and in the sorter's regect bin a 1962 Quarter.


Find of Week: 1962 Quarter, since we don't sort quarters this the first silver quarter we've come across!

[hammerrob]

This week was a good week at the Penny Arcade, pretty blah week sorting. At the Penny Arcade there was 71 cents including a half dollar in the reject bin (not silver, though).

Sorting take: 26 cents / 26% including 1970S

Penny Arcade take: 85 Cents Canadian, 71 Cents US, 1 Peso Mexico, 1 China Yuan, 3 Eurocents, Aruba 50 Cents, 1 French Franc 1978, 2 Golf Markers


Find of Week: China Yuan (a bit unusual but nothing spectacular):

[hammerrob]

Back to our crazy good luck sorting again! Decent week for Canadian at the Penny Arcade, too.

Sorting take: 27 cents / 27% including 1935 (woohoo, we get to log something in the pre-49 tracking thread) ... Nickels 44P War Nickel

Penny Arcade take: 60 Cents Canadian, 1 Rupee India, 25 Cents Cayman Islands


Find of Week: Have to go with the silver war nickel:

[hammerrob]

Got an offer from another list member for all the non-Canadian foreign we've accumulated. Before shipping everything off we took an inventory of all the coins by country. In total there were 55 countries and 967 coins. We only counted the Euros as one 'country'. Also, the 90 coins from Japan were all leftovers from a few business trips I took there.

Seems hard to believe we've gathered so many of these, all just from the TD Bank magnet. Can't remember exactly when we started doing this, or when we got into doing it every week, but I'd guess that took 4 years. To complete the picture, our total Canadian take including the ones we cashed last year = 871 coins
(obviously we kept the Canadian).

Here's the country list:
Euro 249
Netherlands (PreEuro) 3
Italy (PreEuro) 8
Ireland (PreEuro) 2
Germany (PreEuro) 16
France (PreEuro) 16
Thailand 10
Australia 2
Hong Kong 5
Singapore 1
Polynesia 1
Malaysia 3
New Zealand 3
Philippines 22
China 26
India 109
Panama 1
Cuba 3
Bermuda 4
Dominican Republic 7
Cayman Islands 18
Barbados 5
Nicaragua 5
Costa Rica 10
Jamaica 18
Mexico 77
Japan 90
Georgia 2
Israel 7
Ghana 2
Nepal 2
Russia 11
Kenya 2
Ukraine 2
Romania 3
Egypt 1
Aruba 41
Great Britain 97
Ecuador 28
Colombia 7
Brazil 21
Guatamala 1
Guyana 2
Chile 1
Peru 1
Venezuela 3
Paraguay 6
Czechoslovakia 2
Kenya 2
South Africa 2
Zambia 1
Serbia 1
Croatia 1
Albania 1
Netherlands Antilles 3
TOTAL: 967

[hammerrob]

Blizzard coming tomorrow so we stopped by the bank today! Not much of a week for sorting, but the Penny Arcade was at least decent.

Sorting take: 21 cents / 21% ... Nickels 42, 54 (both sent back to the sorter)

Penny Arcade take: 15 Cents Canadian, Philippines 1 Piso, GB Penny, 15 Eurocents, Bahamas Penny, 2 GS Parkway tokens

Find of Week: We're going to go with with a Garden State Parkway token. They stopped honoring these on the tollroad 7 years ago. Someone must have these sitting in a jar or something all that time:

[hammerrob]

Pretty good week all-around ... and no blizzards!

Sorting take: 21 cents / 21% including 1918 ... Nickels 40, 54D, 48D, 57, 46, 54 (all sent back to the sorter)

Penny Arcade take: 60 Cents Canadian, Mexico 12 Pesos

Find of Week: This is one of the oldest pennies we've ever found, the handful of others we've found this old were practically worn smooth:

[plus1hdcp]

Two thumbs up on the 1918

[TheJonasCollegeFund]

sweet