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Last Thursday I was finishing up another sort, and was sifting through the zinc's and found the following in about $150 of zinc's:

(2) blank zinc planchets
(1) dateless Indian cent
(1) 1899 Indian cent, G or better
(3) AU 1936 S wheats
(1) 1909 VDB, VF if not better...

It was funny to see these show up. I didn't find anything of interest in the previous round of sorting, so I guess I was due this round. Hopefully there is more of these treasures in the copper pile. If you sort the zinc's while the machine is running, you end up losing very little time. Assuming you are running bags, or breaking the rolls at a previous time. These finds were a nice break from my silver skunk which is up to something like 8 weeks solid nothing.

Happy Hunting!

~JobIII

nice score congrats. I usually check my zincs when I am turning them back in at the coin counter. That allows me to look for wheats and canadians in the copper.

My Ryedale normally puts the Canadian Cu, Brazialian into the Cu bin. I haven't had any Indians yet with 100,000 sorted. I haven't found any wheats (yet) that the Ryedale missed. Are you saying your Ryedale misses Indians? I know the Ryedale will miss some wheats due to differences in the compostion.

My ryedale will miss indian cents, and an assortment of early wheats. Which is not to say it's unreliable. I did a 2nd sort last night to cull any zincs from $800 in Cu and found only 20 zincs and a handful of teen or very worn wheats.

For me i've found more Indian cents, in with the zincs then with the Cu pile. I think i'm >10 times more likely to find them in my zinc pile. Also Ada, if you sort the zinc pile as you feed the ryedale you really don't lose any time. You may just be missing the rare finds by searching your zinc pile at the coin counter.

JobIII wrote:For me i've found more Indian cents, in with the zincs then with the Cu pile. I think i'm >10 times more likely to find them in my zinc pile. Also Ada, if you sort the zinc pile as you feed the ryedale you really don't lose any time. You may just be missing the rare finds by searching your zinc pile at the coin counter.

I sort by hand and don't use a Ryedale but I've often wondered about combining a hand sorting step with running a Ryedale. Maybe someone with more experience can tell me if this is really practical. Wouldn't it be efficient to simply sort out the Licoln Memorial reverse design and throw those coins into the machine while throwing the newer reverse designs straight to the zinc pile to avoid having them pass thru the machine? Then any other reverse designs you see (i.e. Wheats, Maple Leafs, etc.) can be easily set aside. But then again maybe all this extra handling on the front end slows down the process and defeats the purpose of using the machine.

As I crack the rolls I keep an eye open for Wheats, Indians, and Canadians. I'll pull them out if I see them. I miss a bunch because I crack the rolls fast. I don't bother pulling the shields because then I would be spending too much time picking through the pile than cracking rolls. I crack all the rolls ahead of time. Once all the rolls are cracked I head over to the ryedale and fire it up. While it is running, I quickly scan through the zincs for and IHC;s or wheats that made it through. I do a quick scan so I know that I am missing some stuff, but I think that I catch most of it. I am confident that I don't miss and Indians. However I probably miss a few wheats because I don't look at each date and I don't flip over every coin. If a wheat reverse is facing me I pluck it. If Lincoln is looking up at me and it has the appearance of an older coin then I will pick it up. Sometimes it's a wheat and sometimes it is a copper. I can almost keep up with the ryedale scanning for zincs like this. This process seems to work pretty good for me. I am catching most of the good stuff and still keeping the time invested to a minimum.

Comparing this process to the hand sorting that I was doing before I had a ryedale, what I am doing now is MUCH faster.