Realcent.org

just wondering how long it takes other people in searching nickels on how often they find V nickels buffalo nickels and war nickels just thought about it i have been through probably 500 dollars and only found 1 war nickel and i just found it today

I didn't do a lot of nickel, but I seem to recall finding one war nickel per $100 box on average. A buffalo maybe 1 in 3 boxes. Never found a V.

Used to get about 2 war nics per box... now,,, it is only averaging about 1 1/2 per box... usually do $200 at a time so about 3 war per every $200.... only found about 4 buffs in all my searching and never found a V in the wild...

When I started nickels a few years ago my first box yielded 3 liberty V nickels. Talk about beginner's luck. Never found another one since.

Unfortunately, I never did keep track of all the nickels I sorted, but I think I've sorted somewhere around 20 to 25 boxes in the past three and a half years of coin roll hunting. My average for finding War Nickels is .75 per box (so usually in two boxes I'll have found at least one and possibly a second). My average for finding Buffalos is about one in every three boxes. I have only found one extremely worn V Nickel in the past.

You also asked how long it takes to sort nickels. For me, since I have a keen eye for all pre-1960 nickels, I don't usually need to look at the dates of the post-1960 nickels so I can refuse them immediately upon entering my hand (I've stopped collecting 2009 nickels anyway). As a result of this, I assume I can sort nickels a lot faster than most. I always lose track of time when I sort though, so I can't give you an average or even approximate time.

I've found that I can usually sort around $75-$100 per hour. To date, I've sorted $6100 of nickels and I've found 56 war nix, 21 buffaloes, and 1 very worn V nickel. Also, for what it's worth, I've found 4 key date jeffersons (2-1938s, 2-1939s) and I average about 15-20 pre-60 jeff's per $100.

For what it is worth, in Quebec, I found one war nickel in close to 220,000 nickles sorted.

I've probably gone through around $1000 worth of nickels and found 2 V nickels, 6 or 7 buffs and about half a roll of war nics.

It seems V nickels are more common than I thought. I heard they were rarer than IHs...

scyther wrote:It seems V nickels are more common than I thought. I heard they were rarer than IHs...

I've found one in $2500 searched to date.

Morsecode wrote:I didn't do a lot of nickel, but I seem to recall finding one war nickel per $100 box on average. A buffalo maybe 1 in 3 boxes. Never found a V.

I'd say my numbers are about the same as above. But, we've found one V.

Engineer wrote:

scyther wrote:It seems V nickels are more common than I thought. I heard they were rarer than IHs...

I've found one in $2500 searched to date.

I've found zero IHs in $1,875 of pennies. So that's 187,500 coins vs. 50,000 coins.

In 2012, i searched over 6100.00 in nickels:
3 "V" nickels found
47 Buffalo nickels
63 War nickels
Hope this helps.
your results may vary!

Dano wrote:In 2012, i searched over 6100.00 in nickels:
3 "V" nickels found
47 Buffalo nickels
63 War nickels
Hope this helps.
your results may vary!

I have not exactly kept track, but these numbers sound really close to what I was getting with Nickel boxes. I only do them occasionally now but for a while I was doing 2 a week.

Haven't done nickels in 3 years. I pass up a lot of bags of them. I am going to my source bank on Monday. Maybe I will pick up some. When I did sort then, i got $1400. I found 7 war nickels and no V nickels. They took me a long time to search, and I had to had roll them to get rid of them.

Now I have sound several dump banks that I can run through counters. Is there any problem with putting them in counters like there is with dimes?

knibloe wrote:Haven't done nickels in 3 years. I pass up a lot of bags of them. I am going to my source bank on Monday. Maybe I will pick up some. When I did sort then, i got $1400. I found 7 war nickels and no V nickels. They took me a long time to search, and I had to had roll them to get rid of them.

Now I have sound several dump banks that I can run through counters. Is there any problem with putting them in counters like there is with dimes?

I find that nickels are the BEST coin to run through counters for a number of reasons:

1. They RARELY get mistaken for a lower denomination. I've been through over $6,000 in nickels and returned them all via counting machines and I could probably count on one hand the number of "pennies" that have mysteriously showed up in the count.
2. They fairly often get mistaken for higher denominations. Usually quarters, but sometimes halves! On one dump, I found that 14 halves magically appeared in my count
3. At least for the machine I usually dump at, it seems to jam easily with pennies, but nickels run great. I think it's because they are heavier.
4. If you are able to buy bags, you may find quarters. I usually find at least one or two quarters in every bag. you do find the occasional penny, but they are more than offset by the quarters.

By the way, as long as you're searching through them one by one anyway, it wouldn't hurt to keep the pre '60's as well. There is becoming more of a market for them on eBay.

I wish I could find a bank that would take rolls. Everything has to be loose and run through a counter. Nickles are good running through a counter because they don't get mistaken for other denominations. Dimes seem to have some problems when running through counters.

Monday I searched $102 of nickels (CWRs) and pulled 3 war nickels. Today $40 of dimes produced one Merc. I'm sticking with the CWRs in '13