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I have searching nickel rolls trying to put together a complete set of Jefferson nickels found in the wild. Have any of you ever found a 1950 D or P in the wild? I wonder if it is worth the search or whether those two will have to be bought. Reading on the net, these two nickels are more rare in the wild than a Feathered Liberty, if they even exist in the wild any longer.

I have found 2 1950 D's in the wild. they dont come easy.

I'll have to check. You've sparked my curiosity.

From 1985 to about 2012, when I searched regularly, I found three 50-D's and 34 50-P's. If I'd kept at it, the 50-P roll would be finished by now.

They're out there, but the billions of new coins released each year make those needles in a haystack that much harder to find.

coindood wrote:From 1985 to about 2012, when I searched regularly, I found three 50-D's and 34 50-P's. If I'd kept at it, the 50-P roll would be finished by now.

They're out there, but the billions of new coins released each year make those needles in a haystack that much harder to find.

Agree wholeheartedly.

Also, in a much smaller sample size that I documented, I found a total of 3 1950-P's in $2,180 face that I looked through since 2011. I've never ever found a 50-D in the wild, not even when I was a kid. I remember having to buy it to complete my set decades ago.

coindood wrote:From 1985 to about 2012, when I searched regularly, I found three 50-D's and 34 50-P's. If I'd kept at it, the 50-P roll would be finished by now.

They're out there, but the billions of new coins released each year make those needles in a haystack that much harder to find.

I know it is hard to get specific on what happened over a 27 year period, but can you give some idea as to how many nickels you looked through. Was is a box ($100 face) per week or month or what? That way we could do some kind of rough back of the envelope calculations to see how many coins you had to go through to get even a single 50-D. I'd imagine it had to be 100,000 coins or more to get even one.

Recyclersteve wrote:I know it is hard to get specific on what happened over a 27 year period, but can you give some idea as to how many nickels you looked through. Was is a box ($100 face) per week or month or what? That way we could do some kind of rough back of the envelope calculations to see how many coins you had to go through to get even a single 50-D. I'd imagine it had to be 100,000 coins or more to get even one.

That would be near impossible to calculate, since we're talking slot machine searching, mostly in the casino while I played.

There was a time for many years where I'd regularly bring home $40 to search. Carrying more than that was unwieldy...and suspicious when you came to return it (casinos didn't like when you brought in outside coin).

I've never given it much thought, but I'll try to come up with a really rough estimate later today.

Okay, as I said this will be a really rough estimate but in my heavy search phase - which was 1985 thru probably 2008 (2009-2012 I really scaled back) based on in-casino searching and the occasional bucket brought home, I easily looked thru a box worth a week. Some weeks a lot more, some weeks obviously far less or even none at all, depending on how busy I was. But that's pretty close.

Now I won't count 1985 since I moved here in Sept of that year, so let's say I started full force in 1986:

2,000 nickels/week x 52 weeks x 22 years = 2,288,000 nickels or $114,400.00

My last 50-D was found on 2/27/05, the one before that was on 6/16/99 but I don't have a record of the first. I suspect I was so wowed that I forgot to note the date.

Completed three sets from the wild, and only another 50-D is preventing me from completing a 4th.

I'm sad that my hunting has stopped almost entirely in the last several years. If there was a coin-op casino in my neighborhood I'd still be at it with the same intensity. Bank boxes just don't have the same allure for some reason.

coindood wrote:Okay, as I said this will be a really rough estimate but in my heavy search phase - which was 1985 thru probably 2008 (2009-2012 I really scaled back) based on in-casino searching and the occasional bucket brought home, I easily looked thru a box worth a week. Some weeks a lot more, some weeks obviously far less or even none at all, depending on how busy I was. But that's pretty close.

Now I won't count 1985 since I moved here in Sept of that year, so let's say I started full force in 1986:

2,000 nickels/week x 52 weeks x 22 years = 2,288,000 nickels or $114,400.00

My last 50-D was found on 2/27/05, the one before that was on 6/16/99 but I don't have a record of the first. I suspect I was so wowed that I forgot to note the date.

Completed three sets from the wild, and only another 50-D is preventing me from completing a 4th.

I'm sad that my hunting has stopped almost entirely in the last several years. If there was a coin-op casino in my neighborhood I'd still be at it with the same intensity. Bank boxes just don't have the same allure for some reason.

Wow, thanks for the update. I was guessing you had to look through 100,000 or more coins to get a single 50-D. It was over 700k nickels! No wonder I've never found one!

Gonna throw something totally wild out there- can you imagine if you had a full set and the only one missing was not a 50-D, but something fairly common like a 46-D or 52-P? I'd go absolutely nuts looking till I found that last coin! If I was still working, I'd likely take a day off work and tell my wife I was busy that day without explaining exactly what I was doing. And if I still couldn't find that 46-D or 52-P, I don't know what I'd do then.

Recyclersteve wrote:Gonna throw something totally wild out there- can you imagine if you had a full set and the only one missing was not a 50-D, but something fairly common like a 46-D or 52-P? I'd go absolutely nuts looking till I found that last coin! If I was still working, I'd likely take a day off work and tell my wife I was busy that day without explaining exactly what I was doing. And if I still couldn't find that 46-D or 52-P, I don't know what I'd do then.

Over the years I had something similar to that with the 47-D nickel. Here's an excerpt from a post I did on another website 12 years ago:

I've just been checking my figures for nickel roll searching this year and came across a curiosity that's been a constant since I started hunting nickels 20 years ago.

So far this year I've found all pre-1960 Jeffersons except 1938-D, 1938-S, 1939-D, 1939-S, 1947-D, 1950-D, 1951-S, 1955 and the silver years 1942-S, 1943-D & 1945-D.

Now the one date that stands out in the above list, apart from the silver which are naturally harder to find, is the 47-D. All the others have mintages under 10 million so it's understandable they'd be harder to locate. But the 47-D has a mintage of 37.8 million so it's a mystery why it should be this difficult to find. And this has been a consistant phenomenon over the years. When I was completing solid date rolls a few years back the 47-D took twice as long to finish than other dates that had lower mintages. I live in the western US so Denver coins should be pretty common, and most are, except for this one.

Any ideas about why this happens? Is there some massive hoard that has kept the population down?

And just some data to back up my claim. I completed the following rolls before the 47-D and all have lower mintages:

1949-D (36.5 million)
1956 (35.9 million)
1952-D (30.6 million)
1954-S (29.4 million)
1959 (28.4 million)
1947-S (24.7 million)
1952-S (20.6 million)
1953-S (19.2 million)

The 47-D is a stumper. Maybe the coin gods are trying to mess with you. I can imagine having a dream about it:

I am a single swashbuckling young guy. I approach an attractive female in a bar and ask her to dance. She replies, "NO! You don't even have a 47-D, do you?" And she pulls one out of her purse to show me. Then another guy comes over and she says "He has one." And he proceeds to pull it out of his pocket.

So you are driving home. And you see a billboard for a local dealer. And the billboard says "1947-D's nickels for sale. 10 cents each. Minimum order of 1,000 pieces." But you only need one.

Your madly going through rolls and your heart skips a beat every time you see a 1947, but it is always either a "P" or "S" mint.

And then finally you wake up with a dry mouth and dripping in sweat.

All said in good humor of course...

They are tough to find but overall fairly cheap. Many were saved so you can pick them up online in pretty good shape for a couple of bucks. Good luck if you try to find one in the wild!

I am cleaning out my garage, among other things I had 84 unsearched $100 boxes of nickels stacked. I have gone through 13 boxes ( 26,000 coins ) and found one 1950-P and no 1950-Ds. I started searching nickels in 1959 as a Cub Scout project, and I still have never found a 1950-D in the wild. I will post some summary stats on the Tracking forum when I get the info together. Just FYI, so far I think I've found more war nickels than I've found 2009-P/D.

I do remember hearing that lots of 2009 nickels and dimes made their way to Puerto Rico. After the huge amount of damage sustained by Hurricane Maria in 2017, you wonder how many of the 2009's are gone forever (washed out to sea, buried under tons of mud, etc.).