Multi-Day Penny Sorting Marathon

[crazypennyguy]

Some of you might remember me announcing here that I applied to Guinness World Records to set a world record for hand-sorting pennies. Unfortunately, they turned me down.

But, someone here turned me on to Record Setter. I'm going to do it through them. It's my way of bringing an end to The 10,000 Roll Challenge with a bang. A crazy end

Start time is slated to be 10 PM tonight. Unfortunately, since marathon custom only allows for a 5 minute break ever hour, I can't respond to this thread. Nor can I respond in my blog where I'm announcing it. I have E-mails to check (i.e., delete except for emergency ones) and other things I have to squeeze into each timeframe. I am sorry about that.

The only communication I'll have for this challenge is through Twitter. You can watch me slowly go insane there.

When I announced my application, I got a lot of support here. I'd like to thank everyone for that support.

But I gotta go - 10 o'clock's a loomin...

[Hawkeye]

That is awesome. From another handsorter - good luck, man.

[fb101]

yeah - go man go & good luck!

[bman]

we should do a pool bet on how many wheaties he finds

[henrysmedford]

we should do a pool bet on how many wheaties he finds

He is up in Canada . Did you see this find. It is his 2nd Newfoundland cent. I would like to see him find some more.

[henrysmedford]

I copied his tweets--

On the last stretch, I found what looked like a 1970-S small date - http://ow.ly/97UO9 After a closer look, I think I did get one.

Remember that 1919S I found? Well, the wheatie I just found is even more worn, incl. date and mint mark, but I just scored a real 1919D.

Unfortunately, I've begun hallucinating. So, I'm cleaving this marathon stretch in two. I'll be back at it when I've cleared my head (sleep)

I've finished half the 26 boxes I set out to hand sort in this stretch. With respect to the 10,000 Roll Challenge, I'm at roll 9.300.

Based upon what I've done and (except for crash deletions) recorded, I can claim a 35.5 hour penny hand sorting marathon stretch.

Found a 1919-S wheatie. Very worn, but date's still legible and the S-mark is clear. Not a heavyweight like the teen -Ds, but very welcome!

1 day or 24 hours into my hand-sorting marathon, I've sorted 25 thousand pennies or the contents of 10 boxes. Coincidental, but a harmony.

One thing about zinc pennies: they actually rot. I've seen several zincies with rot holes right through. Never for coppers.

[crazypennyguy]

Thanks a lot for the encouragement, guys. Unfortunately, I got into a few vidcam complications while doing it.

I was using Windows Live Movie Maker to record my sorting, and the durn thing kept crashing by computer. I shortened the time between each recordings, to the point where I was stopping and starting every five rolls and for every break. As a result, I have close to one hundred and forty-five clips that document my 35.5 hour run. A bit was lost through my computer crashing, particularly at the beginning.

It's not really the way to run a marathon: sort five rolls, stop the vidcam, save the project [I had to use one project per clip; more that one got my system crashing], close Movie Maker [again, to forestall crashes], open up Movie Maker again, start recording again, and sort five more rolls. The same procedure, I used for breaks.

As I said, I got 35.5 hours done. By that time, I began hallucinating so I called it quits.

When I had recovered, I started again - but the same five-roll regimen got my computer crashing four times in three hours. At that point, I gave up recording and began taking it a little easy.

I'm glad I did. Clearing my head enabled me to find this vidcam recorder software that has enabled me to record three hours' worth of sorting continuously without any crashes. It's called Debut Video Capture. If you want to make long recording from your webcam, it's much better than Movie Maker.

As of now, I'm in the middle of testing its capabilites with the seven penny boxes I have left in the 10,000 Roll Challenge. I was hoping for a three-day licking of the 28 boxes I had left when I announced the marathon, but it was not to be. So, I'm just in mop-up mode.

But...I broke down some time ago and got eighty more boxes! Now that I've gotten a system that allows me to do my thing instead of having to interrupt myself out of the need to twiddle with the recorder to prevent my system from crashing, I have enough boxies for at least three more marathon attempts.

Even though I'm within a day of ending the 10,000 Roll Challenge, I'm not done yet! RecordSetter will hear from me...

[PennysaverCP]

35.5 hours of hand sorting. Wow!!! My eyes hurt just thinking about that. God bless ya!!!

[Cu Penny Hoarder]

Congrats, but I don't know why people are still hand sorting. The eye and neck strain is horrible, epecially if you are an older sorter/hoarder like me. You must be a young man.

Buying the ryedale early last year was one of the best things I've ever done. It makes it sorting sooooo much more fun, faster and easier.

[slickeast]

Buy a Ryedale.

I would have gave up before the first 30 minutes. My hats off to you for going 35+ hours.

[John_doe]

Buy a Ryedale.

I would have gave up before the first 30 minutes. My hats off to you for going 35+ hours.

that 10,000 would not even be a challenge with a ryedale. thats a lot of hard work. you will get a lot of respect if you keep these sort of things going.


p.s. your blog is quite interesting!

[crazypennyguy]

Buy a Ryedale.

I would have gave up before the first 30 minutes. My hats off to you for going 35+ hours.

that 10,000 would not even be a challenge with a ryedale. thats a lot of hard work. you will get a lot of respect if you keep these sort of things going.


p.s. your blog is quite interesting!

Thanks a lot. And you're right: it is a challenge, which I finally met yesterday afternoon.

[crazypennyguy]

Congrats, but I don't know why people are still hand sorting. The eye and neck strain is horrible, epecially if you are an older sorter/hoarder like me. You must be a young man.

Buying the ryedale early last year was one of the best things I've ever done. It makes it sorting sooooo much more fun, faster and easier.

I'm not as young as you think

Actually, aside from the challenge, I'm glad I stuck to hand-sorting. In order to get the pennies, I had to buy them from a local coin service at a dollar-per-box premium. The banks wanted to charge me a hefty delivery fee and deliver them by armoured truck. In order to take them to the dump bank, I have to roll them: there are no penny arcades in Canada. Had I gone mechanical, I not only would have had to buy a Ryedale but also a used Brandt. That would have just about doubled my capital costs if I were lucky re. the price of the Brandt. And, of course, the Brandt needs to be fed with roll paper.

I also discovered that there's no subsidization of coin-box transport in Canada. The dump branch I was using wanted to charge me transport fees for the pennies I was bringing in because I managed to stuff their vault. Because I was feeding them the dump boxes at hand speed, that problem didn't surface until late in the Challenge. Had I gone with the Ryedale and Brandt, it would have surfaced earlier. And I might have had to pay the fees.

Furthermore, the market for coppers in Canada is far less developed than in the States. I tried selling ten-pound packages on eBay, but they moved very slowly. There's no Portland Mint in Canada.

As it is, my break-even point for the coppers is $2.50/pound. That's without any machines to amortize. Had I gone for the Ryedale and Brandt combo, my break-even point would have been higher.

If any of you were wondering why there's not much product coming from Canada, the above economics explain why. [And remember, I've ducked out of paying bank transport fees for my dumps so far.] I can't see how to make a profit on the Ryedale-Brandt plan unless the buy price for Canadian coppers is $3.00 a pound or more.


But that's only business talk. Granted that the hand-sorting was a grind at times, but I had a lot of fun.

[inflationhawk]

Don't look at the Ryedale as an expense, think of it as a business asset. It has value and when you are done with it, you can sell it. Heck, I bought my Ryedale Sniper first before upgrading to the big model. I ended up selling the Sniper on feebay for a little more than I actually paid for it.

[JadeDragon]

I don't pay extra to get or dump coin. Get it from credit unions and banks and dump with the Royal. TD stocks little coin but the Royal has a lot of business accts and never bats an eye at multibox dumps.

It is important to have an acct or credit card with each bank you use. Everyone wants you to swipe a card even when exchanging cash for cash.