Ratios/rarity

[scyther]

I was wondering if some of the more experienced sorters here could tell me the ratio/occurrence in circulation of the following:

Silver halves 90%
Silver halves 40%
Silver quarters
Silver dimes
Indian Head pennies
Buffalo nickels
V nickels

Thanks.

[Engineer]

Yields vary by location, but the tracking threads will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.

[handsorter]

I will give you a very rough estimate for what I see in a city in the upper Midweset. I am in a position to provide a fairly representative (but rough) estimate for this particular city for the last 12 months, because of my line of work in which perhaps a million coins each year pass by my eyes.

Silver Halves 90%: Approximately 1 in 2500
Silver Halves 40%: Approximately 1 in 500
Silver Quarters: Approximately 1 in 10,000
Silver Dimes: Approximately 1 in 5000
Indian Head cents: Approximately 1 in 250,000
Buffalo Nickels: Approximately 1 in 10,000

[scyther]

I will give you a very rough estimate for what I see in a city in the upper Midweset. I am in a position to provide a fairly representative (but rough) estimate for this particular city for the last 12 months, because of my line of work in which perhaps a million coins each year pass by my eyes.

Silver Halves 90%: Approximately 1 in 2500
Silver Halves 40%: Approximately 1 in 500
Silver Quarters: Approximately 1 in 10,000
Silver Dimes: Approximately 1 in 5000
Indian Head cents: Approximately 1 in 250,000
Buffalo Nickels: Approximately 1 in 10,000

Wow, so buffalo nickels are as rare as silver quarters? And those odds really aren't bad for halves, maybe I should try those... I wonder why it's so rare to find an IH, some of them are barely over a hundred years old.

[Engineer]

Conventional wisdom on quarters is 1 per 16,000 searched. The numbers on Buffalos seems about right, but when you're searching for buffalos, you also get about 1 war nickel per 2000 searched.

[reddirtcoins]

that is about what I see. Takes me a year to pull around 500 war nickels. Some of it is the luck of the draw. I've only found about 5 IH and at what others find I should have 100... I just don't have good luck finding them.

[tedandcam]

that is about what I see. Takes me a year to pull around 500 war nickels. Some of it is the luck of the draw. I've only found about 5 IH and at what others find I should have 100... I just don't have good luck finding them.

500 war nicks! Wow! Might I ask, how many boxes ( or hundreds of dollars) are you searching in a years time?

[creshka46]

I will give you a very rough estimate for what I see in a city in the upper Midweset. I am in a position to provide a fairly representative (but rough) estimate for this particular city for the last 12 months, because of my line of work in which perhaps a million coins each year pass by my eyes.

Silver Halves 90%: Approximately 1 in 2500
Silver Halves 40%: Approximately 1 in 500
Silver Quarters: Approximately 1 in 10,000
Silver Dimes: Approximately 1 in 5000
Indian Head cents: Approximately 1 in 250,000
Buffalo Nickels: Approximately 1 in 10,000

The only thing I would differ on in this is that I find the dimes to be more like 1:2500 (1 per box). Also, as others have said, silver nickels are about 1:2000 (1 per box)

[scyther]

So it looks like halves would be the best to search for silver, then?

[handsorter]

I was maybe being a bit conservative in some of my estimates. It was easier to find good stuff a couple of years ago. For example, in one group of 1000 half-dollars a couple of years ago, I found 41 of the 40% silver Halves. That was a nice day for me!

In the past 12 months I have gone through probably 700,000 to 800,000 pennies. 3 Indian heads were my take. (but I average 26% CU, and I don't keep any 1982s).

In one bag of quarters (2000 quarters), I found 9 silver quarters. In another, I found 6 silver quarters. But then, I can go 10 to 20 bags or boxes, and not find even one. But yesterday I did find one silver quarter from a batch of 2000, and today another from the very next batch. Two more batches after that yielded none.

In some bags (5000 dimes) I have found as many as 7 silver dimes. But in many bags and boxes I have found none at all. Usually, I get from 0 to 2 silver dimes per bag of 5000 dimes.

Buffalo Nickels. In several bags (2000 nickels), I have found two. But then I will go through 10 bags and not find even one. So I just averaged that one according to what I have collected in the past 12 months.

I forgot to mention Liberty Nickels. I have found 2 in the past 12 months. That is probably 1 in 50,000 Nickels.

[handsorter]

So it looks like halves would be the best to search for silver, then?

Yes, halves are great if you can get ahold of un-searched large quantities. But in many instances, individuals (such as I) who have access to large quantities of them have already pulled the good ones out (even before they would make it to the bag).

Silver definitely has the appeal for me as well. But to get a real return every time, I think pennies are the way to go. A bag of 5000 pennies will usually give me around 1300 coppers. It just takes a lot more time!

[scyther]

So it looks like halves would be the best to search for silver, then?

Yes, halves are great if you can get ahold of un-searched large quantities. But in many instances, individuals (such as I) who have access to large quantities of them have already pulled the good ones out (even before they would make it to the bag).

Silver definitely has the appeal for me as well. But to get a real return every time, I think pennies are the way to go. A bag of 5000 pennies will usually give me around 1300 coppers. It just takes a lot more time!

Yeah I already search pennies and don't plan to stop. I thought my bank may have been ripping me off with light bags, but I just checked... I actually counted everything I took from it ugh that was annoying... and it was only 10 cents short! I can live with that loss; I might have miscounted anyway. So at least I won't have to stop doing that. I'd kind of like to try dimes, but I've heard the machines often mistake them for pennies...

[Sheba]

"Yes, halves are great if you can get ahold of un-searched large quantities. But in many instances, individuals (such as I) who have access to large quantities of them have already pulled the good ones out (even before they would make it to the bag).

Silver definitely has the appeal for me as well. But to get a real return every time, I think pennies are the way to go. A bag of 5000 pennies will usually give me around 1300 coppers. It just takes a lot more time!"

Specially for 'hand sorters' ... but I haven't noticed any obvious drop in percentages. Still around 30% (including 1982s that have been weighed). What I have noticed, however, is that the wheaties are pretty much always in the 40-50 era. Used to find earlier date ones and MM early ones more often (a couple years ago).

[reddirtcoins]

that is about what I see. Takes me a year to pull around 500 war nickels. Some of it is the luck of the draw. I've only found about 5 IH and at what others find I should have 100... I just don't have good luck finding them.

500 war nicks! Wow! Might I ask, how many boxes ( or hundreds of dollars) are you searching in a years time?

I normally do $200 at a time and about 10 boxes a week (more or less). $200 is a 2 gallon bucket which is the limit of the CU I dump at. I normally stop at 2 on the way home.

[scyther]

"Yes, halves are great if you can get ahold of un-searched large quantities. But in many instances, individuals (such as I) who have access to large quantities of them have already pulled the good ones out (even before they would make it to the bag).

Silver definitely has the appeal for me as well. But to get a real return every time, I think pennies are the way to go. A bag of 5000 pennies will usually give me around 1300 coppers. It just takes a lot more time!"

Specially for 'hand sorters' ... but I haven't noticed any obvious drop in percentages. Still around 30% (including 1982s that have been weighed). What I have noticed, however, is that the wheaties are pretty much always in the 40-50 era. Used to find earlier date ones and MM early ones more often (a couple years ago).

I wonder if that means there are people out there searching bags and only taking out older wheats. What fools they must be to leave behind all the copper and even common wheats!

[handsorter]

Being in a position to observe a lot of individuals and a lot of coins, I would say that the more likely scenario is that the general public is noticing the old wheats more than before, and pulling them from circulation before they dump them at the bank, or spend them in another manner. In general (if you are someone like me who has access to LOTS of coins), it is much easier to spot a "good" half-dollar before it goes into a bag, than it is to spot a "good" penny. My observation would correspond with Sheba in stating that now the wheats are almost all from the 40's to 50s era. Still, an occasional good one gets through. Yesterday I went through 5000 pennies all by hand (yeah, I am too cheap to buy a sorter, plus, I like to see every penny I get, just to make certain that the sorter does not miss a "good" one.) I got 26 wheats. All in the 40s to 50's, except one was a 1920. I got a 1955 D, which always makes my heart pound a little faster, until I look at it more closely to confirm that it is not a double-die. One of these days!

[scyther]

I don't think the general public would care whether a coin is from the 30s or 40s, or know that there's a significant difference. Anyway I'd say maybe 10-15% of the wheats I get are pre-1940. I think the difference from 58-59 is a lot bigger than 39-40.

[reddirtcoins]

Haven't finished the hand sort but out of $3000fv I pulled 19.8% copper. (2 - 5 gallon buckets) The wheats don't look good so far and of course, no IH.

[Sheba]

I hand sort as well, so don't get through too many pennies. But once in a great while I do find a pre 1940. That is exciting, more so now because it 'seems' to me that I'm not seeing as many older wheats. However, I'll take any I can find

The best find in the past year or so for me in terms of wheat cents was a nice clean 1933 D VG-F condition. That sure made my day!

But, after all the time spent sorting pennies I still haven't found that 1914 D that I think is out there somewhere

[scyther]

Hmm... I don't know maybe I just have good luck with pre-40 wheats in my area. It seems I usually get at least 1 or 2 per bag. Maybe I'll keep track better from now on...

By the way I almost always get at least 10 wheats per bag, often over 20, but in the last bag I did I only got 3. Cu % was normal, though, and one of the wheats was a 1920, so I'm not complaining...

[reddirtcoins]

$3000fv

Only got:
$9.57 common
$0.47 pre 40's.
$2.88 ugly

Not good at all......

[scyther]

Something I forgot to include in the list- 1943 steel pennies. I wouldn't think these would be that rare, but after sorting over 70,000 pennies, I still haven't found one.

[stlouiscoin]

Something I forgot to include in the list- 1943 steel pennies. I wouldn't think these would be that rare, but after sorting over 70,000 pennies, I still haven't found one.

after sorting somewhere between 5 and 6 million pennies, i've found 1. people take them out of circulation because they look different and they're easy to spot.

[ZenOps]

I'm surprised at the circulated rarity of pre-1951 nickels in Canada myself. Its definitely very tough to find, harder than finding pre-67 silver, I'm sure many years pre-1955 were melted down to help with WWII and Korean war efforts - but its impossible to know exactly how many were melted as records were never kept.

The US may have melted quite a few nickels for WWII as well, but that may have been kept secret. I can imagine that if the US was desperate enough to use silver instead of nickel during WWII, then quite a few pre-WWII buffalo nickels were culled, maybe even more than Canada percentagewise because of purity.

[hags]

Something I forgot to include in the list- 1943 steel pennies. I wouldn't think these would be that rare, but after sorting over 70,000 pennies, I still haven't found one.

after sorting somewhere between 5 and 6 million pennies, i've found 1. people take them out of circulation because they look different and they're easy to spot.

and the newer coin counters have magnets to catch foreign coins before they're counted....which also catch any 43s that happen to be dumped....

just ask at your dump bank if you can have the reject coins off the coin counter.....you'll get a 43 in no time....

hags