Sorting out 20000 wheat pennies - any easy way?

[shorttimer]

Hello all,

Question - I have these bags of wheat pennies that I have had for over 30 years. The bags are mint bags and dated late 60s but I know I got them in about 71 so they have been out of circulation since then. I have been entertaining the idea of going through them as they are all mixed dates and all circulated as well. Do you all use a microscope to look at these things? Not sure I am up to all that. Is there an easy way such as get these few dates and then seach those close up. Just don't think I am up to looking at all these things. I pulled out one handful of a bag and they were about 50% 50s and the rest 40s, 30s, 20s and a couple of teens. I must admit I am not into coins at all I just got these a long time ago and they have just sat in their bags. Any suggestions as to the easiest, least painful way to go through all of these or any coins I should specifically look for?

Thanks!

Ricky

[Steven]

Ricky,
No easy way. But I would suggest separating by date and mint then concentrate on one date until you've finished with those as you reference the extensive files at coppercoins.
Don't get in a hurry. If you've had them around for thirty years, a little while longer shouldn't matter. One coin at a time.
You may first want to check out a lot of the information in the forum and ask questions on anything that you feel just doesn't look right. Everyone here is willing to answer any questions you might come up with.
I search mine with a 20mm telescope lens some prefer a 10X loupe, some may search through a microscope. I think you may have to figure out what works best for you.

Photos help with the questions.

You said you were not into coins at all so you may get frustrated or bored if this doesn't become something you enjoy doing. Try searching a few and break from it for a while.

I think once you pick a few goodies you will start to get hooked.
I would love to get my hands on another 20,000 wheats.

Welcome,
Steven

[Dick]

Ricky, welcome to the forum!
You will have your hands full, (pun intended), with those cents! I would suggest separation by date, and mint. Then "rool them by date, and separate the mints. After you have them segregated that way, then you can do a search by date/or mint, for the ones that interest you the most, ie, RPM, Doubled dies, etc It will be time consuming, but you are young,, and have plenty of time. .
You are in the best place I can recommend for the searching for varieties, and errors. With over 2000 different dies logged, and over 11,000 photos, you will have a very good data base to search.
Like Steven said, take your time. Use a 10X power loupe, or you can use a 'scope. It is your choice. You might try a TV, and the program that comes with your camera, to put the coin on screen, to get a large view. It won't be "precisely focused", but it will give you an enlarged view of what you have, and much can be determined from that
Ahain, welcome to the forum. Ask all the questions you can! That is how we all learned.
Dick

[eagames]

Great advice so far!

Be sure when you split them by date not to mix them back together untill you are totaly sure you are not going to look more.

What might happen is you will find something and want to double check a date or find a new variety that you might have missed on the first look. It's much easier to do one year at a time.

I'd split them by date then to get started look for the big stuff first to motivate you to continue. Use the search on the site to look at the varieties for each year as you search it.

The big stuff to start with might be:

1936
http://www.coppercoins.com/lincoln/dietype.php?date=1936&die_mint=p&die_type=do&page=0

1941
http://www.coppercoins.com/lincoln/dietype.php?date=1941&die_mint=p&die_type=do&page=0

See if you get something good from those years then look at other years and you might look for RPMs too, atleast the big ones.

Good luck and welcome to the fun

[GarryN]

With 20,000 wheat cents "the big stuff" would be 1914-D, 1909-S, 1931-S, and if you are really fortunate, you might have a 1922 Plain, a 1909-S VDB or a 1955 doubled die. A 1943 bronze cent? Or a 1944 zinc cent? You have to rule all of those out before you can go any farther. You never know what you might have.

[coop]

I guess I would attack it a little different. I would get 10 containers and sort the coins in years by last digits. A 24 PDS 34 PDS 44 PDS 54 PDS would go into a large bowl. I would sort all the coins into these bowls. Then after finished you could sort the bowl of each number 0-1 on a sheet of cardboard make a line marking invertical lines
190P____________________________________________
S__________________________________________
D__________________________________________
191P____________________________________________
S____________________________________________
D____________________________________________
192P____________________________________________
S____________________________________________
D____________________________________________
193P____________________________________________
S____________________________________________
D____________________________________________
194P____________________________________________
S_____________________________________________
D_____________________________________________
195P_____________________________________________
S________________________________________________
D________________________________________________

Make the area wide enought so each line can hold a row oc cents stacked up. Then tube when sorted and mark according to date & Mint mark or roll them so you have a solid roll of 1931-S Cents (Like you will find that many of that one. LOL) but after while making the coardboard sorter you notice the last digit is missing? You take the bowl with all the dates that end with 4 and place them on the sorting board where they belong till you can roll them as a solid or or tube them. With the whole bage sorted into bowls, rolled in tubes to years/mint marks, then you can start sorting them for varieties. I would recommend reading the chapter on each year in Chuck's Book to see what is known for RPMs/Doubled dies common distortion of coins for that year/MM. Anything that is unusual/unknown. Place into another area to look at again later to search again. The purpose of sorting them by dates/mintmarks over and over and your eyes get train for the coins to look the same way. But it something is different your eyes will catch it. Ones that don't look like their is a variety you could mark wheat cents on tubes (So you won't just cash them in) so you could sell solid rolls (All in roll 1954-S) to sell on ebay later. You can make any changes that suits you, but that is how I would attack it and take the least amount of sorting space as possible. By making the Cent sorter you save 1?10 of the space it would take to make a sorter by years/mint marks. The same sorter could be used for each bowl till upir done. All for the price of a piece of cardboard and a magic marker. Your size would vary as to length height. After you've completed it, you could cut to size. Also works great for inventoring Cents for a head cound to see what is still in circulation. Chuck calls for this every once in a while to see a census of Cents to see what is out there.

[coppercoins]

Sorting larger groups of coins by date and mintmark...

start with ten containers and label each, 0-9. Sort the coins into these containers by the LAST digit in the date...meaning, all 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, and 1950 coins will go in the container labeled with a zero.

Once you have the coins sorted that far, further sorting will be easier (sorting a maximum of five dates instead of ten per container), and you only have nine containers stored at any one point.

When you pull the zero container for resorting, you have the five piles I mentioned above. Each pile will be very easy to sort by mintmark once you sort them by decade.

This method is faster, easier, and more efficient than sorting by decade first, then by year.

[shorttimer]

Thanks for all the recommendations. I will start sorting sometime later this week. At least I will attempt to. Don't know if I have the patience. But I will give it an honest effort. I figured I would start with one bag. Each bag has $50 in wheaties. And depending on what I find - who knows. Maybe they will just get put away. When I bought these a long time ago they were listed as unsearched and I think the cost back then was like $75 a bag including the shipping. It might have been $65 a bag as it was a long time ago.

So I will get at it later this week. Thanks again and if there is anything exciting I will be sure to let you know.

Ricky

ps Anybody on this forum that lives in CO and is bored?

[Rhubarb]

Ricky,

Welcome!!!!


What I do is: Since I have 2 children with alot of time on there hands is, I use a solo cup dating the decade. I will then let them sort them out by year's using coin tube's that I mark by year, MM.

The kid's enjoy sorting thru the coin's and it gives them the excitement of finding a AU coin and the lasting impression of what money was like "Way" before I was born.

Good luck in your find's

Rhubarb