Has anyone searched bags of wheat pennies?

packers88

Has anyone ever bought a bag of 5000 or 10,000 so called unsearched wheat pennies? If so, please share your experiences in what approximate percentage of the lot was pennies from 1910 to 1919. I have a seller of a so called unsearched 10,000 bag of wheat pennies and he is asking $300 for the bag which seems very reasonable. I plan on having my young son go through them and sort them by year, yes he enjoys doing this since I bought him a couple of bank boxes before and he wanted to search them to try and find wheaties. What do you think would be a fair percentage to expect for 1910 to 1919??

kranky

Never searched a whole bag, but I'll guess 3-5% would be before 1920.

lkeigwin

I have my doubts about "unsearched".

$300 doesn't sound like a bad price for $100 in wheaties. But I think you'll get what you pay for.

Sounds like a great way to engage your son! Babysitters can be pricey.
Lance.

Robb

That's a good price even if every one of 'em is from the 50's.

Robb

Add to it a copy of Looking Through Lincoln Cents and you'll have a handful of hours of fun to boot.

InternetJunky

<< <i>I have my doubts about "unsearched".

$300 doesn't sound like a bad price for $100 in wheaties. But I think you'll get what you pay for.
>>

mysterycoinman

You might have a better chance of finding 2 needles in a small hay stack. Although, maybe you could spend $300 at the local bank for new presidential rolls and find possible new errors!! This way you can always cash them in
and start over. Plus ...it's easier on the young fellows eyes looking at those dirty hard to see tiny little pennies!

DCW

Probably over $200 in melt alone. Almost certainly searched for key dates, i think you'll probably find quite a few well worn teens. I found a 1916 in a bank box yesterday mixed in with memorials.
Definitely add a guide book for varieties. Alot less publicized ddo's still out there.

keets

the dealer i used to work for accumulated 200 bags of Wheat Cents during calender year 2009, paying four cents apiece($200/bag). almost all of the bags were unsearched and we had a retired guy who worked part time doing the searching. he litterally looked at a million coins using a Scan-o-matic and we found some nice stuff. the most common "money" coin was a 1922-D followed by 1909 VDB's, although there were plenty of teen "D" Mint coins we found. what made it worthwhile was seperating all the AU/BU coins, clean steel cents, rusted steel cents, generic 1920's, generic 1930's, "S" Mint coins from about 1936-1955 and we tubed individual date/MM from 1909-1935. when i left there were perhaps 25-30 "bags" of tubed cents and the rest seperated as outlined above by bag.

what we learned to speed things up was a simple procedure, one i'd suggest you use before buying this bag. ask if you can dump it out on a table or at least dip your hands deep into the bag to pull out 200-300 coins. if a quick search of that amount yields only coins from the 1940's and 1950's it isn't worth buying. in a sample like that you should be getting some AU/BU's, at least a few "S" Mint coins and several before 1940. anything less than that told us "Already been searched" and we'd run the bag through the counter and start on the next one.

ProofCents

Who hasn't?

Elcontador

I went through 600 or so of a friend's collection and hope to never do it again. All were Wheaties. 30 were from the teens & 20s. Five may have been Uncs. or sliders, all 1956-58. Most were from the 40s & 50s, and would grade VF, a few better, a few worse. The nicest coin I found was a 28 P in VF. It was not a good use of my time.

pennyholic

Gee at 3 cents each that seems like a good deal and spending it with your son would be priceless. Just were gloves and do not spend a lot of time in one sitting. I have bought many of bags and you will find teens and the most common one will be the 1919. Have fun and good luck.

pennyannie

My wife has search thru at least 100 plus bags of 5000 as i can find them. I usually pay between 150 to 200 per bag. Bags are a total cra pshoot. Some dealers do go thru them and i would think most sold on ebay have been gone thru. I have never bought a bag on ebay but have sold about 70 or more bags there. I have watched the people i have sold 2 resell them as unsearched. LOL My wife basicly has a roll set of 1909-1958 of wheats minus the 1909 s, 1909 s-vdb, 14d, and 3 other dates. She has found 3, 1909s, 2, 1914d's and never a 1909 s vdb. We found a lot of 1909 plain and regular vdb's (multiple rolls). I have found a lot of good dates but the 7 key dates are far and few between. I have located some good bags and out of 100 plus bags a few turds.

Last year i bought 200,000 unc mixed date memorial cents and we had a blast and made good money on those. Bought them for face and found 60 small dates by the rolls some 70 s, errors and more.

If you can find bags that look like they have been put back for 30 years they might be better than 5000 in a new fancy bag. I ask the dealers point blank if they or there employees have searched them. I had one dealer tell me they searched them and throw back all the vg and lower grade coins back in the bag. I buy ever bag he has when he has them.

I had one bag that i think the dealer put all the wheaties from coin albums in after keeping the main keys out. There was more than 300 09vdb's in there and 75 or more of most dates after 1915.

GoldenEyeNumismatics

I had the chance to go through about $50 face of wheats that had been pulled from circulation around 1964 and not looked at since.

There were actually quite a few higher end mintmarked teens, and a number of better dates from the twenties. I probably found about five coins that themselves were worth $100+ each, and numerous $20 and $50 coins.

ricko

I have to get to my 'bags' of unsearched wheaties. Have had them for many, many years... just always saved them. I guess I need to build a box with separators and go through them. Cheers, RickO

291fifth

"Unsearched" by 2010? The chance is remote at best but there may be some long hoarded bags still out there.

Keets advice is good regarding sampling.

Walkerguy21D

Depends on your source......as part of a large estate I bought once, there were over 100 rolls of wheat cents in it. The 85 yr old selling it to me said he and his nieces/nephews sorted through them for key dates back around 1970. Their 'throwbacks' included a number of 09P and 09 VDB cents, hundreds from the teens including some mint marked issues, some 22D and 31D's and other better dates from the 20's and 30's, a few mostly red Philly cents from the teens and twenties, a counterfeit 14D, a copper plated 43P cent, a few low grade indian cents, etc. Every date and mm was represented in bulk from 1940 on; you could have filled multiple Whitman 'book 2' folders if you were so inclined.
Good luck with your treasure hunting!

shorecoll

FYI, most bags are 5,000. So are you getting 5,000 for $300 or 10,000?

keets

anyone wanting to look through this many coins really needs to invest around $20 in a Scan-o-matic. it will make the task easier(Read: much more fun) and you'll thank me for the advice later, trust me!!! they show up at eBay with regularity, just be patient.

VAMSKY

I'll add a unique perspective to this one ... I've searched about 7+ bags of 5000 truly unsearched LWC's. Dad would bring them home from the bank back in the late 50's and the family would sit at the table and sort by decade. Now here's where the memory begins to fade ... as I recall we would get two or three 09's per bag (no S-VBD), about 50 from 1910-1919, around 100 in the 20's, several hundred in the 30's and the rest were 40's and 50's. Percentages would be as follows: 09 - .0006%, 1910-1919 - .01%, 1920's - .02%, 1930's - .05%, 40's and 50's - 99%.

As far as keys go we found two 09-S, one 24-D and two 31-S in about 40,000 coins. It was rare to find a mintmark on coins minted prior to 1930. We would average around 10 Philly coins for every S or D.

UtahCoin

The only bags of Wheats (and 90% Silver) that we have bought have come in through the shop. Typically I reach in and take a handful and check them out (both Wheats and silver). If they look promising, we go through them. With that said, we did find a 1914 D Lincoln in VF. In the silver bags, we have done much better, particularly bags that were sealed back in 1980. We have found a few Barber halves, quarters and dimes. Those weren't home runs, but certainly worth more than melt. We have also found a 1938 D WLH in VF, a 1916 D Merc in AG, and 2 or 3 1942/1 Mercs.

Dentuck

<< <i>anyone wanting to look through this many coins really needs to invest around $20 in a Scan-o-matic. it will make the task easier(Read: much more fun) and you'll thank me for the advice later, trust me!!! they show up at eBay with regularity, just be patient. >>



A Scan-o-Whatnow?

keets

a Scan-o-matic, haven't you heard of or seen one before??

MICHAELDIXON

I've never searched a bag. That takes time and good eye sight!!!

mrearlygold

Yes, so many moons ago I don't want to remember and they tell me that eventually I won't.

crazyhounddog

When I was a whipper snapper I did it all the time... At my age , my eyes just can't make the cut...

mheffner2

Scan-O-Matic is likely MY speed, however I held onto this posting from Coppercoins in hopes that someday...

http://forums.collectors.com/messageview.cfm?catid=26&threadid=463702&highlight_key=y&keyword1=search

Edit: Scroll down his thread to see his set-up, it's All-Pro!