To Sort or Not To Sort

I sort. I'm a sorter. Sort of...
Some coin roll hunters sort the coins by year prior to inspection, some don't.  There are several reasons why one would sort a pile of coins.  What you are looking for will help you decide if it makes sense.  I see videos on Youtube where the narrator is searching for wheat cents or silver.  In these cases, sorting would be a waste of time.  As you can can see in this video by NumisNick, his target is silver Kennedy Halves and NIFCs.  Although he conducts what I call a Topical Search, He can blaze through a box of halves in no time and has some success.  His advantage is volume.

Perpetual Clutter on the Sorting Table

If the title of the blog has not offered any hints, I primarily search Lincoln Cents.  I look for everything: Wheats, Indians, doubled dies, errors, design varieties, die varieties, BU specimens, and whatever else is in those rolls worthy of picking out.  I live out in the woods so running to the bank every day is not feasible.  It costs me a $5 bill in fuel to run to the store for a loaf of bread.  What rolls I have available need to be picked over with a fine toothed comb.  Call it a Deep Search.  The advantage is finding errors and die varieties.  This method demands specialized knowledge of what to look for and how to positively identify specific errors and varieties.

There is efficiency involved in a deep search.  In a topical search or a deep search, the coin roll hunter invests time and fuel to gather a source of coins, unwrap them, wrap them when the search is over which involves the cost of wrappers or coinstar fees, then invest more time and fuel to dispose of searched coins.  What happens in between unwrapping and wrapping those rolls is an investment of time.  I'll get the same coins as would be found in a topical search.  I'll also get coins that can only be found with a deep search.  If you can afford to hold on to those coins long enough to inspect each one, the returns can be well worth the extra attention.


If you are new to coin roll hunting, sorting will help find known varieties. If you are collecting a particular series, say, Jefferson Nickels, sorting can help you select the best specimen for a particular date so you can upgrade your set.   

Let's say you have a pile of all 1972 Memorial Cents in front of you.  Pulling up the known varieties for 1972 on Coppercoins, Wexler, and CONECA is a simple matter of getting online.  These sites let me know exactly what to look for and where to look, particularly in regards to doubled dies and RPMs.  It would be a shame to let a 1972 DDO-001 slip by.

Cents laid out for inspection with a loupe

When I go over a particular date with the loupe, I get online first to refresh my old brain. While this can be an especially handy way to achieve results when experience is limited, the narrow focus of attention means you may miss unattributed errors or varieties. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that sorting helps one gain the experience to find select coins easily and learn what to look for. It takes more time to do the sorting, but I make up for it by being able to move from coin to coin to coin quickly during the close inspection phase. There are some dates where sorting is a must. 1988 P and D for example. I need to know the date of the coin so I can give extra attention to the designer's initials if I hope to find the elusive RDV-006.
How you search is up to you. There is no instruction manual, no "Best Way". Trial and Error have a secure place in this hobby. I suggest you try sorting and try going bareback, see which method gives you better results.

If it is in your interest to sort a heap of coins, there is a method to the madness.  While this is not THE method it is MY method and it's worked out pretty well so far. 


Current circulated coin rolls mostly contain coins from the past  50-60 years.  Wheat cent production ended in 1958 and are scarce.  Silver left production in 1964 and is in short supply.  Even older nickels have been diluted with new production which surged starting in 1964.  This gives us 6 decades with up to 3 mints and upwards of 150 different dates and mintmarks to sort.  Covering a table with 150 different piles is not practical.  Instead, I simplify matters with multiple sorts as needed.

INITIAL SORT
I break open rolls one at a time.  I've tried processing batches of rolls at a time but it creates chaos and is easy to spill across the floor.  Keep things simple.  If you are interrupted and have to stop it's a whole lot easier to pack things away without having to start over.  I open 1 roll, sort 1 coin at a time by decade:  60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, with each in a pile of its own.  I also have 2 more piles: Picks and cull.  The picks are the coins that stand out.  These are the wheats, foreign coins, unmistakable errors or varieties, and coins that catch my eye begging for immediate attention.  Cull coins will go back without further attention.  These are damages, scratched, bent, painted, holed, screwed up or otherwise have no numismatic value.

Previously sorted by decade, these 90s are being sorted by year

  When the piles become unmanageable I take a moment to move them into ziplock bags.  I've also used cups to contain bulk sorted coins but after knocking over a bunch of them I find ziplock bags to be more agreeable.  Both are reuseable.

I have a table which I use solely for sorting and piling junk on.  This lets me walk away from sorting before I lose my mind.  I pick up several boxes at a time so sorting 20,000 cents at a sitting is not going to work.  Rather than put in a large block of time which can destroy an evening, I go through a few rolls at a time when I have a few extra moments....when the coffee machine is making a fresh pot, while dinner is in the oven, when I come in from the garden to cool off, while a video is uploading, while I'm watching a movie or some coin videos. 

SECOND SORT
The product of the initial sort is a selection of picks that are given attention soon, and ziplock bags full of coins from the same decade.  When I run out of fresh rolls, I'll repeat the process with a second sort, this time separating the decades into years 0-9.  Again, I'll pick out interesting specimens and throw the culls to the side.  Any coins from a different decade (there will be just a few) go into my pocket change can, effectively starting them over from the beginning.  Each step of the sorting process has a way forward, a way back, and a way out.  As with the initial sort, I do all this a few minutes at a time.  The whole process takes a couple hours per box.  Since I do several boxes at a time it takes a while to finish them all.  There are usually boxes, rolls, and labelled bags sitting around waiting to be sorted or inspected.  60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s...60 different years, 60 ziplock bags.  These are stored in USPS Priority Mail boxes until I select a target.  The price is right.  When I have no coins to sort I spend those extra moments rolling coins to return to the bank.

1951 P, D, S

FINAL SORT
This is a process of percolation and distillation.  At each step chaos is reduced in favor of uniformity.  How far you wish to reduce the selection is up to you.  By the time I get down to year, that's good enough to take it to the loupe.  When I am ready to inspect a Year bag, they have a mix of mintmarks.  These Year bags are usually only a few pounds at most, perhaps 500 coins of the same date.  I can separate these on the inspection table. 

Having the bags distilled down to specific years gives me the ability to choose what I want to search.  The dates with easy to identify, more valuable and more marketable varieties go first.  I want those WAMs!  Gimme the 72 DDOs!.  Doubled Ear, anyone?  With 50+ bags sorted by year it can take a couple months to get through them all if I'm working one year at a time.  The more modern issues have a greater population than the earlier years and can take a few days just for a single year.  I know for a fact that I've got over $50 in 2016 waiting in the wings.  There are some dates, such as 1975, that have few varieties which are of low value .  I give these a low priority.  I'll get to them when there are enough to bother with. 

All this may seem excessive.  For my situation and lifestyle it works in my favor.  The job sometimes takes me away from home for weeks at a time or at a moments notice. 

How many coins have you seen with lathe lines?

I can stop what I'm doing at any point, pick up where I left off without missing a beat.  This method does take up some room.  Storing the bags takes up about as much space as an end table. 

This method also keeps money tied up for a while-I've got a couple hundred bucks in pennies waiting around.  The advantage is finding an astounding array of varieties and errors that can not be gleaned in a topical search.

I'm not able to say this is the best method or that it is better than what you are doing.  All I can do is explain what I am doing and how, with some tricks and tweaks thrown in to make the process more efficient and effective.  If you want to try sorting, by all means, go for it.  If it's not for you, I'm ok with that too.  As a matter of fact, any method you choose to employ I'd like to hear about it.  Maybe I can help make things easier for you and try your methods to see if they make things easier for me.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting.