What Is This Coin Spatula Thing?

There's gotta be tens of thousands of coin roll hunters out there.  Facebook groups focused on such peculiar behavior are growing in number, with populations reaching into the several thousands. Some of my favorite coin hunting groups on facebook:

• Coin Opp
• Coin Roll Hunting and Coin & Currency Collecting
• Variety and Error Coins

Folks talk about coin roll hunting, varieties, errors, show off stuff they find, and learn more about the hobby every day.  Is it a doubled die?  Is it an RPM?  that sort of thing.
With thousands of known die varieties there is constant pressure to post information about WHAT to look for.  I want to get more into the procedure side: HOW to look for varieties.

There's not much out there for tools and equipment.  There's loupes and scales along with the regular coin supply products.  Tools to make coin roll hunting easier and faster are few and far between.  Tim Rathjen at The Stamp & Coin Place has developed a machine that scans coins photographically and sorts them accordingly.  See the video: The Machine.
While it's a tremendously capable device with much promise, I think it is not a practical solution for most people who coin roll hunt as a hobby using the space of a table top and a limited budget.

For most folks, a loupe, a lamp, and a listing of die varieties is all that is available, and it's enough to get by.  It's a slow process: open the rolls, sort (or not), examine each coin, compare to known examples, then go from there.  To make the process more efficient, I choose to sort the coins by decade, then year.  I lay out scores of the same date and mintmark, then examine the batch, one coin at a time, then flip them over to inspect the other side.  Keep the good stuff, wrap the rejects, repeat.

It's a fact that a more efficient operation would let me inspect more coins in less time without sacrificing accuracy.  More coins inspected equates to more chances of finding a valuable coin.  If I can knock a minute off the handling time at each step of the process, I can inspect more coins.  It stands to reason that my results will improve as I handle more coins...Enter the Coin Spatula.

This is a simple jig (homemade tool) that helps me flip coins quickly.  That's all it does.  But it saves me a minute or two each time I use it.  I've put up 3 videos on how this thing is developing:

• Prototype Coin Spatula -First idea, trial and error
• Building Coin Spatula v2.0 -Measure, cut, glue, real easy
• Testing The Improved Coin Spatula v2.0 -Does it work?  Sure does.

MAKE YOUR OWN

Materials used in construction:
20" x 30" x 3/8" Foam Board, Walmart, $3

Elmer's Glue, Walmart, $2

Do I need to add a disclaimer about cutting?  If you cut yourself while trying to make one of these rigs, I really have to question your decision to try to do anything other than convert oxygen into CO2.  Nowhere in these instructions does it say to cut your hand.  What are you doing cutting yourself?  If you make one of these or dont, I'm not responsible.  If you are not responsible, perhaps it would be best to marry someone wealthy and spend all day watching TV.

The finished product should look like similar to the example in the video.

Single Piece

2 Pieces make a complete tool

The size on this will hold 100 cents.  You can adjust it to suit your needs.  If you need stiffer material, check the hardware store.  Lauan plywood should work for larger designs, but may require a soft cover.    Smaller sizes can work with corrugated cardboard, try a couple of layers.

This is about as simple as it gets.  Easy to construct, easier to use.  If you have ideas for improvements, I'd love to hear it.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

I'm looking into injection molding.  If there is demand for this as a commercial product, I'll take it as far as it needs to go.

The next step in the evolution of the idea is to build a device upon which a USB microscope can be mounted.  I think it will also improve inspection time when used in conjunction with the Coin Spatula.

Riders Of The Storm

I'm sitting here typing with a hurricane bearing down on me.  I've done what I can to prepare the house.  I've packed away every coin I own in a manner that is safe or recoverable.  The only thing left to to do is put myself into safe storage.  Hurricanes are slow disasters with several days warning.  While the path of the storm, winds and rain totals can be predicted, the exact results won't be known until I return to see if my little house is still standing.  I may be able to get on with my life.  Alternately, the house may be destroyed, in which case, I will still get on with my life, albeit in a different direction.

Currently, the house is paid for and the bills are low.  Buying and selling coins makes it possible to pay all my bills without a full time job.  If I need to bear the expense of an apartment, along with water and sewer bills, at least a part time job would be needed while I continue to build my coin enterprise.  If faced with the prospect of starting over, I suppose I will do ok.  I have family I can stay with until we drive each other crazy.  I have a job which brings good paying work a few times a year.  Take away any part of the equation, and no matter how I look at it, the coins offer a tremendous advantage: Hope.

I've talked to plenty of people over the years, offering encouragement to develop a side income separate from employment.  Investing in real estate or precious metals or some other opportunity is talked about.  Getting a business going, be it a diner or selling crafts at flea markets or installing window tinting...anything will work, as long as you are good at it.  Most folks don't.  That breaks my heart.  There is so much opportunity out there to be seized upon if only one would jump at it.  There may not be a fortune to be made, but improving one's situation is a matter of effort and activity.  In my experience, simply making the attempt is usually enough to bring results.

Coins offer a unique opportunity.  It's more knowledge based rather than capital based.  One does not need a lot of money.  If I want to open another restaurant, I'll need tens of thousands of dollars.  If I want to buy an apartment complex, I'll need a big sack of cash and a line of credit.   When it comes to coins, the more one KNOWS, the better the results.  Cash helps, but you can get the cash without investing thousands.  An investment of a few hundred sure would help.  I'll need to give first priority to protecting from the storm those things that make it possible to get the coin operation back up and running in short order.  With a few pieces of equipment, all I need to start making sales are a few coins.  I can get those from coin roll hunting.

Camera
Tripod
USB Microscope
Laptop
Printer
Loupes
Books and Reference Material
Flips
Coin Scale
Postal Scale

With the equipment in this list I can make videos, post articles in my blog, stay in touch with all the fine people in the coin groups, take good quality photos of coins to post for sale or auction, and print up shipping labels.  If it was all lost, $500 would replace most of it.

If all my coins were scattered far and wide by a tornado, I could get started again with around 30 bucks for a box of cents and some wrappers.  I always find a few wheats.  I see people in coin videos get excited with each wheat they find.  It breaks my heart to see the rest of the coins tossed in the reject bucket.  The money is not in the wheats, it's in the die varieties, and there are plenty of them out there.  If I don't double my money on a box of cents I got skunked.  Coin Roll Hunting gives me seed capital which I can put to good use:  I hunt for coins at a good price, flip them for a quick profit, repeat.  A key aspect of my operation in leaving the money in the coin account, reinvesting and repeating until I have a considerable surplus of cash.  That's when I can take a profit, expand my selection to another series, or stock up on supplies.  I keep a personal account to handle my household bills.  I have at least enough in there to cover my expenses for a few months.  I'm not selling coins to pay my electric bill.  This invites desperation which inevitably brings costly mistakes.  The coin account is seperate and must survive on its own.

If I did lose everything to a storm, I would still need a place to live and either savings or employment income to pay my bills.  The coin enterprise can be restarted inexpensively.  Once the ball starts rolling, I keep it going by reinvesting in marketable coins and necessary supplies.  This week, a package of kraft envelopes.  Next week, a case of flips.  The week after, a ream of shipping labels.  Each purchase gives me greater efficiency by reducing my cost per unit.  When the time is right, step up to a case of padded mailers instead of the kraft envelopes.  There are not many different supplies, and they are not prohibitively expensive, but buying small quantities of anything usually brings the highest price.

Lets put some numbers behind all this to figure out how much I'll need to regain my independence.
Let's go with the idea of $25 being a typical sale.  For the sake of discussion, figure I net $5 on a $25 sale.  That's 20% after paying for supplies, paypal fees, shipping.  If that's all I'm earning on a $25 sale I'd be doing a poor job, but this makes it a conservative figure.  $20 invested gets me $25 back.  I'll need to reinvest $20 if I am to keep $5 and repeat the process.  If I want to net $50 per day, I need 10 sales per day.  Each sale requires a $20 investment, so each day of sales requires a $200 investment.  From the time I buy a coin to the time I sell it and have the money in my paypal account is about a week.  It can be longer, but to come up with a minimum amount, 7 days at $200/day says I need an investment of $1400 to earn $50/day.  Repeat the process 4 times in a month, I earn $1500 in net each month from a $1400 investment.
These figures are back of the envelope ballpark estimates used to come up with some idea of the scale of the operation I would need.  Experience shows I do better than 20% and it usually takes longer than 7 days to flip a coin.  The fact that my monthly expenses are considerably less than $1500/month suggests a daily goal of 10 sales or $250 in total sales should be sufficient to allow me to recover from a storm.

The next step in this is to take the storm out of the equation.
Fire burns down the house...I'll be able to recover.
Lose/quit job ✓
Break leg, can't work ✓
Volcano ✓
Earthquake ✓
Flood ✓
Eviction ✓
Forest fire ✓
Landslide ✓
Tsunami ✓
Extinction Level Asteroid...still working on that one.

Another Checklist Added

Over on the right of the page is a link to the FILES section.
There you'll find several collector checklists.
The latest addition is for Kennedy Half Dollars.

Copy it, print it, have at it.

Coin Video Chat

These livestreams on YouTube by Dustin Morgan, Justin Couch, Sylvia J and others has me looking further into technology and how it can impact the hobby.   I'm not talking about technology being developed, but those devices we already have available.

Our daily lives have changed greatly in just the last 10 years.  Phones used to flip open and have buttons.  They were used to call people.  When you hung up, it was folded and stuffed in your pocket.  They're a little more versatile now.  You can make home movies on the things.  When I grew up there was 1 phone in the house.  It was black, weighed about 12 pounds, had about 5 feet of cord, and if you were talking to someone 100 miles away you had to yell.

Texting, back in the day

10 years ago I had a desktop computer.  It was called a desktop because that's the amount of real estate it covered.  Between the monitor, tower, keyboard, mouse, and speakers, there was not much space left on the desktop.  I saw this as great progress because 30 years ago I had a manual typewriter.

These technologies take a few years to move from development to niche market and finally to widespread use.  The past couple of years has seen an explosion in digital camera quality.  Combine these cameras with increased broadband access and you've got video phones.  Phones, laptops, USB cameras...they are affordable, functional, and widespread.

I talk to my family as often as I dare.  I shave first, and put on a clean shirt.

Now take it to the next level, add a few thousand people in a single coin group on facebook.  Now you have an endless number of people to chat with, and a common subject to chat about.  I tried an experiment the other day with 4 other people involved, 5 of us total.  1 fellow did not have the camera activated, but could talk along with the rest of us.  For the most part, it worked pretty well.  Being an experiment, we did not have a selected subject to discuss so there were a few periods of quiet.  Nonetheless, we still found plenty of common ground and ended up talking coins for over an hour.

It's not unlike having 5 interactive livestreams going.  I was quite impressed with the potential this venue offers:  A close gathering of like minded people in a video chat with a common purpose can add another level of communication to the hobby.  I should like to do a Q&A chat.  Perhaps a chat about coin holders one night with some new collectors.  Another day, have a brief talk about selling coins and how to get started.

Being an experiment, the first video chat showed some issues that need to be addressed to make for a smoother chat.  It would help if everyone involved understood that their are protocols that can be followed to improve the experience for all.

Background Noise
When a user's microphone picks up a sound, that sound is broadcast to the group.  It also supercedes whatever else is being broadcast.  Jack is talking, John drops a coin.  The facebook chat software kills Jack's signal in favor of John's coin.  The result is a lot of interruption.  A better chat is found when background noise for each person involved is reduced to s minimum.

Don't Everyone Speak At Once
As with the background noise, if Jack is speaking and John starts to speak, Jack gets shut out.  Then if Alice chimes in, she gets priority.  With several people involved, it may be useful to set up an order, with each person speaking in turn.

How Many People
This would be dependent on the speed of the slowest connection.  Bring in too many people, the machines get overwhelmed.  I've tried this with 2 people, 3 people, and as many as 5 people.  So far so good.

Talking Points
Eliminate dead air time by creating a list of talking points ahead of time.  Keep the chat moving.  Dead air is wasting the time of everyone involved.  In a Q&A session, have your questions at the ready.  A little bit of planning can turn a chat into a productive session.

Test Equipment First
If you want to switch from one camera to another, test it first to see if it works before getting into a chat and finding out then that it won't work.  A 2 minute chat with someone will find this out for you.  Check the background of what your camera will be pointed at.

Ending the Chat
I have found that once a chat is ended, Google Chrome needs to be shut down and restarted before another begins.  Could be the way my computer is configured.  You'll find out eventually what subtle nuances the software requires.

Future Possibilities
Imagine if the software could handle several cameras, and hundreds of people.  Lectures, classes, presentations all become possible, with real time video interaction.  This is already possible with a few people.  I think it would be incredible to do with dozens, scores, or hundreds.
How about a Live Coin Auction every Monday Night at 8PM?  That would be interesting.

All this makes me wonder where we'll be in another 10 years.

New Technology, New Opportuntiy

Back in the day I typed up a pricelist of coins, made photocopies at the library, then spent an afternoon stuffing envelopes to mail out.  I licked so many stamps I could skip dinner.  There were no photos, no instant messages, long distance phone calls cost more than the shipping.  It was typewriters and stamped envelopes.


Today I can take a picture of a coin, post it for sale (I prefer the Coin Opp Sales and Trades Only facebook group), have it sold in seconds, get paid, and print a shipping label...all in the span of a couple minutes.  The longest part is taking the package out to my mailbox.

With the advent and improvement of cameras, internet technology, videostreaming, and a plethora of websites which make life easier, there are new trends developing.  I thought I'd share this one.

Fella by the name of Justin Couch has a Youtube Channel, Couch Collectibles.  Every night at 10:30 PM EST he produces a live stream in which he searches through rolls of coins, picking out the better dates.  He splits them into a couple of batches, raffles them off.  Viewers buy an entry via paypal or by payment through YouTube (It's secure!).  If it's coins valued at 25¢ or $25, it gets shipped out.

This is the entrepreneurial spirit at it's finest.  Watch this guy's video, doesn't cost you a thing.  The more you watch, the more income he generates from youtube.  Make him unemployable.

NEWS ALERT: 2nd 1992-D Close AM Die Pair Discovered

ALERT!

John Wexler has attributed a 2nd 1992-D Close AM die pair.

See Ken Potter's article in the Numismatic News, July 28, 2017

Up For Auction: 1914-D Lincoln Cent

I've been moving stuff around lately, getting this place organized. There's a box of coins on the desk that got away from me. This 1914-D was in it. Forgot I had it.  How does a key date such as this get forgotten?

Grade is VG. Coin has a bite in the rim near the date. The reverse has a lamination error at the bottom.

The $125 starting bid should get some attention.
You can place a bid or follow along in the Coin Opp Sales and Trades Only group on facebook.

UPDATE: Final bid on this coin was $140.