Getting into the 'spendy' cents

I have finally started getting 'serious' about trying to complete some of our Lincoln Cent collections. We have 3 in progress right now. They were just a few handfuls of cents gleaned from weekly bank runs to obtain as many rolls as the clerks were willing to lug to the counter for me. Then I get rid of the ones I don't want at another bank, so that I do not get the same pennies back again and again. I just turned in $35.00 worth a week ago. I have all of our copper cents, and our clad cents sorted by date & mint to make the next phase easier. I go through each date & mint mark, get the best of each one, and put them in the book. I noticed that my better collection of the three had all B.U cents from 2009 back to 1956. The other two are in need of B.U examples badly, as only a few are 'gem-like' shiny. I have given up on finding any real great coins from the bank, but still buy about $50.00 a week in cents to get the copper coins out of circulation and into my growing mass of copper for the future. I usually get about 1/3 copper from the bank, so the turn-over is worth it to me. I have a bag for the worst examples of corroded, cleaned, bent & banged-up copper cents, and the rest are sorted and put in rolls. Out of about $500.00 worth of 'bank' cents, I have gotten about $200.00 face value in copper, some of which helped fill a few voids in our collections. I found a 1914-D which was badly corroded, but the date and mint mark are very readable. I will send it in to see if it can be restored to a better grade than it is now, which if not fo the corrosion, would probably be a nice VF or EF coin. But instead of looking through thousands of bank pennies for a few shiny gems, I decided to order some B.U rolls, and go through these three collections and upgrade them from 1959 to present year. The new ones are easy to get from most anywhere at face value, but I had to order rolls from 1959 to 1970 to get the ball rolling. Now I should be able to clean up my existing collections, and have more to make collections in the future. I need to get more rolls, actually they are available from my coin place in B.U condition all the way back to 1941. For anything older, I will have to buy by the coin. The rolls from 1958 and older start to get spendy. Some rolls are $10.00, $12,00, and then they get REAL bad. But a roll or two each month should have me caught up from the 1940's on by the end of the year. Plus it will make putting together multiple sets in the future much easier. Locating and buying the key coins (1909-S VDB, 1931-S, 1914-D, ect) will have to be on a 'deal to deal' basis, as I can probably only buy one or two of these type coins each month (hopefully). But I seen a real nice complete Lincoln Cents collection on the auction block for $22,000 to start, so it has become a good motivator to build these sets. Has anyone else in here built their coin sets in that way,-- from B.U rolls? How hard was it, and did you learn any tricks to make it easier? Once I am able to grade my excess cents with a high degree of accuracy, I can start to sell some of them off to pay for my more expensive cents. I know that some of the key coins are hard to find in an acceptable condition for MY purpose, but I figure as long as I will accept coins in G-4 & higher in the early teens & twenties, the rest should be easy to get in fine condition or better for the 30's. The 40's can be bought in B.U rolls, and although a 1941-P B.U roll will cost me $225.00, I will have 50 of them to help complete 50 sets. A few dates I will probably weep to pay this amount for a roll of pennies. Maybe you will agree:

1942-S B.U roll - $675.00

1943 P, D, & S respectfully- - $95.00, $235.00, and $375.00 per B.U roll.

Very spendy, and looks like a challenge to get it done. Wish me luck.