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A question on Wheat rolls.

10 posts in this topic

Wasn't sure where to ask, so I'm sorry if there was a better place.

My neighbor has 380 rolls of circulated wheat pennies. His father owned a candy store and started putting these away in the mid 1960s, when the coin collecting fad was at its height. Supposedly, the father searched them for key dates and then rolled the remainders. Each roll has a date from 1965 to1977 that appears to indicate when they were rolled. The earlier dates are close together, the last few are a couple of months apart which makes sense as these pennies were getting scarce by then.

What would be a fair price for these? He says he would sell them to me for what a dealer would offer.He is thinking around $2 a roll, would that be fair to both of us?

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Two bucks a roll may be OK for late dates, bur a bit low for earlier dates. If you divided the coins into year groups, you might get a bit more, e.g., maybe $5/roll for very early cents in the teens. You would have to check ebay to see what these rolls are going for.

 

If your neighbor has any interest in collecting, he/she could have a lot of fun with these. Tons of varieties which may be worth a few extra bucks. A terrific reference book would be "looking through Lincoln cents" by Charles Daugherty. There are some other good ones.

 

As I approach retirement I am looking forward to checking out the hundreds of rolls of wheat cents I have accumulated since trudging to the local bank to get pennies as a little boy in the 1950s. No keys, but may find something interesting.

 

Anyway, good luck selling them.

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...the nice thing is the cents are of 95 per cent copper. so that makes them worth at least double face value for the copper content alone.

 

as was mentioned, they should be given a good looksee in any event, for keys or semi-keys and varieties. :popcorn:

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I buy wheat pennies for $0.03 each from the local B&M and estate shops. Just yesterday I found a 1912-d in a group that I bought, and previously I've found multiple 1909 and 1909-vdb pennies. While these coins aren't rarities they are definately worth more than the 3cents I paid for each of them. On the other hand, I have a bucket of 1950's wheat pennies worth.. 2cents each. I guess you could tell him you'll pay $2/roll but give him the knowledge that if he were to spend time sorting them out according to date he might make more. Some people don't want to deal with looking at piles of pennies and are willing to sell for a bit cheaper just to get rid of them.

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Both of us are in our 50s and have hard times reading dates on coins, even with my reading glasses.

I used to separate my pre-1981 pennies from the later years but its a real eye strain these days.

He's not interested in searching the rolls and I have some slight interest, but it would be a roll or two here and there, not a weekend of searching.

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.

 

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$2 a roll or 4 cents per coin sounds to me like full retail, especially for wheats which we know have been searched and anything good removed

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$2 a roll or 4 cents per coin sounds to me like full retail, especially for wheats which we know have been searched and anything good removed

 

I am thinking the same thing, $2 for circ wheats is more than I would pay, $1 a roll would be my limit and I would not be in any rush at that price.

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$2 a roll or 4 cents per coin sounds to me like full retail, especially for wheats which we know have been searched and anything good removed

 

We know they were searched, but don't know how extensive the search was. I'm sure there are cents that were worth a nickle in 1970 that sell for multiples of that now.

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