What is Coin Roll Hunting?

I know a lot of you who visit this blog are stone-cold coin roll hunters already, but one of my missions for this blog is to spread the word on this wonderful and fruitful hobby. I’m guessing that starts with introducing the hobby and talking a little bit about it.

1912 V Liberty Nickel

Recently, there have been many ads on the radio claiming that they can sell you the secret to getting silver for free from any bank, many times without an account. The ad goes on to tell you that they are going to tell you the 5 magic or secret words that you need to know in order to do this. What these ads are talking about is a hobby or income source known as coin roll hunting and there really aren't any secret or magic words involved.

   Coin Roll Hunting (the hip, shorthand acronym is CRH), is the act of searching rolls of coins for desirable or collectible coins. Pretty much every searcher has their own pet coin type that they are looking for. Many hunters search for error coins, die varieties from the minting process, silver, valuble key dates, particularly old coins, foreigns, or even just a quest to fill one of those addictive little coin books. Personally, I’m a little bit of all of these, though at this point I don’t really have the patience to fully delve into the variety thing on everyday coinage. I’m sort of a silver stacker nut and I definitely love the older coins I find as well. I’d take finding a 1912 V nickel over a silver war nickel any day!  

As a CRH'er -- get used to these!

      Typically, we coin roll hunters get our coins from banks or credit unions for face value, though there have been times in my obsession when I’ve asked stores to return my change in the form of coin rolls. Those were some dark times! Banks will usually oblige requests for coin rolls with no issues. I have many different banks that I stop at to pick up coins, affectionately referred to as Source Banks. I try to rotate through them so as not to become annoying.

Coin Redemption Machine

     After getting the rolls, tear into them and keep the goodies! Remember that any coins you keep were purchased for the low price of face value.  Many coins are worth well more than that, even in circulated grades. All of the coins that are not simply end up getting returned back to another bank, referred to as the Dump Bank. It's generally wise to have a separate dump bank from your source banks since the last thing you want is to search the same coins repeatedly. When dumping coins, you can always re-roll the coins yourself, but I greatly prefer to select a bank with an automatic coin counter since it’s much easier to just dump the coins in and get all of your cash back. They’re generally pretty accurate and the time-savings is well worth any shortcomings from what I’ve been able to determine. I stay away from Coinstar machines, but there are (limited) cases where it may be a reasonable option for returning coins.


 Enjoy your new hobby and happy hunting!