Searching my coin jar of spare pocket change at home is something I’ve been doing since I first became a coin collector in 1992. And it’s always been a fruitful way to pick up a few coins here and there to add to my collection. Lately, it’s an especially lucrative way to wile away the spare moments as they crop up.
Everybody has her or his own method for searching through loose coins like this. Some folks check dates first, then mintmarks, with a secondary glance toward errors and varieties. Others only care about finding one thing: silver! That means looking strictly for pre-1965 dimes and quarters or pre-1971 half dollars.
Then there are people like me… I like looking for a bit of everything. If I find an error? Great! Silver is it? I’ll keep it. And I’ve always been fond of Lincoln wheat cents and early (pre-1960) Jefferson nickels. I also pick out any foreign coins that I find, with a relatively significant presence of Canadian coinage in my local circulation. However, even in my state of Florida, I’ve noticed a seeming decrease in Canadian coinage here in recent years. Maybe more tourists and snowbirds from the Great White North are ditching coins and using plastic? Possibly…
Those are just some of the many fun things about looking through pocket change and coin jars… Not only can you make neat discoveries, but with an inquisitive eye you also might just deduce a thing or two about local coinage circulation patterns. Let’s face it, things can get a little boring when there’s too much downtime and not enough “up” to keep you going. But you’re never far away from the adventures that await in your coin jar of spare pocket change. I hope you get to dive into yours at least once during your time at home during this COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
