Samuel Cary

Samuel Cary is 13 years old and in 8th grade. He is mostly home-schooled, but he does attend McCook Junior High School for band (trombone) and choir. Samuel enjoys being on the YMCA McCook swim team, mountain climbing, and camping. He is also very interested in cars, specifically newer models. He likes to write stories about his hobbies and he reads a lot of books; his favorite is the series “Ranger’s Apprentice”. Samuel is the middle child of three boys and he has four pets - a dog named Mercy, a cat named Grace, a bearded dragon named Toothless, and a fish named Wilma. His favorite movie is “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith”. Samuel will be sharing a series of articles about his coin collecting hobby.

How I got into coin collecting

Thursday, September 12, 2024

McCOOK, Neb. - One day my grandmother and I were looking through her box of “treasures”. Most of them only had value to her, but then we came about a tiny sack. It was very heavy and as soon as I picked it up, I knew there were coins in it. I had always been interested in old coins and their value but had never held that many in my hands before. There wasn’t anything special in the sack- just some wheat pennies and dollar coins and such- but it was enough to get me attached to coins.

A few weeks later, I heard about something called “Coin Roll Hunting” on YouTube. Coin roll hunting is a hobby where you go to the bank with some money, ask them to exchange your money for whatever kind of coin roll you want (that you have enough money for), then you go home and look through them for special coins.

Of course, before you do this, you will want to do some research or buy a coin price guide. After you look through them, you go back to the bank and exchange the non-valuable coins for cash - and repeat this over and over again.

I started doing this and found a lot of wheat pennies and 2009’s. 2009’s are pennies that celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

Then, one day, I decided to get some nickel rolls. On roll #5, I found my first silver coin. It wasn’t much, just 35% silver, but it kept me getting nickel rolls. I found three more silver coins until I started looking through dimes.

Dimes can get really boring really fast because there’s not much to find. I only found one silver dime in about 50 dime rolls.

Then, I started getting dollar and half-dollar rolls. These are still some of my favorites because there’s so much to find. Though you mostly just find NIFC’s (coins Not Intended for Circulation). There are so many different designs to find for dollar rolls. For half dollar rolls, you can find silver, but it is very hard to do.

My dream coin to find is the 1943 copper penny. There were only a thousand of them minted. You never know what coins you can find lying around your house or in your piggy bank. That is how I got into coin collecting.