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I was sorting a box this evening that was giving me more of the new Shield cents than copper cents. I was sure the box was going to be dud. There were already some rolls in there that were not wrapped well and were obviously short. Overall the box was short by 11 coins. When I finished sorting I had 500 Shield cents and 440 copper cents. The copper total is actually pretty close to my average so my copper percentage yield came out quite normal despite all of those Shield cents.

Finding exactly 500 Shield cents was a little strange but I also had exactly 1500 zinc Memorial cents. The rest of the numbers weren't that unusual (9 wheats, 37 - 2009's, and 3 non-U.S.) but all 3 of the non-U.S. coins did come from the same roll (1992 Canada, 2001 Canada, and 2006 China 1 Jiao coin).

Looking just at the Memorial cents and disregarding the rest of the coins, I had 440 of 1940 copper (22.68%) and 1500 of 1940 zinc (77.32%). Over time as more and more new Shield cents are produced the percentage of total Memorial cents per box will decline. But how much change will there be in the copper/zinc ratio of those remaining Memorial cents? Maybe this question is rather pointless sense the overall number of copper cents to be found per box will be declining too. If the yield gets too low it may not be worth the trouble to sort. But I'm curious none the less. Maybe finding a way to rapidly seperate the Shield cents from the Memorial cents will increase sorting efficiency enough to permit sorting at even lower copper yield levels. I went over my sorting stats and came up with 20.49% as the copper percentage of the Memorial cents I have sorted. My sorting history is still too short to tell if there is a slower rate of decline in this percentage versus the decline in the overall copper percentage per box. Are any of you other sorters out there starting to see any trends in these percentages?

Just 3 Canadian in a box, I get 2 per roll most of the time.

Dave wrote:Just 3 Canadian in a box, I get 2 per roll most of the time.

It was actually only 2 Canadian total. The 3rd coin was from China. But 2 Canadian per box is my average. It would be nice to get 2 per roll.

I would say I'm heading in that direction. I'm located in between the mints so I don't see new stuff as quick as some others do. It would be neat to have a thread titled 2012 pennies, put the date you first found one!, it's just that threads get buried so fast it seems. Still, I weigh and separate my rolls into fun rolls and less fun rolls. Anything over 136 grams is a fun roll. 131 gram roll is kind of a drag, but 137 and above are super-fun rolls. More copper, more fun, more finds. Basically, I save the funner rolls for when I need a little cheering up, or want a couple of hopeful decent rolls to go through for a change. If you don't search much, I think January is a good month to stock up on boxes or bags for later, I have just heard that people dump more coins at the banks after the holidays. Also, I have had quite a bit better than average copper this month so far, and have heard the same from some other members here. My last loomis box only had 5 rolls less than 134 grams, which is basically 20%.

I like that idea of sorting the rolls by weight to seperate the fun ones from those that aren't. The digital scale I ordered the other day hasn't arrived yet but I can't wait to ty it out when it gets here. I could have used it on a batch of bank rolls I was sorting tonight. There were a few rolls that looked like they might be solid zinc. They had bright uncirculated pennies on the ends but the dates I was seeing were 2006. It turns out there 5 BU rolls of 2006-D and 1 BU roll of 2005-D out of the 50 rolls I opened and sorted. The Shield count was 172 which is well below my average - not like the box from my original post above.