How Many Coins Come In A Roll? Here’s Everything You Want To Know About Coin Rolls + My Best Tips For Coin Roll Hunting

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Did you ever wonder how many coins come in a roll?

For example, do you know how many coins are in a roll of nickels? What about dimes? Or dollar coins?

Every denomination of coin roll contains a certain number of coins.

Here’s a rundown on the different types of coin rolls — including the number of coins that each roll contains, and the total face value for the coins in each roll:

Coin Roll # of Coins Roll Value Penny Coin Roll 50 $0.50 Nickel Coin Roll 40 $2.00 Dime Coin Roll 50 $5.00 Quarter Coin Roll 40 $10.00 Half Dollar Coin Roll 20 $10.00 Large/Silver Dollar Coin Roll 20 $20.00 Small Dollar Coin Roll 25 $25.00 $2.50 Gold Quarter Eagle Coin Roll 40 $100.00 $5 Gold Eagle Coin Roll 40 $200.00 $10 Gold Eagle Coin Roll 50 $500.00 $20 Gold Eagle Coin Roll 25 $500.00

Why Do We Use Coin Rolls Anyway?

Coin rolls are stacked bundles of coins worth a certain amount of money in face value.

They’re used to help organize large amounts of loose change and are the preferred method for banks and merchants to receive and dispense big quantities of coins.

Coin rolls are also favored by coin collectors who enjoy searching through circulated coins to look for old coins, rare coins, error coins, and other types of interesting and unusual coinage.

I enjoy looking through rolls of coins because it’s generally easier to find old and rare coins when looking through rolls of coins rather than picking through individual coins that come and go through my hands as pocket change.

I also like to roll coins up in wrappers when depositing in my bank the change from my coin jar — it’s easier to deposit them this way at the bank.

Whether I look at them through the eyes of a numismatist or as a typical coin-spending American, coin rolls are an important part of commerce and are essential to helping the exchange of physical currency in commerce.

Here are the most valuable coins you should be saving in all denominations.

The History Of Coin Rolls

Numismatists can’t determine exactly when the first coin rolls emerged.

Some theories suggest coin rolls in simple paper wrappers may have first been employed by banks hundreds of years ago.

Possible evidence for early coin rolls can even be found in old shipwrecks containing coins. In many cases, shipwreck coins are found in small stacks — suggesting they were originally rolled in paper wrappers before the paper disintegrated underwater.

Automated coin wrapping mechanisms came into widespread use during the early 20th century, with the most popular of these being the Batdorf coin package wrapper — which was granted a patent in September 1913.

With the rise of automated coin wrappers, coin rolls became much more common.

Original Bank Wrapped roll coins (also called OBW coins) are those that are still in their original bank rolls.

OBW coin rolls from the first half of the 20th century on which the bank name is visible are often worth more money than OBW coins in plain wrappers.

What’s The Easiest Way To Roll Coins?

Have a bunch of coins sitting around in your change jar that you need to wrap?

Sure, you could wrap them by hand like I do. (I love looking for old coins and errors, so I check each coin by hand.)

But what if you’ve got thousands of coins and don’t really want to spend time looking at every coin?

There are several great coin counters and coin wrapping machines available that can count and wrap your coins, lickety-split!

Check these out:

Before You Buy Unsearched Bank Rolls…

Ever go on eBay and see a roll of old coins that has what appears to be a key date coin on the end?

You know, a roll of old pennies with the reverse of a VDB penny (maybe a 1909-S VDB penny) appearing at the end of the roll?

Perhaps even more tempting for coin buyers are those penny rolls that have something like a 1916 Mercury dime (possibly a rare 1916-D Mercury dime) that somehow winds up at the end of the roll.

Before you spend big bucks with the hopes of striking it rich with these supposedly unsearched coin rolls, consider the following:

• It’s possible to buy a coin roll crimping machine for less than $500 — which means anyone can make a crimped roll of coins – not just the bank!
• How do you know a roll of coins is really unsearched? You don’t. Shotgun rolls and unsearched rolls offer no guarantees.
• How come the dime always seems to wind up at the end of the penny roll listed on eBay? The chances of this happening with an automated coin-rolling machine by accident are extremely slim. So why do so many of these rolls seem to exist? And how is it that a coin that offers tempting hints that it could be a rarity always appear to pop up at the end of the roll and not in the middle? These are almost always plants to entice people to buy the coin rolls and see what’s on the inside. In most cases, the rolls aren’t worth as much as the inflated buy price.

Coin Roll Hunting Tips

If you’re a coin collector who enjoys looking through rolls for old coins, rare coins, error coins, and other interesting pieces, then coin roll searching is for you!

I’ve found many old, rare, and valuable coins in rolls!

Here’s a summary of my experiences with coin roll hunting, plus a list of coins you should be looking for in bank rolls.

It’s still possible to find the following in coin rolls:

• Error coins
• Indian Head pennies
• Lincoln wheat pennies
• Buffalo nickels
• Jefferson wartime nickels
• Other pre-1960 Jefferson nickels
• 90% silver coins

Finding old and rare coins — such as Indian Head pennies or 90% silver dimes — may be possible while searching through old coin rolls, but it isn’t necessarily easy to make those discoveries.

Here are some tips to improve your odds of finding old and rare coins in coin rolls:

• Ask bank tellers if they have recently seen older-looking rolls of coins come into the bank. If so, buy any they may have on hand.
• Half dollars and penny rolls tend to yield the highest number of “keepers” per roll. I’ve found a wheat cent at least once every 2 or 3 penny rolls I’ve searched, and 40% or 90% silver Kennedy half dollars tend to appear in every 1 or 2 rolls, too.
• If you’re looking for silver dimes or quarters, you can make your coin roll searching go a little more quickly by checking the rims to see at a glance which are silver or copper nickel. (90% silver coins don’t have the orange or brown line along the coin edge as seen on copper-nickel coins.)
• Errors and varieties can be hard to spot at first. My advice is to hold aside all coins from a certain date that are widely known for their errors — such as 1972 cents (there was a doubled die made that year) or 1982 Kennedy half dollars (missing Frank Gasparro’s FG initials to the right of the eagle’s tail) — and look for the presence of errors on those coins when you have more time.

More About Coin Roll Hunting

• How To Buy Unsearched Coin Rolls
• 5 Magic Words To Tell Your Bank Teller & You’ll Walk Away With Silver Coins
• Where To Pick Up Rolls Of Coins

I’m the Coin Editor here at TheFunTimesGuide. My love for coins began when I was 11 years old. I primarily collect and study U.S. coins produced during the 20th century. I’m a member of the American Numismatic Association (ANA) and the Numismatic Literary Guild (NLG) and have won multiple awards from the NLG for my work as a coin journalist. I’m also the editor at the Florida United Numismatists Club (FUN Topics magazine), and author of Images of America: The United States Mint in Philadelphia (a book that explores the colorful history of the Philadelphia Mint). I’ve contributed hundreds of articles for various coin publications including COINage, The Numismatist, Numismatic News, Coin Dealer Newsletter, Coin Values, and CoinWeek. I’ve authored nearly 1,000 articles here at The Fun Times Guide to Coins (many of them with over 50K shares), and I welcome your coin questions in the comments below!