Coin Collecting Guides

Where to start if you are new to coins

If you have just found an old coin or inherited a jar of change, read How to Tell if a Coin Is Valuable first. It sets out the seven checks in the order a dealer would make them: date and mint mark, metal, mintage, errors, condition, cleaning and a realistic price check. Each step points to a deeper guide, so it works as a map of the rest of this section.

Next, read Mint Marks Explained. Almost every question about a coin's rarity comes back to where it was struck. The mint mark table shows the exact location of the letter on every series. Then read Coin Grading Basics, because condition decides more about a coin's desirability than any other single factor. With those three guides you can sort a box of coins into common pieces, possible keys and coins worth a closer look.

Guides for pennies

Three guides deal with the cent, the coin most people have the most of. Wheat Pennies Worth Money covers the Lincoln cents of 1909 to 1958, listing the lowest-mintage dates and the famous varieties and showing how to check a pile for them. The 1943 Steel Penny guide explains the wartime steel cent and the rare bronze 1943 and steel 1944 errors, with the magnet and weight tests that separate genuine coins from plated fakes. The End of the Penny explains why circulating cent production stopped in November 2025, what that means for the coins already in circulation and which ones are worth setting aside.

Read them in that order if you have a jar of old cents. Sorting out the wheat cents first takes the oldest coins out of the pile. The 1943 guide covers the most common question about a single date. The end of the penny guide covers the modern copper and zinc cents that make up the rest.

Guides for finding and keeping coins

Coin Roll Hunting explains how to buy rolls and boxes of coins from a bank at face value, what to look for in each denomination and how to return what you do not keep. It is the cheapest way to build a collection from scratch. Should You Clean Old Coins? covers the opposite end of the process: why cleaning ruins collectible coins, how to handle them and which holders, albums and storage conditions keep them safe for decades. Proof vs Uncirculated Coins explains the different finishes the Mint uses, which matters as soon as you start buying sets or find a mirror-bright coin in change.

Guides to new and changing coins

The 2026 America 250 guide lists every circulating design struck for the 250th anniversary of independence, with the subjects, the release dates and the collector reproductions issued alongside them. It pairs with the end of the penny guide, which explains why the 2026 cent exists only in collector sets.

How the guides connect to the tools

Most guides end with a practical check and our free tools do the arithmetic for those checks. The coin weight chart sorts copper cents from zinc cents and counts coins by weight. The silver checker answers whether a coin of a given year is silver. The roll calculator counts what you bring back from a roll hunt. The What's My Coin Worth? Finder turns a date and mint mark into the right coin page in a few seconds. The glossary defines the terms used throughout, from about uncirculated to wheat cent.

How these guides are written

Each guide is written to stay useful over time. Mintages, weights, compositions and dates come from US Mint records and standard references and appear on the coin pages so they can be checked. The guides do not try to price individual coins, because coin prices change constantly and depend heavily on grade. Instead they explain what makes one coin more desirable than another, so you can judge a price you see elsewhere. Where a fact is uncertain, such as the number of known examples of a great rarity, the guide says where the figure comes from.

Frequently asked questions