When Roll Hunting dimes you can expect to find a bunch of clad (1965 and up) Roosevelts with an occasional surprise thrown in just to grab your attention.
If you’d like to read a little bit of history on the Roosevelt dime I would suggest reading the Coin Resource Article (new window).
Composition Hunters - There is still some silver floating around in dime boxes, however if you’re strictly a Composition Hunter I would suggest hunting any of the other silver possibilities. On average you’ll find 1 silver dime per box the vast majority of which will be FDR’s. You might occasionally run across a Mercury dime and if you’re insanely lucky a Barber.
Variety Hunters - I would highly recommend looking at Richard’s Roosevelt Review (new window) for FDR varieties prior to 1965. I’m unaware of any FDR clad variety site so would recommend the Cherry Pickers Guide to hunt 65 and on dimes.
Set Hunters – The Clad Roosevelt dime set is in my opinion the easiest modern set to complete. There are no circulated keys (like the 1950D nickel) and no major varieties (like the state quarter series).
Unless you’re just amazingly unlucky you should be able to put a clad set together while searching through 1 box. More than likely it will only take searching through 25 rolls before completing the set. The 1969 and 1971 Philadelphia dimes will probably be the two that take the longest to find, but both have mintages of more than 100 million.
Before putting a clad dime set together I would recommend purchasing an H.E. Harris & Co. folder for Roosevelt dimes years 1965-1999. There are enough unmarked holes to take you through 2002 while still having a hole for displaying a reverse and an extra hole for an error.
