How many rolls of any coin should you keep before you start breaking the rest up to look for the perfect coin?

Not to long ago the USMint came out with a thing called the Bicentennial Quarter. That was back in the 70's era. Myself and many others saved as many as possible. We all went to banks, coin shows, stores, anywhere and every one of them was hoarded. We put them in plastic rolls, paper rolls, jars, boxes, etc. One friend of mine had amassed thousands of dollars worth and most in Uncirculated condition. I too had several hundred dollars worth just waiting for the day when they would be worth a fortune. After about 30 years of saving these dumb things I began checking at coin shows as to what a dealer would be willing to pay for any of them. Basically I was told $0.25 per coin. Or I was told "I've got thosands myself, how many do you want to buy?" Or "try a bank, although they may not want them either". I did take them all to a bank and so did many of my friends. We lost a lot of interest by not just putting those quarters in a savings account.
The moral of this story is if you hoard what everyone else is hoarding, they will never be worth more than face value. Of course if I waited another 100 years or so they may go up to about $0.26 or even .27 but at my age just can't wait.

None. It's the numismatic form of gambling. And as just_carl notes, the house usually wins.

I think Just Carl hit it on the head, if you hoard what everyone else is hoarding, you'll end up with just change. However, if you hoard what no one else was hoarding, you might make out. As an example, I have maybe 30 BU rolls of cents, including a roll of 1957 wheaties, and a roll each of 1965 and 1966 memorials. Those rolls today might get me $2-3 each if that. I also saved a bunch of rolls from the 1980s that I got from the bank for face value, and most of those are worth $4-7 each, and the 1986-D rolls I saw recently were selling in Coin World for over $30 each! Why? In the mid to late 1960s, BU roll saving was all the rage, and when the bubble burst, there were literally TONS of rolls left. After that fiasco, almost no one saved BU rolls for the next 30 years, at least until the state quarter craze where suddenly collecting by the roll was popular again. In 20 years, state quarters will still be very much available in BU rolls, but you might be hard pressed to find a BU roll of 2003-P dimes or 2002 cents!

Be careful. Items are only "worth" a given price IF you can sell them at that price. The selling part is a big if.

You also need to consider the loss of interest if you had deposited the money instead, what you actually get in a sale rather that what the item retails for, the cost of selling, and the cost (base cost plus lost interest) of other stock that hasn't risen. Once you factor in those costs, the "profit" typically ends up negative.

I agree with this statement. And with others here as well. If you hoard what everybody else is hoarding, you can only hope for face value.

The price I quoted was actually in the classifieds as an offer to buy, so I feel pretty confident in my previous statement. If I had deposited these coins (a whopping $15) back in the 1980s, at 5% interest I would have a total of $39.80 today. Though I suppose if I knew the future and added another $10 to buy one share of Microsoft (ignoring for a moment that even $25 wouldn't have even paid the commission on that trade in 1986) then I would have 288 shares today with a value of $8,346.24, not including dividends. Based on your way of looking at things, it seems impossible not to be a loser in everything you do.

It's really simple.

Your best bet is to acquire rolls from multiple sources. Spot check a roll from
each source and if you find anything good or anything promising then go back
and see if you can get more. Just dump any of these searched coins into cir-
culation if you have plenty of rolls. Now search a roll from each discreet batch.
If you don't see anything good then set the rest of the the batch aside to save.
If you do see something then open every roll in the batch and save the nice ones.
When you're done you'll have a little pile of choice and gem coins and a stash of
rolls. Decide how many you want to set aside and pull out the worst rolls to spend
if there's an overage. Nicer rolls will be much easier to sell.

Remember that other people may be saving this coin extensively too, so if it doesn't
go up in three or four years then take them to the bank. Don't allow your money to
depreciate. If they do go up be sure to take at least a little profit. You can use this
for other coins that you think are too cheap or to stash more coins. Don't be too
surprised if dimes are being saved in insufficient numbers the last few years.

While those bicentennial coins were saved in massive numbers very few
people were paying any attention to the quality. They were mostly fairly
good but there were almost no gems. While the typical bicentennial quar-
ter is distressinly common today, gems are scarce and an important type
coin. They can sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars for superb
coins.

It appears that you are confusing hoarding with investing. Hoarders gamble that a cheap, common non-performing item will be worth much more in the future. Investors take a hard look at the underlying financials, past performance, and future potential of a stock, bond or real estate and make a decision and then monitor it.

Hoarders also tend to be terrible at calculating cost and profit and any increase is a "profit" (your comment above certainly supports that). OTOH, investors must calc true profit because they pay taxes on it (a downside, but the upside is they become very disciplined businessmen).

Hoarders count on luck and investors count on educated evaluation. Now, past performance is certainly no guarantee of future profits and things can go wrong, but I did just buy my wife a nice 2007 Lexus ES350 and paid in cash so from my perspective this method ain't too bad a "loser". Smart wins over gambling every time.

cladking also points out a key difference between hoarders and more astute collectors. Hoarders buy in bulk and hope the bulk goes up in value, smart collectors look at the quality. Again, smart wins over gambling every time.

I am confusing nothing of the kind, I merely attempted to provide quartercollector with some ideas to help him along in his collecting by answering the question he originally posed. Of course from this thread, you seemed to have made some rash assumptions and generalizations, but those can be easily overlooked. As for "Hoarders" being terrible at calculating cost and "profit" it seems you're not much of an expert yourself, since you pay taxes on your nominal profits, not your actual profits. Then again, I have neither a wife nor a Lexus, so I guess that would disqualify me from knowing anything about investing. By the way, this is a Coin Collecting board, if you really want to get all revved up about your investing prowess, might I direct you to Yahoo! Finance, they have some wonderful message boards there!

Not meaning to beat a dead horse to death but as I noted both myself and several freinds hoarded those Bicentennial Quarter in as much Uncirc conditions as possible. Many were put in 2x2's when they were noted as almost perfect. Many rolls were from the bank and were completely new. Even the Proofs we hoarded hoarded which could be bought individually at many coin shows. Also, as noted regardless of the condition, they are a drug on the market and just ended up in change. Not the proofs of course but at coin shows just this last weekend they sell for a few dollars but no one will buy them there since all the dealers have to many as it is. I go to about 2 to 3 coin shows a month and ended up taking all my precious Bicentennials to a bank.
There are many examples of people hoading certain types or years of coins. One rather famous one is the 1931S Lincoln Cent. One of the lowest minted Lincoln Cents ever and yet the prices for that coin are hardly anything. That too is due to people back then knowing of the low mintage and hoading many, many in uncirc conditions. The 31D Mercury Dime. It appears that for some reason many coins were hoarde back then possibly due to the depression or just collectors being aware of low mintages.
The fate of the state quarters will be the same as people loose interest in thier little binders from Walmart and need the money for the laundromat.

Thank you all for the wonderful thought on the subject, I started breaking the rolls looking for the best coins and to my disbelief, 98% look like crap.
After reading all the postings I'm going to keep 2 rolls of each and the rest are going back to the bank. After I looked through them

98% is just about typical. The same number will apply to mint sets but if you
compare the nicest 2% from sets to the nicest 2% from rolls, the mint set coins
will usually win by a wide margin.