The futility of searching circulating coins for silver- Washington Quarter edition

I have found a SLQ before and I would think the odds of finding that is even less than a Washington. I think the date was 1929.

Nickeldude

 

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I have only received silver dimes in change. No other denomination. 3 silver dimes, all in a period of one week. It makes you wonder why.

 

Sometimes it just pays to be in the right place. Many years ago I found these (and about 25 silver Roosies) in the cash register at work.



Some kid came in with a roll of dimes and wanted $5. I was at lunch. I got back and they were waiting for me in the till.

 

Nice 3-cent

 

Yeah. For years I thought it was a dime until I finally looked it up.

 

I think this is what's happening, combined with the Christmas time. I dunno, for some reason, I always seem to find silver in November or December. Last month I found 10 silver dimes and one Silver Quarter alone.

 

I decided to give each of my boys a roll(circulated) of each of the State Quarters. I fell a little behind, so for the last year I've been searching rolls. I get $100 worth every day of the work week and sell back what I don't want the next day. I think that means I've looked at 100,000 quarters over the last year. I've found one 1940 silver quarter. I think that's one one thousandth of one percent. Like someone said, virtually nil chance. I've also noticed that there appears to be a one or two in 400 chance of finding 1968 or 1969 quarters, and I'm sure this has to do with low mintage numbers.

cal.sales

 

My finds...

I'm 42 and all I've ever found is a mercury dime, probably spent from pop's collection, a war nickel and a fair number of wheat pennies. Not much! I think you're better off searching flea bay (if you're careful not to get ripped off), online dealers, or better yet, your local dealer if he's honest.

 

Scott:
Welcome to the forum.

 

I've recently (past month 1/2) found two silver Washington quarters (1949, 1963). Found in the past couple of months found two silver Roosevelt dimes. A few scattered war nickels, and a couple of years ago found 2 mercury dime in circulation the same day. It helps to work at a local pharmacy and now a Walgreen's.

 

As iI have mentioned before, I hit area car washes,around 5 in my local area, usually put five dollars in each one, you would be surprised of some of the dates, sure alot of state quarters . But i still get 4 or 5 1960 - 1969 coins every weekend , put the rest in a ziplock and coinstar here I comee getting ready for the next weekend, It is a cheap way of searching and enjoying the nice weather when we have Ii.

 

I am a car wash owner. I have four locations and probably handle 20,000+ quarters per month. I may find one silver quarter every few months. I would say the 1 in 100K is fairly accurate.

 

I just read through some of this again and enjoyed reading it all over again. (If I do say so myself!) This thread should have been nominated guys. :secret: :goof:

Good to see comments still coming in. :thumb:

 

I agree with you vess it's futile to search quarter rolls
I looked through 4 boxes last year to find 100's of 1965's or 1967's or anything but 64 and before...
and as for wheaties I only find 7-8 a box and on rare times 10-11 a box... and with the exception of that 1913 penny I posted before they are mainly 1940's-50's
and 17% 30's and before which might sound higher but it feels so small

of course I do love to search halves! I usually find 40%'s at a 1:60 ratio which is pretty good I think

 

Well, speaking of finding silver coins, my daughter suprised me about four weeks ago and said she had some coins from the lady that she works for. In each and every case she showed the lady what she found and reccommended that she save them. the lady said she had her deceased mother's collection which is locked up and alarmed and didn't want them. My daughter stressed to her they might be valuable but again the lady said " keep them" my daughter's total is 44 silver coins:
6 SAE's------- 87-92
2 morgan's-- 82-p, 83-O
6 FRANKLINS-- 51 TO 63
5 KENNEDY's-- 64 to 66
4 WASHINGTON QUARTERS-- 39 to 64
36 WALKINGING LIBERTYS-- 35 to 45, one no date s mint

How that for surprizing me.

 

although I mostly look through pennies, I occasionally pick up a roll or two of quarters or nickels (rarely dimes) for a little variety. I also ask the tellers at my bank branches if they have halves or Eisenhower dollars whenever I go in. an acquaintance of mine works at one of the branches and during one visit gave me around 10 silver dimes he had in his tray. I actually went in today and told him about how earlier in the week I had received 3 silver halves (66, 68D, & 69D) out of about $20 I purchased from the bank, upon which he went through his tray and came up with another 69D.
As for quarters, I just found a 1945 in a brinks roll a few weeks ago. I've also found a 1946 metal detecting, but I don't feel as though that counts...When it comes down to it, silver wartime nickels are by far the most common for me, while silver quarters are extremely rare...but really, it's all the luck of the draw!

 

Finding coins in common change is always fun. About 4 years ago I received a 1900 Indian Head penny. The clerk thought it was a Canadian coin. I was ecstatic! I placed it with a 2000 penny. Maybe my grandchildren (of which I have none to date) will add a 2100 penny, and so forth through the generations.

 

No! The coinage hasn't so much been picked over as the silver coins have been selrctively removed from circulation. "Picked over" suggests all the good coins have been removed from circulation but in point of fact there weren't any good quarters in circulation from the 1940's to the 1960's because they were all picked over. All the leavings from these coins were selectively removed from circulation by 1970.

This is a very good thing since everyone believes there's nothing worthwhile in circulation so very few are looking. This means each year rare, scarce, and unusual quarters are getting a little rarer, scarcer, anmd more unusual. They're also getting worn down so even the most common clads are becoming scarce in nice condition.

The junk silver that was circulating back in the 1940's will still be junk silver in a thousand years in present trends continue but each day that goes by makes all the clads scarcer.

I was collecting quarters from circulation in 1957. I never found anything but picked over junk and the oldest piece of picked over junk you could find back then was a 1925. All the older quarters had their date worn off. That was a mere 32 years old. Today that 1965 quarter you find so often is 45 years old. Even the average quarter is older today than in those days.

Frankly I'm glad that everyone leaves these coins alone. Not so much because it lets me find the best ones as it makes the coins interesting and pulling out the good ones robs them of their stories.

A silver quarter if one could be plucked from change is worth a couple bucks but you won't find one worth any more than that. But a typical 1965 quarter is worth a small fortune in the stories it can tell and what it can teach. If it's one of the mules then it can have a substantial collector value as well. If you find a typical ho hum '65 with very light wear then just ask yourself how many of these are left today. Never mind a thousand years, how many are still around today?

 

Everything is perception.

1965 quarters are percieved to be common so almost every one ever made is in circulation except for the 750,000,000 that have already been destroyed by calamity. This attrition works on the scarce and rare coins as well. '32-S quarters were pulled out of circulation and protected but how about 1972-D type b reverse quarters. There are none of these known today in unc and only a few with wear yet the mintage was close to 100,000. How many more of these will get saved before they all get dumped into the melting pot. The "rare" '32-S quarters will be "common" and the "common" clads will be "rare".

 

Hello. I found a silver quarter today, the second I have found in about 20 years of keeping an eye out for them (I've never really had routine exposure to a significant amount of change), and found this thread as I was wondering how many are in circulation. I think I'm pretty good at catching things that don't fit a pattern and this extends to math. I see that this post was edited and the reason says, "corrected math," but the math is currently incorrect. It should read

377,000 / 75 Billion = 0.000005 = 0.0005% (or one coin in 200,000)

On the bright side, I have no sense of what percentage of coins are in circulation. I'll keep looking out for them in any case!