A theory regarding silver in rolls...

If someone can prove me wrong, please do because it will ease my paranoia! Although I have only pulled 3 silver pieces out of rolls in my short numismatic life-time I have noticed a trend. All 3 pieces came from what I believe they call Bank Wrapped Rolls. The style where both ends are rolled and the wrap is glued, and tightly at that. 2 for sure came from an N.F. String and Sons wrap where as the 3rd I believe was a different brand wrap but in the same style.

I only bring this up because some of the rolls I get are either folded over, or are the clear plastic shrink wrapping. I have never found a single quarter, half, or dime when the rolls look like this. I know finding silver is getting rarer and rarer but I was wondering if anyone knows of any truth to my theory?

Does the clear plastic represent pre-sorting and cherry picking? Does the folded over style, or "Customer Wrapped" represent dumping of skunks? I would like to think not, as I am always reading stories on this forum of a guy who gets told by a teller "Oh, someone just turned in $4 worth of halves!" and BOOM they are all Mr. Bi-Focal himself! I am sure it is just luck, or lack thereof. But I hope we as collectors, commodity traders, etc etc aren't being F'd over.

--Rob.

 

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Rob: Welcome to the forum.

Customer Wrapped Rolls on average yield more silver than bank wrapped rolls. However, as you state, you may find someone's dump bank and the CWR may already be searched and pilfered. Point is, you never know. Keep at it, there is silver out there. Check out the thread: Roll-searchers, post your results

I have found a couple of silver dimes in the clear plastic rolls. They are easy to spot, and as you say, it would be easy for someone in the banking industry to cherry pick it. So, I'm sure it happens.

 

There was a member last year sometime who posted that he worked at a sorting facility and that he and all his co-workers pulled the silver and odd coins out of the hoppers and they were allowed to purchase them at face. I don't know if this was true or not, but I get a sealed box of halves every week from my bank and most weeks I get 2-3 40% sometimes 6-7 sometimes 1 and last week I got 2 1964 kennedys. I get skunked now and then but they are still out there.

I don't usually get any other denomination, but have in the past. I have pulled silver out of dime boxes with the clear plastic but mostly the odd shiny coins in those boxes were foreign coins. I think if your bank gives you the clear plastic wrappers your best bet is to order whole boxes so at least you take the tellers out of the cherrypicking equation.
Keep at it.

 

I am def keeping at it. Buying a box is pretty much out of the equation for me, as I have little money to invent in coins. Also, the only bank that EVER seems to get rolls of halves, in my area is B of A. They area always customer wrapped and therefore I think they are picked through. I say that because they tend to have them on a fairly regular basis and I doubt they are ordering in rolls of halves for the hell of it.

I shall keep my head, and my hopes high!

--Rob.

 

Where are you? I find halves scattered here and there, but of the two BofA branches I've hit, one never had any halves, and the other was very enthusiastic about them -- "we've got LOTS of rolls! No, the lady who brought them in had just been saving them. We're sure she hasn't picked over them." Well, as I've said before, we need to get a better class of little old ladies hoarding halves -- $300 of these rolls yielded exactly squat.

I gave up on my home bank branch when I realized that at least three of the tellers were collecting silver themselves. A shame -- this was the same bank that once was only able to sell me four halves: three Walkers and a Franklin.

 

I'm in northern California. I think I might just happen to be around 3 dump banks. The town I am in is fairly small, but perhaps there are enough silver collectors to prove too much for me to overcome. I know for a fact at one of the three banks one of tellers is a silver hoarder. She always tells me "Oh look, I found a silver dime." Which leads me to believe when I ask for halves and she says "I have some, but no silver" she has either grabbed the silver already, or is saying no until the end of the day so she can buy it.

Also, at the Wells Fargo nearby I know is someone's dump spot because they ALWAYS have loose halves and they are ALWAYS non-silver. They even have some Ikes. Just too strange for it to NOT be a dump bank. I am thinking I will have to plan a road trip to smaller town, like Hamilton or Durham to get some decent luck. What a shame. None the less, my head and hopes are still high!

 

I'm done with buying boxes. The last 15 boxes I did had nothing. I have had some recent luck buying loose and customer wrapped. I got 16 40% and 4 90% last week.

 

I've got boxes coming in regularly, $3000 a week. One box was loaded and the other few last week were so/so. But I'm hooked on small, one-bank towns. I'm going on a road trip Tuesday to try and find some old rolls in the back of the vaults. Best advice: Call ahead to as many banks as possible. Let your phone do the work for you. Whenever I find someone at a bank that is super helpful, I remember their name. Later in the day, I make a point to call back and speak to their manager, give them some praise. It pays off. Those tellers pay me back for giving them a leg up.

 

My comment is not motivated to prove you right or wrong, it's merly an observation. Back in the 80's and early 90's casinos still used nickles, dimes, quarters and half dollars for the slot machines. The $1 dollar slots were casino tokens. Anyway, if you hit say a payout of 200 quarters ($50) the machine would spit out a tray full of quarters. You could normally spot a single silver quarter in that pile of clads, it was easy, like looking through a window, just like looking into that shrink wrap packaging.

Happy Collecting

 

I only get plastic shrinkwrap dimes in my area. In half a year I've pulled exactly 260 silver dimes and 31 Mercs.

 

Wow, that is an awesome total! Well, depending on the amount of dimes searched I guess. But I envy you none the less!

 

that is a stunning total. Congrats. How many boxes a week do you do?

 

I got some silver rolls from my aunt today:

They are from Commercial Trust Co. of NJ (Jersey City, NJ)....she thinks my uncle got them when silver was exploding in 1979 or 1980 or so.....I have 20 rolls of $10 halves of JFK 1964-and-earlier coins...but also 2 rolls that have a Franklin and a Liberty Walker at the ends of the roll. No idea if the entire roll has more of those or just regular JFK silvers. For that matter, could be more silver Walkers or Franklins in the Kennedy rolls, too...no idea.

These 1/2 rolls or whatever are almost 'sealed' in that they have that round lip edge at both ends that makes emptying them out and re-sealing them next to impossible.

Any idea what I should do ? And if I do nothing and let's assume all 22 rolls (220 half-dollars) are just silver halves, what are they worth assuming no or minimal numismatic value ?

 

That depends on how many you expect would be 40% and how many 90%. If you were going to keep them, I'd just open the rolls and find out what's inside.

 

Well, first, if it's 22 rolls at $10 face value each, that's 440 halves. (20-coin rolls are standard for half dollars, although I occasionally heard of 40-coin, $20 rolls back in those days.)

Silver value for dimes, quarters and halves is currently 11.45 times face value; for half dollars, that's about $5.73 each.

So, if you have 440 halves, that's just over $2500 silver value, assuming no numismatic premium. In reality, half-dollars do trade at a slight premium; this afternoon, I was seeing rolls of 90% halves going for $150-160 or more on eBay.

If it were me, unless I needed the cash immediately, I'd hang on to them. I'd also go ahead and open and search them, but I'm not sure I can back that opinion with supporting evidence.

 

What's the dividing line year-wise for that split ?

Never mind....1965, forgot it was only 1 year with 90%.

I opened up one with the flap-end that is easily re-sealed....the coins all appear to be pre-1964....the JFK's are very silvery and some are very shiny and have that silver-powder feel and look.

 

You just doubled my money !! Thanks !! I owe you 1 beer and 1 Thai/sushi/chinese dinner !

How come they go for a 30-35% premium over spot silver ? Is that just the extra value for the coins or is it to take into account there could be 1 or 2 coins worth even more that might not be checked ?

Sound advice, I agree. Thanks !

 

Everything up to 1964 is 90%. 1965-1970 are 40%.

 

Yup, thanks Paul...also got 2 rolls of silver quarters. So I guess that's another $20 face or $220 in silver.

Jeez, pretty nifty sum my aunt gave me.

 

Basically, they go for more because that's what people are willing to pay. I can guess at a couple of reasons, though.

First, half dollars tend to retain more silver in the face of wear. As a coin circulates, metal wears away, at a rate proportional to the coin's surface area -- and the larger the coin, the larger its volume (and thus its mass/weight) relative to its surface area. So, dimes lose weight fastest, followed by quarters, halves, and dollars.

Besides, recent half dollars are likely to be less heavily circulated -- I've seen very few Franklins worn down to anything less than F, and 1964 Kennedys hardly circulated at all. I've got some slick Barber halves and older Walkers that have lost substantial weight (more than 5%), but those coins still carry a higher numismatic base value.

This is even more pronounced for silver dollars. First, they contain more silver than $1.00 worth of dimes, quarters or halves as minted -- equivalent to about $1.07 worth of smaller change. Second, they lose weight less rapidly than smaller change. Most importantly, though, both Morgan and Peace dollars are very heavily collected, meaning there's more demand -- and any earlier type of dollar coin (Trade, Seated, Bust) still carries a numismatic value that dwarfs its bullion value.

Finally, 90% silver in general is trading at a premium these days. At the moment, Coinflation quotes 90% coinage's silver value at 11.15x face value. Provident, a large online dealer, will pay 12.79x face value for your silver ($1000 minimum, or a bit less than $100 face value); they'll sell it back to you for 13.86x. This isn't always the case, but it has been for most of the last few years. Local dealers, with smaller volume, need a bigger spread to make money; they'll pay you less than Provident, and charge you more if you're buying, especially for small quantities.

(I notice that Provident doesn't pay extra for half dollars, but does charge extra for them -- 15.29x for circulated 1964 Kennedys, 14.57x for Franklins, and 14.21x for Walkers. I'm a bit surprised at that. They don't list prices for bulk dimes or quarters.)