Lately, I have been re-thinking my Half Dollar CRH. I've been searching halves for 2-1/2 years. The first year I was still working, and managed to search bags and rolls to the tune of around 2-3 boxes per week. This was a period of developing my CRH strategy (learning all I could from CoinTalk , opening new bank accounts for supply and dumping, developing relationships with tellers and managers, figuring out storage solutions / buying albums, etc.). I was searching every coin, looking at every date and mint mark. I was building Dansco albums for my kids with at least 10 duplicates of every date & mint mark for the common coins for my grandkids' future albums. Also learning about different varieties like the 1974-D DDO, 1972-D "No FG", 1982-P "No FG", 1990s Philly obverse die cracks, and finding a lot of 2002+ NIFCs and impaired proofs. I was also stacking a good many silvers along the way including Walkers and Benjamins. As a retiree, the last 1-1/2 years have been more about the quest for silver, upgrading the albums and duplicate sets, saving the best of the impaired proofs for my personal Dansco Kennedy PDS album, and weirdly, finding a lot of 1974-DDOs! During this time, I increased my weekly orders to 5-6 boxes per week. To date, the 2-1/2 years have netted 1,984 silvers and 2,122 NIFCs out of 344,860 halves searched for success rates of 0.58% and 0.62%, respectively. But, they have taken up a good amount of my time what with the picking up, searching every coin by date/mm, upgrading, and dumping. This has translated to gaining some weight since I don't go to the gym as often as I used to, and not getting all the other projects done around the house like I should. I've thought about several options: 1) Quitting CRH altogether , 2) Cutting back the volume , and 3) Changing my search strategy . I recently told the wife I was going to quit altogether when I found my 2000th silver half, but I believe I would miss the thrill of the silver hunt too much! The wife and I had a long conversation about it this weekend, and while she supports my CRH (and actually searches some boxes with me, usually ones with enders, lol), she agrees it takes up a lot of my time. So, even though it will be hard, I've decided to keep the same volume and primarily edge check for silver (white or suspiciously dirty rims) and shiny edge NIFCs rather than look at every date & mint mark. This should speed up the time to search each box. I did my first box in that manner last night and it took about 1/3 the time as it usually does, although I checked more shiny edged coins than I should have, lol. I found 7 NIFCs and no silver. Today, I pick up about 5 boxes that I missed last week due to being out of town. I will have about 5 more boxes to pick up later in the week. So, the new method should cut down considerably the time I will spend searching them more thoroughly. And, if I miss the odd impaired proof or 1974-D DDO so be it.
That's what I do. Edge search. I liken my CRH'ing to clear cutting a forest to find the one good piece of lumber.
Good that you and your spouse are communicating about it and came to an agreement. I had to significantly change the way I CRH dimes and quarters. I’ve literally done side checks only and the rest got rolled. I’m sure I’ve missed countless errors, but it’s the best way to keep from letting the searches overtake my time. I hope you still find enough enjoyment out of it to keep going, or that you find something that perhaps interests you more.
Even though it takes up, in your opinion, a lot of your time, if you enjoy it keep doing it. If you're doing it because of habit then maybe step away for a while. My take from your post is that your roll searching might hint at being compulsive. Ask yourself this question, do you enjoy this and what are your end goals? What do you plan on doing with the hoard of halves you've accumulated? Keep up the good hunt!
I think what you are doing is great, especially since your wife enjoys spending time and searching with you. That's something you don't want to give up. In my opinion I think you need to find a balance between the CRH, the gym and doing those honey do jobs around the house. Best wishes.
Good idea Jaelus. But can you detect a single 40%er in a roll of clad by this method? I figure I might miss a single 40%er which weighs 11.50 gm vs. a clad which weighs 11.34 gm, not much of a difference on a whole roll. Plus there's the whole weight tolerance range for clad and silver halves which makes the weight of a roll of Kennedy clad halves a range anyways. Do you use this method successively? Thanks!
This thread is probably my favorite so far! It really is hard to admit when something takes over your life. I’m sure many of you have had similar thoughts and never told anyone. Kudos to Tex for being so open and kudos to the members that have responded in such a positive way.
I like this idea, a lot. @TexAg with all the boxes/rolls you handle daily it should be very easy to do a scientific sampling of rolls to weight. I would approach it thusly: Weigh every unopened roll. Record the weight. Open the roll. Record the count of clad vs 90% vs 40% All skunk rolls add to your scientific sampling to determine tolerance. Any roll with various combinations of 90% & 40% can be statistically analyzed for weight distribution and add to your forecast of roll content before opening. It'll take quite a few rolls to accumulate enough data to feel comfortable with this system of not even opening a lot of rolls per box. However, you're opening the rolls anyway (LOTS of them). Might as well make the exercise a data collection bonus. Good luck and keep us posted.
Yes, I do tend to be compulsive about things! My goals were to build out Kennedy albums for my 4 kids and have enough Kennedy duplicates to build albums in the future for all of my grand children. I think that is in place now. So, I guess it's now the occasional upgrade coins I might find and of course the silver. I haven't thought about selling the silvers, and can afford to hang onto them indefinitely until the price of silver hopefully improves. I searched 2 more boxes today using the edge checking method. It's faster than looking at every date, but still takes about 40 minutes as I give every shiny or suspicious edge a date and mint mark check for fear of missing a "goodie", lol. Besides being faster, another benefit is that I am not setting aside as many possible upgrades as I used to which means I don't have as much work to do after the boxes are searched. That part of the process used to take up a lot of time trying to high grade the duplicates. I pretty much am being cold and calculating about the shiny edge coins. If they aren't very nice, I toss them. I'll give this a try for awhile and see how I feel about it. Thanks!
I have to admit, the engineer in me likes your approach, I can add another sheet to my spreadsheet! I think I'll try the edge checking for a spell and see how it works out. One dilemma with weighing rolls and not opening the clad only ones is my dump bank has a coin counting machine and only accepts unrolled coins. But, if edge checking still takes too much time, I'll get another jewelers scale (mine only goes up to 200 gm) and try weighing rolls. I suppose I could still open the clad only ones and dump them without looking at them, but oh the temptation! Thanks!
