I have noticed when searching boxes of halves that if there is not a silver half on one of then end coins then the box will contain no silver. I have been through more boxes than I can count and I can only think of one time when this wasn't true. You can see 10% of the coins by looking at the end roll coins. If it's a hot box you're going to see it. I am thinking that what happens when I get boxes of halves they are either searched (someone else's dump box) or assemebled from many customer handrolls. I know that the armored services roll up the coins and box them. If I turn in a dump box they have to run the coins through a counter and then rebox them. I found 43 40% coins and 9 90% out of six boxes. Four of those boxes had nothing. I get exicted when I open a box and see a silver on the edge but it's disheartening to see nothing good. I am getting out of the roll searching business for a while. I have found almost $1000 face in silver halves this summer. Three rolls of assorted 90% and the rest 40%. Most of it came on one day when I found just over $800 in one bag. It's alot of work and it drives my wife crazy. She helps me sometimes but more often than not it's me. I haul the coins back and forth and make sure I have enough money in the right bank to get the coins ordered. I wish all of you the best of luck in your searches. I have seen quite a few coins with a red mark on the neckline. If that's your signature PM me and share some stories.
I'd like to find a bank that will actually get me boxes of halves to look though...I the most silver I have found is %9.50 in 40%'ers.... I would keep looking if I were you...or at least send me your boxes and I will get some more silver too!
I agree w/ your theory. My best box ever (43) had 7 silvers on ends. Last week I found 23, 4 of which were ends. Typically, if no silver is showing on the ends, I found none in the box. Maybe 1 if I'm lucky. Maybe I should just check the end rolls and if no silver is showing, cash them in. (Don't think I'll do that, but I do only check edges)
Don't just check for edges, you'll miss the dirty ones. Also I do find proofs, 1987's, and other cool stuff. I have yet to find a 1970-d.
I'll agree that the ones that have showed silver typically have more silver but last week I had 4 boxes, no silver showing on the ends and I ended up with 3 of the 4 boxes having silver in it.
The two boxes I got had no silver on ends, and no silver in the box. Dimes however...no silver on the ends and I pulled 4 52-64s.
If you see silver on an end then statistically it should have a higher chance of having more, but just because you don't see any would not be a reason to be discouraged. As you say you can see 10% of the coins. That means that if there is silver it has a 90% chance of being inside the rolls and not visible.
Today is another example of it only being an indicator of a potential good box. Opened the first box of 3 tonight with the kids. No silver on any of the ends but we ended up finding a 1966, 1964 and 1943 walker.
Found 10 40% and 2 %90 in a box with nothing showing on the end. This is not a total stat workup or anything just a quick and dirty, but assuming a box has 10 silver pieces, a decent box, with each silver being in a different roll. Then you have 10 rolls with silver, each roll has a 90% chance of not having it's silver on the end. The odds that no roll has any silver showing would be .9^10 which is around 35%. So basically if a box has 10 silver there is a 35 percent chance none will be on the ends. It's 50% at around 7 silver pieces, again assuming 1 per roll.
