I see these sites where you can buy $100 or $1000 face value of old silver coins. Is this a good way to possibly look through 100's of coins and find valuable coins or is this only an investment in the price of silver? Or both? Investing in silver and hoping to find some more valuable coins in the bag? Or are all of the good coins taken out before hand?
I don't know whether all those sites search the stuff themselves -- I suspect not -- but it seems likely that a lot of the folks selling to them do. So, from a buyer's perspective, it's the same idea.
I would agree with this. When you buy "junk" silver you are buying silver value, not coin value. I would not expect to find anything but common date 90% silver coins and more than likely well circulated.
I would only buy them for scrap, then if you find something of value consider it an extra since a "rarer" date is not guaranteed
The owner of a company I worked for bought a bag of halves from a wholesaler I know in 2012 and he found eight uncirculated (MS-60) 1892 Columbian halves in it. He was going through the bag to see what was in it and brought the coins in to work to show me. I told him it was rare to find those in any grade in a junk silver bag. He replaced those with some circulated 1964 Kennedy halves and kept the commems out. The second bag he bought several months later was truly a typical junk silver bag of halves.
