Kennedy Halfs

silver

After the cave trolls post, my find seems tiny but it ended my dry spell. I got three rolls and came up with 3-64,s and about a dozen 65-69 halves.

 

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Wow , I dont know how you guys are able to find that many old silvers.
Ive searched $2500 in halves last year from three different banks and found only 1 64 and 3 40%.
I think the bank's in my area (Denver),have such a low silver count, because their employees are collectors or cherry pickers.

I can remember over twenty years ago, when i was a kid, looking for silver and such, that silver was not easy to find.

It is simply amazing that you guys are able to find that much silver today.
In my lifetime as a collector, Ive only found as follows:

2 frankies
1 walker
1 barber half
Maybe 6 1964
one roll 40%
about 2 rolls of 90% quarters
almost two rolls of 90% dimes
one barber dime
5 mercs
about a half roll of silver nickels

About 90% of these finds was in the eighties.
I guess you have to be in the right place at the right time.

Congrats to all of you with such great finds.

CLAW

 

Every time i read this thread ,it makes me sick.
But ,then again,it makes me wanna search some more.

Good luck to all

CLAW

 

Just picked up five rolls today and found:

1 1968D
1 1965
1 1986S Commemorative Proof (!??)

Don't know how that got in there...

 

Keep in mind that I've searched about $15k in halves in the last year, sometimes with little or no success and that box was easily my best ever. Don't get discouraged, the good boxes are out there waiting to be opened!

 

today I stopped by the bank just to make sure there wasn't any Halves...the one lady said not this week and as I was walking away another girl said I have 2....I almost didn't stop but decided to anway...one was a 1969-D!
That is the 2nd 40%er I've gotten in 2 weeks!!

Speedy

 

Congrats on all the recent "motherload" finds. Mine was limited to the first $18. A search through the other $140 provided nothing (as well as an additional $100 that was at the bank). Oh well, no complaints here.....and the search goes on

 

I have found that you you need to do a few things to find silver:

1. Make sure you have enough money to get all the rolls they have. You must get all the halves they have in the vault. The reason is because you are starting off fresh the next time you come in.

2. Return all your coins to one bank this is so you don't see them again and find out what amount they need to ship them out.

3. If buying boxes that they order make sure the bank you get them from uses a different company from the bank you return your halfs to. If you don't then you may be getting the same halfs.

4. I have also marked my returned rolls.

Good luck

 

Cave

WOW!!!!

Regards!

Willie

 

TOLS,

Your having a wife and a girlfriend gives me a vicarious rush!!

Willie

 

What's the procedure for doing this?

This sounds like a lot of fun, and would be a good way to expand my collection. Not just of halves, but all of my coins.

How do I go about doing this? Just walk into a bank and ask the teller if I can buy rolls of coins? Do I typically have to be a customer of that bank, or no?

Someone mentioned that you should make sure that the bank you buy the coins from uses a different coin rolling company than the bank you return the coins to. How do you find that out? What is the question I should ask?

Also, do I have to wrap the coins myself before I return them? I seem to recall that back when I was a kid, my bank wouldn't accept coins unless they were wrapped. Should I just use the standard loose wrapper where you fold over the ends?

And what do you do when looking through the coins. For the halves, I know obviously that you should check for dates prior to 1971. I suppose I should also keep an eye out for other key dates. I also know about the 1974-D DDO, so I'd need to keep an eye out for that.

I'm also interested in hearing how you actually go through them. I mean what is your personal routine? Do you sit at a table and go through the coins one at a time and toss the ones you don't want into a bag? Do you wrap them as you go through them? Do you have any kind of automated system for wrapping the coins that makes it any easier?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm just getting (re-)started collecting coins, and I really hadn't heard about buying many rolls from the bank before, but it does seem like a pretty cool idea.

Thanks!

Mark

 

A guy on one of the detecting forums I read went to a bank in Lawton OK, and bought $100 in half dollars to searce for silver. When he did he found every roll was solid '64 Kennedys. Every one.

 

Nice one Willie! I'm only 19 and we're not technically married. I just refer to her as "the wife" because she's enough of a ball and chain to qualify. Just kidding, but back to coins. I got the itch again, so I have 7 boxes coming in tomorrow.

Mark, there isn't really a set procedure for searching through the coins, but when you go to cash them in, try to find a bank that has a coin machine so you don't have to roll them again yourself. Also, I would like include a little caveat for you. If you back read this thread you will see some great finds, but just remember that it takes a lot of boxes to come up with these coins. Personally, I've been doing this for about 9 months, and I go through 6 boxes a week. If I can still do math (doubtful) thats over 200k halves. In all those, I've found only 1 Barber half. So, jsut remember that you won't strike it rich on most boxes. However, I think that its time for a little update on what I've found since I started searching:
Barber
1907-O
Walker 178 (including some semi-keys)
Franklin 136 (I actually did manage to pull a complete set from boxes)
1964 Kennedy 67
1965-69 Kennedy 747
Proofs 17
Silver Proof 1
1893 Columbian Expo Half
1974-D DDO 3

I've had a ton of fun so far! Its great to open a box and see a Walker or Franklin staring back at you. Also, the 250oz or so of silver is pretty neat! Best of luck to all you roll searchers and keep posting those results.

 

Mark,
Tols gave you good advice, I'll add some tomorrow, it's too late tonight, though.

 

The bank called today and said my box of halves was in so I'll pick them up tomorrow. Maybe if I'm lucky, one of the boxes The Cave Troll or TOLS196024 get accidently showed up at my bank. I'd love to find something older than a Kennedy in the box.

 

Good luck!! Just remember that for every "mother lode" box we have found we have had to endure dozens of boxes that had nothing in them.

 

Just go to your bank and ask if they have any rolls of half dollars. You will likely get a funny look and a response like "I've got two coins, but no rolls". Then you need to press a little farther and ask if there are any halves in the vault. Some banks/tellers will be helpful (I'm wishing you one of them) and others will act put out as if you'd asked them to travel across the Klondike in winter to get you halves. Either way politeness and persistence are your best tools. Next ask if they can order boxes/bags of halves for you. You may need to speak to the vault manager to have this question answered. If they can great! If not, ask why. If that answer is one that you can't get around, then try a different bank.

Many banks will charge you a fee for rolled coin if you are not a customer, so when you find a bank that will order boxes/bags of halves for you then open an account. (The bank that has been so good to me is in my Wal-Mart, and I opened an account there that I only ever use for buying halves. I think the account has $2.10 in it and that number hasn't changed for nearly 6 months, except when I deposit checks in expectation of halves coming in).

When you find a bank that will order boxes for you, then ask when you pick them up. Just ask what armored car company they use for delivering coins. Once you know where you are getting your coins from (as in what armored car company is delivering them), then find a different bank that you would like to return them to and ask what armored car company handles their coins. This second bank can be found over the phone, just ask for the vault manager.

Once you've found a bank to return your coins to then ask the vault manager how they prefer to handle coin deposits and ask if there are any fees. There will almost always be fees for non-customers, but many banks won't charge a fee for customers, so you may end up opening another bank account. I have 3 banks that I routinely return halves to and one of them wants them wrapped and the other two don't, so it depends on the bank. If they want them rolled, then just open one end of the roll and then refill it once you've looked through the coins and refold the top down, there is no need to incur additional expenses here.

Yep, that is a good synopsis. I keep anything 1970 or older, anything with an S mintmark, anything on this list, anything dated 1987, andything dated 2002-2006, anything dated 1982, 1985, 1986, or 1999 that is in AU+ condition, plus I have an uncirculated set of Kennedy's, so one of each date and Mint Mark in unc. I recommend that you do this as it will give you some enjoyment of the searching at the beginning even if you don't find a bunch of silver.

When I get a box, then I open it up and dump the rolls onto my desk/sofa and relax. Searching is hard on your eyes and neck/back (leaning over the coins for hours on end), so find a place with very good lighting where you can relax comfortably. Then I take a roll and open it by carefully unrolling one end. I use a letter opener to quickly and easily facilitate this step. Then I use my thumb to press the coins out of the roll into my hand. I glance at the edges of the coins and pull out any silver coins first (they are usually obvious since they have white rims instead of the clad coins' copper colored rims). Next I go through the coins one at a time looking at the date first, mint mark second, and then if it is one of the dates that has a possible doubled die, then I use a loupe to look at the coin. If it is a 1982, 1985, 1986, or 1999 then I check it's condition, to see if I want to keep it. Also, if the coin is gem uncirculated, I pull it out to compare it to my uncirculated set to see if it is an upgrade. I put all the coins that I want to keep in a stack/bucket and the reroll the unwanted coins (obviously you don't want to reroll them if you're bank wants them loose). When I've pulled all the coins I want/might want then I sort the coins that I have pulled out of the rolls by date. I roll up the silver and put it in away and then I sort the other coins.

No problem, I hope I helped! The real key is to not get discouraged by bad results, we all have bad boxes, and those of us sorting the most boxes are also the ones who see the most bad boxes. That said the key is volume. The more boxes you sort, the better your odds of finding a great box. My average is about 1-1.5% of the coins searched are silver, so that means that a $500 box averages about 10-15 silver coins, but remember that that average counts my good boxes as well as my bad, and very few boxes are "average."

Chris

 

Well, I picked-up my "box" of halves today. This is what I got



Do most people get an actual box or do you sometimes get a bunch of rolls like this? I was thinking I was probably going to be looking through somebody elses rejects when this roll caught my eye



I took a closer look and it had Don't Give Out written on it in faded pen. That got my hopes up. The top coin was a 1988-D, but under that was

4 1964
4 1965
2 1966
1 1967
7 1968-D

Not bad but somebody back in time was mad when they went to look for this roll. In the rest of the rolls I found

1 1964
1 1966
5 1967
4 1968-D
1 1969-D

I haven't looked through the rest for 1987s, 74-D DDOs, or other keepers yet. No pre-Kennedys but overall not too bad.

I do have one question, if you do the math on the roll I listed there were only 19 halves so it was 1 short. I'm not sure if any of the other rolls were short but I'm going to do a count tomorrow. How often to you end up with shorted rolls when buying boxes? Since you already took the rolls out of the bank I'm sure your stuck with the shorted rolls. Do you just chalk it up the the price of finding the silver? Have you ever had so many shorted rolls in a box that it wasn't balanced out by what you found?

 

I always get the actual boxes from the Fed. As they come in true shotgun rolls, they are never short. Nice finds and good luck!

 

fropa,
That is not a box of halves. My guess is that you went to a branch bank and they just sent out an in house order for $500 in halves and it was supplied from the vault of one of the other branches of the bank. Those lots are hit or miss, sometimes you will find tons of stuff (Billy found grampa's old silver stash and decided that he would buy baseball cards so he took the coins to the bank) or they have been searched by someone doing the same thing as you and you will find nothing. Here's to hoping it's the former.

A true box comes in 2 forms (that I know of). the first is a flat cardboard box that holds the rolls in a 5x10 roll rectangle. those rolls are white with yellow printed paper and they are mechanically rolled on both ends. (incidentally I have had all of my best boxes in this style). The other style box is a cube that holds the rolls in a 5x5x2 block. These rolls are white with brown/gray printing and again they are mechanically rolled on both ends.

Here is a picture of what the 2 stle rolls look like. The paper on your rolls is the kind that banks use to hand-roll their own coins. You hardly ever see it.