It's been a few years since I was actively searching Halves, COVID kind of put an end to it for me. I had literally searched through millions of Halves and found thousands of Silvers, hundreds of Die Varieties, and compiled several complete (including '70-D) sets of MS Kennedys at face value. I recently searched through 8 boxes, primarily to update my set with the latest years, and things sure have changed! Every box is nearly full of 2021 -2023 dates. I know the Treasury resumed ordering half dollars for circulation so I understand why, but I'm surprised at the level to which they have displaced all the millions of older halves. I've heard that the resumption of placing halves into circulation was in response to the coin shortage, but has anyone seen them actually circulate? This sure does reduce the likelihood of making older finds with the added volume of new coins to search through. It also makes the purchase of rolls and bags from the Mint a bit pointless as so many of these new halves are just as pristine. I still managed to make a few finds, 1 Franklin, 2 90% Kennedys, a half dozen 40%, and something much less common, a Barber Half. It's beat up to an almost unrecognizable state but was still a fun find, and silver is silver! I'm not sure that the current situation will keep me in the game much longer though, it's too tedious to order, search, and return thousands of the same dated coins over and over. I miss the old days!
If not issued for circulation I have no explanation. It seems about 30% of every box lately are 2023s, almost all Ds Interestingly I have seen very few 2024s yet, and only 1 P
2021, 2022, and 2023 they did issue some half dollars into circulation in order to alleviate the coin shortage, so a lot of these do show up in boxes. 2024 not sure about, Red Book claims they weren't issued for circulation but that's a projection they made in the 2025 Red Book, actually published in about April 2024 so that could just be a guess on their part.
