Results from Searching Over $90k in Halves

[Recyclersteve]

I have been keeping an Excel spreadsheet since 5/28/04 which tracks the half dollars I have received from banks and what percent of them are silver. That spreadsheet just surpassed the round number of $90,000 in face value searched. I thought it might be good to share the results with others who search for silver. Here are some of the specifics:

$90,028 in face value searched (180,056 half dollars)
128 were pre 1964 Franklins or Walkers with just a few Barbers likely mixed in
349 were from 1964, so 90%ers
2,351 were from 1965-1970, so 40%ers (yes, I did get a single 1970 half)
2,828 total silver halves were found (1.6% of the coins searched)

I found 10 or more silver halves 27 times up until 1/17/14 and only 1 more time since then (on 6/7/19)- so 28 times total

There were 1,864 banks where I got half dollars, so 1,864 lines of data on this spreadsheet.
With the analysis included the spreadsheet now has 2,040 lines of data in it.

Coins were found in 33 different states- 11 of those states yielded silver coins.

Any questions? Please feel free to ask.

This has been a LOT of work, but it is a labor of love.

P.S. I am of the firm opinion that halves are MUCH BETTER to search than dimes or quarters. My percentages would have likely been much lower with other denominations.

[coindood]

Nice totals.

What dates were your oldest? How about the lowest mintage? Did you keep track of any foreign finds?

[Recyclersteve]

Didn’t track all the dates perfectly and never got anything truly valuable. That said, the oldest I saw on the spreadsheet was (2) 1940-P’s and a 1941-P. Lowest mintage was the (2) 1970-D’s- 2+ million minted.

May have gotten a Mexican coin once. Got 2 commemorative halves- ‘82 Washington and ‘86 Immigrant.

[Recyclersteve]

Let me add another tidbit.

I had a period from 2004-2010 that I called the BONANZA years. 1 out of 50.9 halves searched then was silver.

Then there was the 2011-2022 SLUMP years. Only 1 out of 239.6 halves searched during those years was silver.

[Saabman]

Truly impressive! Thank you for sharing!

I feel your pain in later years and agree halves are much better to search than other denominations.

[coindood]

Didn’t track all the dates perfectly and never got anything truly valuable. That said, the oldest I saw on the spreadsheet was (2) 1940-P’s and a 1941-P. Lowest mintage was the (2) 1970-D’s- 2+ million minted.

May have gotten a Mexican coin once. Got 2 commemorative halves- ‘82 Washington and ‘86 Immigrant.

Interesting. Many people will get an occasional British penny in the mix too.

So you don't recall the Barber dates? Always fascinated to know the oldest halves someone finds.

[JadeDragon]

I feel much better about my pitiful results with this data. I rarely find silver but that is because I can only search when I’m in the US side of the border and have extra time to hit up banks. That is an impressive number of banks visited. Do you just hit up random banks and ask for all the 1/2s they have?

[cwgii]

I never got around to making stats on dimes or halves as the success rate is so low. Bad enough my pennies are at 12, with nickels at 2-3 percent.

Every bank I go in I ask for funny money. Lol and if I forget half the tells will tell me anyway. Sorry nothing today.

[Silver4face]

Steve, you mentioned 33 states. What pct of these are from your home state? Has to be over 90 percent I would think. Also what is the largest amount that you searched in one day? Also, if you buy one or two loose halves from teller trays, do you count them in your spreadsheet?

[Recyclersteve]

Do you just hit up random banks and ask for all the 1/2s they have?

I go to lots of banks where I don’t have accounts. If they say anything, I tell them that most tellers don’t like to have to count oddball stuff like halves and $2 bills over and over again each day. That comment may get them to change their mind and let me have their halves.

[Recyclersteve]

Steve, you mentioned 33 states. What pct of these are from your home state? Has to be over 90 percent I would think. Also what is the largest amount that you searched in one day? Also, if you buy one or two loose halves from teller trays, do you count them in your spreadsheet?

208 of 2,830 silver halves found (7.3%) were from out of state. So the other 92.7% were from my home state.

If I get even a single half dollar (silver or not) from a bank, I document it. The only thing I don't document is when the bank doesn't have any halves to give me.

The largest amount searched in a single day was $1,379.50 in face value on 9/18/12. That day I got 0 pre-1964 halves, 2 from 1964, and 25 that were 40%ers. So 27 silver halves that day.

[Recyclersteve]

Just for grins, here are the times that I got over 100 silver halves from a single bank in a single day. Note that if I got 100 total from several banks in a single day I am not counting it. It would take too much time to go through such a big spreadsheet to find that kind of data. So here you go:

461 silver halves from a single bank on 5/28/04, the very first entry on my spreadsheet (62 from 1964 and 399 that were 40%ers)- the teller told me she had been saving them for another teller for a month- he never took them off her hands and she was passing them onto me!- $310.50 face- a whopping 74.2% of the coins were silver!

169 silver halves from a single bank on 7/5/07 (all were 40%ers)- this was from a $500 box- I wonder if some novice coin collector didn't know that halves after 1964 still had 40% silver in them- $500 face- 16.9% silver

147 silver halves from a single bank on 5/24/10 (again, all were 40%ers- hmmm!)- $123.00 face- 59.8% silver

101 silver halves from a single bank on 8/23/08 (2 from 1964 plus 99 that were 40%ers)- $68.50 face- 73.7% silver

[Recyclersteve]

Didn’t track all the dates perfectly and never got anything truly valuable. That said, the oldest I saw on the spreadsheet was (2) 1940-P’s and a 1941-P. Lowest mintage was the (2) 1970-D’s- 2+ million minted.

May have gotten a Mexican coin once. Got 2 commemorative halves- ‘82 Washington and ‘86 Immigrant.

Interesting. Many people will get an occasional British penny in the mix too.

So you don't recall the Barber dates? Always fascinated to know the oldest halves someone finds.

Don't recall the Barber dates. I didn't track them carefully by date. Sometimes I found so much silver that I didn't have the time to itemize every single date. So I'd record the amount of pre-1964 90%ers, the amount of 1964's and the amount of 40%ers. There were probably 2-3 Barbers and they were common dates or I'd have itemized them on my spreadsheet.

[Cu Penny Hoarder]

Let me add another tidbit.

I had a period from 2004-2010 that I called the BONANZA years. 1 out of 50.9 halves searched then was silver.

Then there was the 2011-2022 SLUMP years. Only 1 out of 239.6 halves searched during those years was silver.

This is the very reason I stopped searching halves many years ago... as times goes by, less and less silver. It's the same way today with Cu pennies.

Interesting info Steve, thanks.

[JadeDragon]

Part of the problem is dilution. Now that I can access the US side of the border again I’m finding a whole lot of 2018-2021 halves. No idea why they are minting more when no one wants or uses halves, but there are a ton of newish coins in Washington State at least.

[silverflake]

As a stats freak, I LOVE this kind of stuff. I tend to track things on excel too though nothing this grand.

Great work, keep it up!

Continue to stack!

[cwgii]

Wish I knew about such things years ago. But I do still like my paper notes

[Recyclersteve]

Thanks everyone for your kind words. Originally, I was gonna wait til I went through $100k in halves. Then along came COVID and it became a lot more difficult to go through large quantities of coins. It could be quite a few years before I hit the $100k level. And I don’t want to resort to doing stupid stuff like driving long distances to almost always get zero silver. So that’s why I decided on $90k instead of $100k.

[DC_Penny_Guy]

I'm curious what the numbers looked like over the past 4 years or so.

[Recyclersteve]

I'm curious what the numbers looked like over the past 4 years or so.

Here you go. I went back to 1/1/19, which is almost 4 years.

$4,320.50 in face value searched
0 Pre-64 halves
4 from 1964 found
50 of the 40%ers found
54 Total silver halves found

That's one silver half in every 160 searched, which is actually better than I expected.

That said, let me add a bit of commentary to the numbers. On a single bank visit while traveling out of town in June, 2019 I found 26 silver halves (25 were 40%ers). Since that day, I haven't found more than 4 silver halves on any bank trip. So it has been quite a dry spell.

I do think we are nearing a point where we will hear more about people finding large hoards of coins at banks as collectors die off and their survivors take them to banks. I think part of this is them rationalizing by saying "Heck, if grandpa thought the coins were worth something, he'd have sold them a long time ago. So I'll just take cash for them now so I don't have to go through the hassle of dealing with a coin shop."

[cwgii]

I'm curious what the numbers looked like over the past 4 years or so.

Here you go. I went back to 1/1/19, which is almost 4 years.

$4,320.50 in face value searched
0 Pre-64 halves
4 from 1964 found
50 of the 40%ers found
54 Total silver halves found

That's one silver half in every 160 searched, which is actually better than I expected.

That said, let me add a bit of commentary to the numbers. On a single bank visit while traveling out of town in June, 2019 I found 26 silver halves (25 were 40%ers). Since that day, I haven't found more than 4 silver halves on any bank trip. So it has been quite a dry spell.

I do think we are nearing a point where we will hear more about people finding large hoards of coins at banks as collectors die off and their survivors take them to banks. I think part of this is them rationalizing by saying "Heck, if grandpa thought the coins were worth something, he'd have sold them a long time ago. So I'll just take cash for them now so I don't have to go through the hassle of dealing with a coin shop."

That last sentence was proven two weeks ago. The assistant manager told me of an elderly lady fuming bags of silver. He tried to sto her. Her words, I can’t be bothered.