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Is it realistic to fill out an album of Kennedy half dollars from the wild? I kind of want to buy one but if I'll never be able to finish it I won't...

We did it. Go for it. Some of the later years are only in mint sets and might be harder to find. This is a older scan but we are up to date from mint sets.

Nice. I don't really want to buy the mint sets though...

If you are searching boxes of halves, you should still be able to find all the recent year halves I would think. I saw them from the year 2000 and up all the time. Never saved them and don't know if there are specific years that would be harder to find though. I would imagine that you could fill one of these books pretty quick sorting boxes. Toughest one would probably be the 1970. Would probably be tough to find that in a box. Just start saving them loose and if you get enough to fill the book or come close, then you can buy the book. If you are worried about spending the money on the book and then not being able to fill it, that might be the way to go.

Hm, maybe I'll do that.

I would have to say that the half dollar album is by far one of the easiest albums to fill today when starting from scratch/zero. GO FOR IT. This is especially true if you buy half dollar boxes even just once in a huge while. Plus, you can just keep replacing the average ones with newer, shiny BU halves as you find them (upgrading). I would buy just the regular book that does NOT include the proofs; you will find proofs in $500 boxes on occasion, but not enough to warrant buying the proofs book.

As NHsorter mentioned above, the 1970 is the key coin and is the hardest to find (although I think CardsnCoins found one once from circulation). Most folks at coin shows will sell it to you for a premium but not a huge premium. The other coins that are only slightly hard to find are the 1986/1987 halves; still, I have found plenty of them in circulation (I only save them if they are BU). So in my opinion, the 1970 silver half is the only one that you will have to seek out manually from a dealer at a coin show; just trade it for a 1965-1969 silver half and a little extra!