Best Practices for Sorting Halves

[Recyclersteve]

It's been a while since I aggressively went to banks and got rolls/boxes of halves. That said, some of us are still active sorters and have lots more expertise than others. There is another thread about $500 boxes of halves, but let's make this one just halves in general. I mention halves because it appears the general consensus is that half dollar rolls are typically more productive than dime or quarter rolls.

Here are some questions I'd like to see feedback on...

What do you do when you see rolls with markings on them, such as someone's initials?
What do you do when you see bank wrapped rolls that appear to be loose on one end, as if perhaps someone went through them?
Do you save impaired proofs if they are NOT silver?
Do you save 2002 to date coins (which have lower mintages)?
Do you buy Loomis rolls?
Do you buy Brinks rolls?
Do you ask your teller to check with other tellers or do you consider that rude?
Do you ask your teller to see if that have any other odd or unusual coins or bills in their cash drawer?
If someone says they only have 1 or 2 halves, will you accept those or is there a certain minimum you are looking for?

highroller4321 has these tips on another thread, where he said:

"You are always better off with small local banks.
You are always better off getting ALL of the half dollars a bank has. (This doesn't work if you live in a big town)"

Please feel free to add other questions or comments as well.

I can appreciate someone who is new to sorting halves being enthusiastic and wanting to be helpful. However, please realize that if you had, for instance, one $500 box of Loomis halves that had a single 40%er in it, that doesn't make Loomis rolls the mother of all opportunities.

Please try to be as specific as possible with your tips as others (including this guy) are looking for any helpful nuggets that are available.

[AGgressive Metal]

presence of initials or other special markings doesn't automatically mean you are about to get skunked but they often do - make a note and remember if there are ones to avoid, you may have a local "competitor"

[68Camaro]

I gave it a shot here for some months - years ago - but every box was pre-sorted and re-wrapped and after a few dozen boxes of the same it was obvious I was sitting in a "mature" market where someone(s) had beat me to the punch. So I stopped looking here. When the topic came up with my cousin in law - also a PM advocate - I explained to him the theory but dampened his enthusiam and expectations telling him that while there are some pockets of results in the country, they are few. He started CRH anyway and to my complete shock it turned out that his area had NOT been searched (I still don't know why). He went in big time and for months going well into a second year he was literally pulling in hundreds of silver halves. An embarrassment of riches, actually. So much so that he wouldn't post the take on RC for both fear that he would be perceived as boasting, as well as some proprietary concern that he wanted to mine the field that he had discovered. I visited him last summer and had the thrill for the first time of pulling nearly a dozen silver halves from a few boxes that he had set aside for me. He has started to exhaust his market so it is tapering off. But the point is - there are still some unclaimed territories.

[Recyclersteve]

I gave it a shot here for some months - years ago - but every box was pre-sorted and re-wrapped and after a few dozen boxes of the same it was obvious I was sitting in a "mature" market where someone(s) had beat me to the punch. So I stopped looking here. When the topic came up with my cousin in law - also a PM advocate - I explained to him the theory but dampened his enthusiam and expectations telling him that while there are some pockets of results in the country, they are few. He started CRH anyway and to my complete shock it turned out that his area had NOT been searched (I still don't know why). He went in big time and for months going well into a second year he was literally pulling in hundreds of silver halves. An embarrassment of riches, actually. So much so that he wouldn't post the take on RC for both fear that he would be perceived as boasting, as well as some proprietary concern that he wanted to mine the field that he had discovered. I visited him last summer and had the thrill for the first time of pulling nearly a dozen silver halves from a few boxes that he had set aside for me. He has started to exhaust his market so it is tapering off. But the point is - there are still some unclaimed territories.

Without saying exactly where your friend lives, can you indicate whether it is a large metropolitan area or a town of 25k-50k people to give us at least an inkling of hope?

[68Camaro]

It's a small-ish (maybe 20K) town in a cluster of similar towns, that are essentially in the outer suburbs - on the fringe of a large metro area. A metro area in which the perimeter hasn't moved outward a lot for the past number of decades. (A little, but not a lot.) When you look inward toward the city you see almost nothing but buildings. When you look outward you immediately start to see farms, and fairly quickly nothing but farms. The proximity to a major metro area is what caused me to try to lower his expectations. (I'm in a bit of the same situation, but a bit closer in.) To my surprise, I was wrong about his area.

[AGgressive Metal]

The halves are ultimately circulating through whatever armored car processing branch services those local banks (virtually no banks have their own wrapping/boxing anymore and they rarely store much coin due to insurance), so when the branch bank orders halves they get boxes wrapped from coin that was deposited or spent somewhere, but it might be from the nearest metro area where the sorting/boxing operation is, rather than the local small town or rural community. And if the armored co orders a skid of halves through the Federal Reserve system, it might even be trucked in from an entirely different district. In this sense, a given area is theoretically never FULLY tapped out, but having an active competitor will make it much harder on you. If it was not so, you'd never find "D" coins on the East Coast and vice versa.

[JadeDragon]

I rarely find a silver half but I try to remember to buy them all. I've never ordered 1/2s because, well I have a BoA account the closest branch is 45 min away and my schedule is unpredictable. Last silver half I scored was from a Canadian bank. I ask for oddities and obsolite coins and bills and sometimes find interesting stuff.

[Recyclersteve]

I ask for oddities and obsolite coins and bills and sometimes find interesting stuff.

The last time I asked a teller for oddities, she pointed at me and told me I am an oddity!

[Recyclersteve]

I meant to add another best practice for going through rolls. Let's say you have a $10 roll of halves (20 coins). If all the coins have the heads side facing the same direction, then almost certainly the coins have been gone through by a collector or hoarder of silver.

The odds of 20 coins just randomly facing the same direction is less than 1 in 500,000! Imagine what is for rolls of nickels/quarters (40 coins) or dimes (50 coins). Staggering odds!

Two other points about this:

1. The 1976 Bicentennial coins were the only year where you could tell the date by looking at either side of the coin. So if there is a roll where 17 coins face the same direction and the other three are 1976's, then that roll has likely been gone through by a collector.

2. Also, I've noticed that when putting coins back into wrappers after looking for silver, perhaps 2-4 of them would be facing the opposite direction of the rest of the rolls. My point here is that if perhaps 16-18 of the coins face the same direction, you can be pretty darn certain they've been gone through by a collector, as opposed to being wrapped by a bank teller.

Bank tellers have frequently been stunned when I tell them I can decipher (with pretty good certainty) by looking at 2-3 rolls from a box of $500 whether a collector has gone through them.

[bankmining]

This probably isn't a best practice sorting tip, but I thought I'd share a story. Back when I was sorting halves 6 or 7 years ago I came upon a roll (not from a box) that I initially thought had a couple of silvers. My usual habit was edge checking, then double checking by dropping the coins from one hand into the palm of my other hand to sound check. It was at this point that I realized they weren't silver but had been sprayed on the edges with silver colored paint.

Over the course of the next year or so I came across thousands of these from many source banks, usually by asking for customer wrapped rolls. Some were scattered among rolls and many times entire rolls were painted. I'm guessing it was some sorter in my area using this method to discourage others. I guess it was clever, it definitely frustrated me a lot. Not sure if it was legal or not, but he sure spent a lot of effort trying to break the competition .

[chris6084]

The halves are ultimately circulating through whatever armored car processing branch services those local banks (virtually no banks have their own wrapping/boxing anymore and they rarely store much coin due to insurance), so when the branch bank orders halves they get boxes wrapped from coin that was deposited or spent somewhere, but it might be from the nearest metro area where the sorting/boxing operation is, rather than the local small town or rural community. And if the armored co orders a skid of halves through the Federal Reserve system, it might even be trucked in from an entirely different district. In this sense, a given area is theoretically never FULLY tapped out, but having an active competitor will make it much harder on you. If it was not so, you'd never find "D" coins on the East Coast and vice versa.

How often would coins travel that far across the country to introduce D mints into the East Coast and vice versa? I always figured travelers did most of the 'cross contamination'

For example, when I traveled extensively for my job, I frequently picked up a box of pennies. Many times, that travel was on the East Coast, and I brought home a box of mostly P cents that got dumped in the San Antonio area (D mint territory). Now I know that is not a normal circumstance, but it would be common for travelers to have a pocket full of change from normal transactions on business trips or vacations that they bring back home and eventually cash in at the bank. I would think that alone is enough to bring in a healthy amount of coins from the other half of the country.

[OneBiteAtATime]

I gave it a shot here for some months - years ago - but every box was pre-sorted and re-wrapped and after a few dozen boxes of the same it was obvious I was sitting in a "mature" market where someone(s) had beat me to the punch. So I stopped looking here. When the topic came up with my cousin in law - also a PM advocate - I explained to him the theory but dampened his enthusiam and expectations telling him that while there are some pockets of results in the country, they are few. He started CRH anyway and to my complete shock it turned out that his area had NOT been searched (I still don't know why). He went in big time and for months going well into a second year he was literally pulling in hundreds of silver halves. An embarrassment of riches, actually. So much so that he wouldn't post the take on RC for both fear that he would be perceived as boasting, as well as some proprietary concern that he wanted to mine the field that he had discovered. I visited him last summer and had the thrill for the first time of pulling nearly a dozen silver halves from a few boxes that he had set aside for me. He has started to exhaust his market so it is tapering off. But the point is - there are still some unclaimed territories.

Makes me want to probe my area a little more.