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Greetings board.
Hello - I've been searching halves for a while now and I usually come across a circulated proof every now and again. I usually throw it in a jar and give it to my niece but this last box believe it or not there were 162 proofs (1974 - 2004)?!!

Two questions from this newbie please... one, how/why do these end up in circulation? weird that they can cluster up all in one box. Prior to this i've only found about 30 or so in 5+ years.

And two, is there any value to these above face at all (any scarce years - some look really good, others not so much) but again circulated so the niece may get them all for X-mas.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

Welcome Hammer99!

I have also wondered how proofs get into circulation. I have found about a half dozen over the last year. 162 in one box is amazing!

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Hammer99 wrote:Two questions from this newbie please... one, how/why do these end up in circulation?

I hope you don't mind if I only provide a (partial) answer for one of your questions.

I often get proofs back with my change when I go to one of the larger coin dealers here in Vegas. The reason being that they buy a lot of collections, and end up with more proof sets that they could ever sell, or want to sell. So, any (non-silver) proof sets that have the slightest flaw to the cover or box will get cracked open and the coins given out as change. I imagine this is how a lot of proof coins end up in circulation.

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people that inherit proof coin collections, or received proof sets as gifts when they were younger and end up spending proof coins or cashing them in at coinstar once they discover how little a dealer will give them (or once a new Xbox game comes out that they want).

I appreciate your input fella's - thank you.

So obviously this proof dump came from one person. Wish they would have dropped a load of silver off instead but I always liked the way proofs look.