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Curious as to the odds of finding silver in rolls of half dollars?

Well, there is only one way for you to find out ----- It costs almost nothing, and takes a half hour or less to know the answer, and a couple minutes to return the clad coins. Try several different banks (really, several different armored service delivery companies). You will find some. Maybe not enough to keep you looking, but maybe ---- read the forum section on searching for silver; different areas produce different results.

Tracking Thread Only/Official 2012 Half Dollar and other coins

Country also provides a wealth of statistics found at the beginning of that thread.

Impossible. There hasn't been silver in US coinage in over 40 years.

Don't listen to CardsNCoins. He wants to get all the remaining SILVER.

Test the waters out by visiting your local banks. It's always good to start off being friendly and not too demanding at first too. Ask them to order you a $500 box of halves and see what shows up. Also, ask if they have any loose halves in their teller's tray or a few scattered rolls. I always take ALL the halves they offer, and look at them later. The rule of thumb: NEVER BRING THE HALVES BACK TO THE BANK WHERE YOU GOT THEM. Of course, you may have lots of competition; but you may not. So, try your luck.

Aren't all coins silver? They all look silver to me, well besides the 24kt gold presidential coins, but that is a different story. So you should have 100% success as long as you don't get pennies or presidential gold, they will all be silver.

BlackOut wrote:Aren't all coins silver? They all look silver to me, well besides the 24kt gold presidential coins, but that is a different story. So you should have 100% success as long as you don't get pennies or presidential gold, they will all be silver.

I was told the pennies are all copper too. Some people even call them coppers.

JadeDragon wrote:

BlackOut wrote:Aren't all coins silver? They all look silver to me, well besides the 24kt gold presidential coins, but that is a different story. So you should have 100% success as long as you don't get pennies or presidential gold, they will all be silver.

I was told the pennies are all copper too. Some people even call them coppers.

Some people call those Real Cents!

My best luck has been customer rolled rolls or loose. I always take all of those if a bank has them. I have never, never got silver out of a machined rolled roll yet. I have only done about 10 boxes over the years and nothing. Now as for loose I hit one every now and then, Last week was one 40% in a loose stack but silver is silver. Keep hunting!!

Good Luck.

Thanks for all the replies. I was just curious as to if I should focus more on copper pennies or silver hunting.

jmacri01 wrote:Curious as to the odds of finding silver in rolls of half dollars?

If you want to guess at the ODDS, your best bet it to study the tracking threads that the members here update with their skunks and finds. I briefly looked through the half dollar searching results for Jan-Apr of this year:

Boxes searched - 1856 (909 had silver, 947 were skunks)
Silver halves found - 5333

So, based on this information, there is a 49% chance that a $500 box will contain any silver halves. Overall, there were 2.9 silver halves per box searched. Hopefully you are lucky enough to avoid the skunk curse, the boxes that contained any silver at all averaged 5.9 silver coins per.

Of course this look into it is based on a small sample size and there are many factors that will influence your success rate. If you are interested in searching halves, just go get some. The only thing that is guaranteed is that you will not find any if you don't look. Good luck.

For me personally, I have found more reward in sticking to pennies. Sure, it is fun to dream of hitting a jackpot silver box, but that rarely happens. I'd rather stick with the guaranteed return that pennies provide, I know that every box will give me 600-800 copper pennies and a couple wheats on the side.

I would hate to search through a $500 box to find nothing.

The off the cuff figures above suggest there is close to a 50/50 chance of finding silver in a box of 500. Extending that logic a bit, I feel that there is a 50/50 chance of finding one in a roll of CWR. So I always ask if they have any half dollars and just search those few that wind up showing up from random drops by customers.

jmacri01 wrote:I would hate to search through a $500 box to find nothing.

Yes, but you could find 20+ silvers...
Just do it. You know you want to try. Just one box...

I have purchased two $500 boxes of halves. The first contained 9 40% silvers and the 2nd contained only 1 40% silver. Better than getting skunked though. I bout one box of dimes and was skunked with those.

My last two boxes, one skunk, and the next had 3 1964's, and one 1968, picking up two boxes tomorrow. This is how it works for me, is I'll get 3 or 4 skunk boxes in a row, then I'll go pick up two boxes, cancel my order and then I'll find something.

Looks like quite a few of you are having moderate success with the halves! Hope it keeps up!

Went through the two boxes, found 1 1968 half dollar.

i'm sure its posted somewhere else, but what types of banks do you guys buy rolls of halves from? i only have banking relationships with the TBTF banks (and a CU that has no branches) and they don't take in customer rolls, so all I'd ever get are rolls from brinks which i would think would be pointless to sort.

flyingboujanero wrote:i'm sure its posted somewhere else, but what types of banks do you guys buy rolls of halves from? i only have banking relationships with the TBTF banks (and a CU that has no branches) and they don't take in customer rolls, so all I'd ever get are rolls from brinks which i would think would be pointless to sort.

Almost all banks, regional and national, will order halves. Brinks isn't pointless, it's where a lot of people find their silver.

db23 wrote:

flyingboujanero wrote:i'm sure its posted somewhere else, but what types of banks do you guys buy rolls of halves from? i only have banking relationships with the TBTF banks (and a CU that has no branches) and they don't take in customer rolls, so all I'd ever get are rolls from brinks which i would think would be pointless to sort.

Almost all banks, regional and national, will order halves. Brinks isn't pointless, it's where a lot of people find their silver.

oh ok- thanks! guess i will give it a try.

This month I stepped it up with the halves and am sorting and dumping between 15 to 20k a week. In my opinion... Unless your going to do some volumes, it isn't worth it. Once the infrastructure is there its all about volume and percentages. When I started I did two boxes a week and it was hit or miss on. A weekly basis. Ther more you sort the more opportunity you have to average those boxes against 20 others sitting next to you waiting to be done. There are fees associated with larger volume though. You can't deposit 15k in the bank with out incurring some charge.

mtldealer wrote:This month I stepped it up with the halves and am sorting and dumping between 15 to 20k a week.

Your pickup and dump banks must use different armored services.