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I'm sure there are casual viewers of this site who don't carefully read everything that is published. A short while back I became intrigued with the success that saabman was having going through half dollars. I reached out to him, but apparently he didn't track the results in total- other than reporting on this site. So I became curious, because it seemed that he was doing quite well.

I decided to create an Excel spreadsheet to write down the results of his frequent postings in the Half Dollars found threads on this site. He typically gets three $500 boxes per week. This is what I've found:

As of 8/26/18 (yesterday) saabman showed activity from April of this year until now that included a total of 47 boxes gone through. From those boxes he found 141 silver halves, which is exactly 3.00 halves per box. And that included plenty of boxes where he found nothing!

There was a period from December of last year until April of this year where he didn't post anything. I believe he said his previous bank closed and he was in the process of trying to find a new place to source halves.

Before the period of inactivity, if we look at the year of 2017 he went through 89 boxes and averaged 1.3 silver halves per box.

I did reach out to saabman before publishing this post. First of all, congratulations on being such a model of consistency with regards to your efforts and results. Many have given up on looking through rolls and this is a great example of what hard work can do for you! Anyone who thinks that he is lucky is simply missing the boat.

At the end of his posts saabman always says "Cerca trova"- I was curious about the meaning of that. It means "Seek and you shall find." I think that is a very appropriate thing to say. Congrats, saabman, on your successes as documented here. I hope that you continue to experience the success that you deserve.

In this world two similar traits stand out to facilitate success, persistence and diligence. The Saabman has them both most assuredly as the dude abides. Kudos.

Saabman must live in some small, po-dunk town or had access to some long lost bank vault that was recently opened. I've lived in a few larger cities and I used to search boxes of halves. I stopped in 2005. The chances of finding 90% Ag halves these days is very, very low... almost impossible. Too much time and effort to open skunk box after skunk box, then you have to dump all of them.

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:Saabman must live in some small, po-dunk town or had access to some long lost bank vault that was recently opened. I've lived in a few larger cities and I used to search boxes of halves. I stopped in 2005. The chances of finding 90% Ag halves these days is very, very low... almost impossible. Too much time and effort to open skunk box after skunk box, then you have to dump all of them.

If you stopped in 2005 you stopped way too soon in many areas. I am in a metro area of 1 million+ and continued to have very good results until 2010 or so. Until that time probably 1 in 60-70 halves was silver. Now it is more like 1 in 400-500.

Recyclersteve wrote:

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:Saabman must live in some small, po-dunk town or had access to some long lost bank vault that was recently opened. I've lived in a few larger cities and I used to search boxes of halves. I stopped in 2005. The chances of finding 90% Ag halves these days is very, very low... almost impossible. Too much time and effort to open skunk box after skunk box, then you have to dump all of them.

If you stopped in 2005 you stopped way too soon in many areas. I am in a metro area of 1 million+ and continued to have very good results until 2010 or so. Until that time probably 1 in 60-70 halves was silver. Now it is more like 1 in 400-500.

I didn't stop too soon. I ran all the math. Quite simply, the return I was getting was no longer worth the time and effort. You also have to factor in the time it takes to make the dumps and the gasoline usage. At current prices you are much better off buying 90% halves, put them away and wait.

I used to box search halves in the 80's and 90's. The returns were quite substantial and well worth the effort. JFK 90% was plentiful... lots of Franklin's and even Walking Libs. The amount of 40% I was pulling out of each box was amazing.

Good point. If you have to go out of your way to find the halves and it is hard to dump them, it may indeed not be worth the effort.