In March 2011, my six year old daughter and I started a coin roll hunting project to find silver coins. After four months, we have stopped the effort since the project yielded very few silver coins.
We searched five boxes of half dollars (5000 coins) and one box of nickels (2000 coins). The search yielded five silver half dollars (2 1964's, 1 1967 and 2 1968's). We didn't find any silver nickels, but we did find a lot of old nickels. The best nickel find was a nearly perfect 1938 Jefferson nickel. My guess is that someone spent a coin obtained from a coin collection.
While I enjoyed the time with our daughter, I've decided the return on coin roll hunting isn't worth the effort. Maybe our next step is to start a coin collection, and accept the silver coins as a bonus find. Then it would feel like progress was being made.
I just wish I had thought of coin roll hunting when I was collecting coins in the sixties. I probably would have filled many more of the old coin spaces in my coin collecting books.
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3 comments:
Wow! I'm surprised that you found as many silver half dollars as you did. From your results, can you conclude that the odds of finding a silver half dollar is about 1 in 1000? So if one were to get a hold of $500 in half dollars, they can expect to find one silver coin?
Based on the silver content, the 1964's would be worth more than the 1967 or 1968 ones. Also, when you say that you "ordered a box" of coins, where exactly did you get them from? I assume that most big banks have coin rolls, but I don't know if they keep entire boxes on hand.
I was also surprised that you didn't find any silver nickels at all. On rare occasions, I've received a silver dime or nickel in my change. I believe that most people don't even know silver nickels exist since they were only minted during WWII.
Yes... please share how you "ordered boxes."
I know your hunt wasn't terribly successful... but I'd like to try a couple of boxes, just to see what I can find.
Thanks!
@ PFStock and Anonymous,
I have a good relationship with our bank and asked the head teller to order a "box" of half dollar rolls ($500). I've heard that banks may be charged for ordering a box, but I was not charged. It is one of the larger banks and they were OK with doing several boxes for us. But I sensed that they didn't want to do it on a frequent basis, especially since I returned most of the coins (rolled) to them.
I have found a bank with a free coin counter (but won't take halves) so I may try small change rolls.
While fun, I think the better return is just to buy silver coins in bulk, after considering the value of time invested. However, for me, the time with our daughter was priceless:-)
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