CRH 6/29/2013 : Teller Tray Yields Free Silver!

Saturdays on which I don't volunteer are one of my main days for picking up coins and today I was able to make it to 4 banks to get a ton of rolled coins. I haven't really had time to start going through them all, but I just had to share my first finds of the hunt.

I really love coin roll hunting through half dollars! I always ask for half dollars whenever I go to the bank and usually I'm told that they have none or very, very few that I can pick up. But I always try! Today it worked out for me a little better than usual. One of the source banks told me that they had $11 to give me and threw it in one of the bill envelopes and stapled it shut. I just put it in my backpack with the rest of my coins I asked for in my coin roll hunting and went on my way. When I got home I tore open the envelope, poured them out and realized that the first coin to fall out was a 1968 D 40% silver half dollar! Then, the next one was also a 1968 D silver. And the next was a 1968 D silver. Then the next.... they just kept coming!

Not the best photo of my finds, but it should do the trick!

CRH 6/29/2013 -- 18 40% Silver 1968 Half Dollars From the Bank!

In total,  18 out of the 22 half dollars making up my $11 order were 1968 D 40% silver Kennedy half dollars! This had to be a coin collection windfall that someone deposited. Finding that many silver coins in a teller tray isn't common at all, but having them all end up the  exact same year is way beyond coincidence. Maybe someone was stockpiling silver half dollars way back in 1968 but decided that they didn't want them any more and released them back into circulation. Guess they forgot about the silver part. Too bad!

1968 40% Silver Coin Value
As of this post, the silver price is 19.60/oz, which makes each one of these 40% silver half dollars worth about $2.90 each, or $2.40 over their face value. Since I found 18 of these, I made $43.20 over face value in the 30 seconds it took to make the transaction. The silver loophole is real!

This is my best single silver haul of the year so far and brings up my count of silver coins found this year to 42! The 5 magic words for free silver - without the box!

I still have hundreds of more dollars in nickel rolls, penny rolls, and rolled dimes to look through so I imagine that the good coin roll hunting finds will keep coming in!

CRH 6/25/2013 : Proof in the Nickels!

I've been trying to mix it up a little bit and get some variety in the coins that I'm searching, so you might start seeing more posts about the nickel and penny roll hunting that I've been doing.

I do my best to hit the nickels, but I almost never find anything worth sharing with you guys. I am currently working on a completing a Whitman Jefferson Nickel book entirely from coin roll hunting and I do occasionally find coins for it, but they usually aren't too special -- for example, I did fill my 1954 S nickel hole today. Since starting this blog, I haven't found a silver war nickel! Talk about a bad streak! 

Today, I was only able to get my hands on $10 in nickel rolls from my bank and even that was harder than it should have been since they were running low on their coin stocks. 3 of the 5 rolls were customer wrapped rolls (CWRs) so that was pretty promising. I dug into them and found a super shiny 1982 nickel that caught my attention. Then, I noticed the S mintmark upon closer inspection. This is officially my first proof coin that I've ever found coin roll hunting! It has some scratches so it's unlikely that I can get any real premium on it but free proof coins are never a bad thing. That makes me wonder how many proofs I may have been missing from edge-hunting the other denominations. Nickel roll hunting forces you to closely look at all of the obverses and reverses, so you have a better shot of noticing these cool rarities. Proofs are one of the few cases of NIFC nickels!

Here's an iPhone photo of my 1982 S Proof nickel that I found searching nickel rolls!

1982 S Nickel Proof Coin Found Coin Roll Hunting

How often do you guys find proof coins while coin roll hunting?

CRH 6/24/2013 : Dime Box Results in Dirty Silver!

Hey guys! As promised, I'm going to post the results of the $250 box of dimes that I posted about getting over the weekend. I had people guess how many silvers I'd find in the box and lo and behold, we have a winner, but the person was anonymous so we'll never know who they are.

I was thinking about doing a similar contest, but the winner who guesses the right number would win the silver. Not bad for you guys!

Ever wonder how many dimes are in a coin roll? The answer is 50 dimes, for a total of $5!

Back to the box! I only found 1 1957 silver dime and it was super dirty. In fact, I almost missed it while edge hunting. It was very well hidden in there. There's actual dirt down in the details of the coin which makes me think it was fully buried. Maybe it's a metal detecting find that the digger never noticed was silver and just mixed in with the clad. I've done my fair share of metal detecting and I have to admit that the coins do look a lot like this when they're pulled out of ground.

The back is pretty dirty so it's really hard to make out any details, but I don't think I can see a mint mark.

Silver coin number 24 for the year! I guess I know the 5 magic words for getting free silver from banks.... "Can I have a box?"

 CRH Find 6/23/2013: 1957 Dirty Silver Dime found in my $250 dime roll box!

Got a Box of Dimes -- Guess How Many Silvers I'll Find!

I'll make this post very quick today. I was able to pick up a $250 box of dimes at one of my local branches, so I thought it would be fun if you all tried to guess how many silver dimes I'll find when I search the 2500 coins in the box. I'm not going to be able to open it today, so you'll at least have a day to make your guesses before I publish the results!

Here's a tip: these rolls are likely machine wrapped, so they probably have a lower number of silvers in them compared to the customer wrapped (CWR) dime rolls.

Guess how many silver coins are in the box of dime rolls! Post in the comments below!

I'll try to post the results in the next few days!

Guess How Many Silver Dimes Are In This Dime Box!

What's the Best Bank for Coin Roll Hunting?

Today I opened a brand new bank account. For Coin Roll Hunting. Yes, that's right. Coin Roll Hunting. Otherwise, the features of the bank are pretty miserable. They're closed pretty much all of the times that I'm outside of work. Their fees for overdrawn accounts and other bank "services" are quite high. But, they don't charge for coin rolls and I never plan on using the account other than as the best answer to "Do you have an account with us?" when I ask for more coins than I reasonably have an excuse for.   ( A quick aside -- my personal favorite excuse is "I work a lot of flea markets / yard sales" or "This is for a 'Guess How Many Coins are in the Jar' fundraiser" )

That got me thinking, "What's the best bank for coin roll hunting?".

Since I live in an urban environment my answer may be a bit different than yours if you coin roll hunt in a small town or if you're looking for silver in the suburbs.

My answer is "The closest bank you can find (that doesn't charge fees for coins, of course!)."

Realistically speaking, most banks are going to be approximately equal for silver, errors, or interesting coin varieties, so the specific bank you select isn't too critical as far finds quality. Coin roll hunting is a numbers game and part of that is frequently churning through coins. That means going to the bank a lot. A whole lot. Closer banks are easier to make it to every day.

This bank is located a 3 minute walk from my workplace and I'm pretty sure I'm going to hit them up for many times my balance within the first few weeks. It's all gravy after that.

Do you have any bank accounts just to get you more banks to coin roll hunt?

Side note: I got over the $4,000 mark today. $26,000 to go in order to meet my $30,000 search goal!

CRH 6/17/2013 : Silver Dime and 2013 State Park Finds!

Things have been a little busy outside of the Big Game Coin Roll Hunting world so I forgot to update on my quarters that I searched last time. No worries since it wasn't too exciting. My best find was a decent looking America The Beautiful 2013 White Mountain State Park quarter but it's a very good strike for a randomly circulated coin. When I took my photo below, you can see what looks to be some gold highlights on it, but it's just some awesome lighting that happened to appear. I don't personally collect the state park quarters but this might be interesting to someone who does so I thought I'd share it with everyone.

2013 White Mountain State Park Quarter Found Searching Quarter Rolls

I was able to get a quick run over to one of my source banks to pick up some dimes and additional quarters. I haven't been able to really search through them all yet, but the $40 in dimes  I've searched through so far already gave up a 1964 silver dime! This one also has some pretty good toning, but there's some coin crud on Roosevelt's cheek that makes it look like someone punched him in the eye. I have a rule not to clean coins, so on it stays!

1964 Silver Dime with Black Eye Dirt, Found Coin Roll Hunting 6/17/2013

More free silver from the bank. Silver number 23 of the year!

Check back tomorrow for an update on the rest of the coins I have found searching through all of these coin rolls!

CRH 6/10/2013 : Single Silver Saves Sunday!

Yesterday, I picked up $100 in bank rolled dimes and finally found the time to search through them today. Searching for silver in coin rolls is always a fun time! I was able to find a very pretty 1964 silver dime in one of the rolls. That makes my 22nd silver find since April and my 21st silver dime found by searching coin rolls. Silver is still in circulation, people! You really can find silver in coin rolls if you try!

CRH 6/10/2013 1964 Silver Dime Found in a Coin Roll!

I was also able to get my hands on $250 in quarter rolls from my local source bank. Here's to hoping there's something good in them. I'd be awesome to find another silver quarter! I should be able to update tomorrow, so stay tuned!

$250 in quarter rolls. Think there's silver in one of them?

CRH 6/8/2013 : $100 Skunk Reversal

It's been a little while since I last posted, but it's only sort of my fault. I've been hitting up my source banks but they've all been out of coin (or so they claim) so when I get there I can't really pick up anything. That, combined with some non-coin roll hunting things I've been chasing, have been keeping the posts light.

Last time I searched I got skunked on $150 in dime rolls.

This morning I woke up intending to hit a few banks on my Saturday rounds just after they opened, including a branch that I don't frequent very often. If you're a somewhat avid reader of my blog (and you better be!) then you know that all of my hunts are done by carrying the coins. This branch is a bit farther than I'd like, but it's definitely doable if I keep my coins in a bag. I walked the 30 minutes over there and entered the branch. I noticed that there were no tellers at the large main desk and was sort of caught off guard. One of the bankers informed me that she could help me over at one of the smaller support desks. Unfortunately, this teller had given me some hard times with supply rolled coin in the past, so I pretty much just walked out the door.

 As I walked down the sidewalk I realized that it was foolish to assume that she'd be unable to help me, so I turned around, walked the 25 paces or so back to the bank and asked the teller if she help me with a box of dimes. "We don't have any of those," she replied. Then I asked here about lower quantities of dimes and she said she could give me $100. Apparently asking for a box of dimes doesn't fetch a counter offer when they are short.  I guess there are 2 lessons to learn here:

1.  Never assume a teller is going to give you a hard time about coin roll hunting, even if they've done so in the past. 
2. Just because you ask for a box of coin rolls doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for lower quantities of coin as well

All but one of those dime rolls turned out to be customer wrapped rolls (CWR). Well, good thing I asked her for those coins, because the $100 yielded 4 absolutely gorgeous silver dimes. That's a pretty good haul and puts my silver count at 21 silvers so far for the year! The years for the silver dimes are 1963D, 1964D, 1952, and a 1964!

1952, 1963D, 1964D, and 1964 Silver Dimes found Coin Roll Hunting 6/8/2013

I'm going to aim to hit another one of my source banks tomorrow since they have Sunday hours! I'm crossing my fingers to find more silver dimes in those coin rolls!

CRH 6/2/2013 : Skunked on Dimes!

I planned to hit quite a few banks yesterday, including a bunch of banks that I drive past every day but I'm not a customer for. But as I looked up all of their hours I realized that only 2 of those banks actually had Saturday hours at the branches I was heading toward. Oh well, 2 banks was all I could hit and those were ones that I'm already a member of.

I was able to get my hands on $200 in dimes between the two banks and I was happy since most of them were customer wrapped rolls (CWR). The CWRs tend to be a bit better for me than the bank rolled ones, but these were total skunk. Oh well, they wouldn't call it hunting if it was always easy. Time to re-roll and return. Hopefully my next haul of coin rolls will be a bit better!