9/7/2014: Small Search Yields Silver!

Since it's the kickoff of football season today (see what I did there?), I made a quick stop at my local bank to pick up some coins while I watched the games. On a Sunday! Yes, I just happen to live in a neighborhood with a large population that require banks to be open on Sundays for religious reasons. Having an extra day to get coins is always nice! But, we digress...

I originally wanted to get a box, but the bank only had $50 that they could spare. No problem! I took them and searched them up and found a sweet looking 1960 silver dime!

1960 silver Dime

A couple of days ago I was searching through some cent rolls and came across this guy between the wheat cents that I kept. I'm not sure if it's an error or post mint damage, but then again I only claim to be a coin roll hunter, not a coin expert! That's what social networks are for. Leave your comments below!

8/31/2014: Still hitting the Silver!

As you have probably noticed, I haven't been doing  as great of a job of keeping this blog updated in the past few months. I haven't really been coin roll hunting very much in 2014 so the finds haven't really been blog-worthy.  We're also nowhere near my previous goals of searching >$30,000 a year in coins and figured that the readers wouldn't be interested in my tiny $150 a week searches that I've been doing. That's Small Game Coin Roll Hunting. This is Big Game Coin Roll Hunting and those small searches belong on someone else's blog!

But even searching a few rolls a week can yield some pretty cool finds, especially my favorites: silver dimes!  I've found quite a few silver mercury dimes recently, but here are my most recent Roosevelt silver dime finds that I pulled from some customer-wrapped rolls.

As of this post, the value of a silver dime is a lowly $1.40.

1964 and 1959 Silver Dimes found Coin Roll Hunting

CRH 9/26/2013: CWRs "Merc" the Spot!

I was able to grab a handful of a customer-wrapped dimes from one of my local branches. Lucky for me, one of them contained an awesome silver 1944 Mercury Dime. I also got yet another 1964 silver Roosevelt as well! I just keep stacking those silvers now.

Silver is still out there!

Obverse of my 1944 Silver Mercury Dime Find!

Reverse of my 1944 Silver Mercury Dime Find!

CRH 9/07/2013 : 50th Silver Milestone!

I haven't been posting much the last few days but I have been searching dime rolls again. After going through about $350 I was able to pull out 3 silver Roosevelts which is about on par with with my average number of silver pulls in a standard machine wrapped box.

These 3 silvers helped me to finally hit my 50th silver since April of this year, but I'm well behind of my goal of getting to $30,000 searched since April. I guess I'll have to start hitting the half dollar boxes full force again!

Here is a photo of the 2 more circulated ones. Too bad I'm in a Starbucks and the lighting doesn't let me photo the shinier 1964 one!

1946 and 1960 Silver Dimes found Searching Coin Rolls!

CRH 8/29/2013 : Foreign French in Dime Rolls!

I have been having sort of a drought of coin roll hunting opportunities the last few days and finally had a chance to hit up one of my source banks for some rolled dimes, my old standby! It's been a while since I've hunted dimes.

I tore through the 50 machine-wrapped coin rolls (MWRs) but didn't hit any silver coins. I did come across two out of the ordinary 1941 coins, though. The most interesting part is that they were in different rolls. I got pretty excited since even much of the non-US coinage from that era was made with silver, but it wasn't to be.

Though they are very pretty, these 50 centimes coins from France are only made of a bronze-aluminum alloy. They are the French equivalent of the half dollar, but they're about the size of a US dime (50 centimes diameter is 18mm compared to the 17.91mm of the US dime).

There were over 82 million of them minted for France in 1941, but it seems like they can be sold for more like $1 on the internet! Some quick research shows that there are many die varieties out for these.

Obverses of the 2 French 1941 50 Centimes coins found Coin Roll Hunting

Reverses of the 2 French 1941 50 Centimes coins found Coin Roll Hunting

CRH 7/22/2013 : Clear Wrapper Brinks Box Results!

I made a trip over to a bank branch near my workplace for yet another coin roll hunting adventure on my lunch break. In my last few visits there I noticed that they always have a stock of those Brinks clear plastic coin wrappers, but I haven't been able to land any silver coins. I'm thinking there might be a sniping teller there getting the easy pickin's from the clear rolls and never passing them onto the customers. I was determined to make that change today.... by buying a whole box. They can't take what they can't see!

After work I tore open the Brinks box and quickly skimmed all of the rolls through nice, easy to search clear plastic wrappers. In total, it took about 2 minutes to search the entire box and locate the one lonely silver through the clear plastic roll: dead center in the middle of the dime roll. I could immediately tell it was a US silver dime because the reeding was a bit less pronunced than the typical Canadian dimes that you'll come across while coin roll hunting.

Coin Roll Hunting for Silver in Clear Dime Wrappers -- Easy to Spot the Silver!

When I popped open the dime roll and worked my way to silver I found yet another 1964 US silver dime! I'm sure finding a lot of these lately! Silver coin number 46.

5 Magic Words for Free Silver from the Bank - Found another 1964 Silver Dime !

The best part is that the bank told me that they could order me boxes of half dollars so don't be shocked if I start seriously hunting half dollar rolls in the near future. That's the first bank in my area that would be willing to order them for me so I'll have to take them up on their offer.

CRH 7/13/2013 : Two More Silver Dimes!

I'm back at it once again! I made a quick run down to my dump bank to deposit about $380 of already searched coinage and then made my way to other 3 of my "Big 4" banks.  These are banks in a somewhat wealthier part of town that caters to an older crowd and I've signed up for accounts at all of them. I can dump at my dump bank (with the coin return machine) and then walk about 50 yards to a cluster of 3 totally great source banks. There are a lot of really good finds in this area, but apparently there's a fair bit of competition from other coin roll hunters.

First, my receipt from dumping my coins in the coin machine. Some good variety there, but you can definitely tell I'm a fan of the dimes. Hey, I like me some silver!

Receipt from my coin roll hunting dump into a coin machine. Lots of dimes!

The best thing is that I'm moving to that neighborhood in about 2 weeks! That's real coin roll hunter dedication!

Anyway, I slipped into my first bank and grabbed $9 in cents. I found a number of wheat cents, but the coolest ones were a 1950 S and a 1955. I looked extra closely and it wasn't a doubled die. Finding a 1955 doubled die would have certainly made my day! Alas.

I moved onto my next bank, which is a branch that I haven't been into very often and found that they didn't have any half dollars. While I was waiting, a guy next to me asked as if they had any "funny money" and then spouted off a list of things like Kennedy 50 cent pieces and $2 bills. Luckily for him, I had 10 $2 bills in my pocket. We kindly traded bills and moved on our way. Competition is about!

I moved onto my last bank and waited in line while 2 people asked for half dollars in front of me. The competition is really tough here! When I got to the teller, all I could get was $150 in CWR dimes. After searching through them in about 10 minutes I'd uncovered 2 silvers: 1954 and a very dirty 1964. The '54 silver dime has a very nice white coloration to it, like you'd expect on a silver coin, but boy is that 64 ugly!

CRH 07/13/2013 : Finding Silver Dimes in Bank Roll Change! 1954 and 1964 Dimes

Total silver count at an even 45 since April!

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!

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!

CRH 5/25/2013 : Silver Continues!

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day so I decided to get out and hit a few banks for some coin rolls. I walk to all of my banks, so I tried to hit the path that would allow me to pick up and dump coins at various banks, with my ultimate destination being the single branch in my area that has an automatic coin counting machine. We coin roll hunters love the automatic coin counting machines!

 I don't remember all of the details of my various stops and searches, but I probably hunted something along the lines of $325 in coins, mostly dimes and quarters, because you never know when you might get lucky. None of the banks had any half dollars so that wasn't really an option.

 In all of my searching of the coin rolls, I was only able to find a single silver dime. That's a bit disappointing, but it's really my only "real" search in the last 2 weeks, so it's great to get the silver flowing yet again and finding silver in coin rolls is always tons of fun. The 1954 silver dime is neatly toned, but has a slight tinge of the yellow toning which I don't like as much as the black toning.

You can still find silver in those coin rolls, so keep looking and don't give up!

1954 Silver Dime found Coin Roll Hunting 5/25/2013

CRH 5/7/2013 : Steady Silver!

Today was a pretty straightforward search with some straightforward finds. I was able to search $200 of customer wrapped dime rolls and was lucky enough to grab 2 silvers for the silver stack! One looks to have a number of dings on the outer rim but the value is all in the silver anyway.

2 Silver Dimes Found While Coin Roll Hunting 5/7/2013

CRH 4/30/2013: Final April Coin Roll Hunt!

Ok guys, so I lied about the wheat harvest being the last post of the month! I was able to get away from work a bit earlier than expected so I grabbed a full box of machine-rolled quarters ($500 value) and $100 in dimes on my way home.

Quarters continued to be lackluster. I found some state park quarters, which I have been keeping, but otherwise the quarter rolls were not in my favor. Not exactly unexpected, but I'd like to live the dream again. Luckily, my old standby dimes came through for me to give me my 14th silver of the year! (since 4/10)

1953 Silver Roosevelt Dime found Coin Roll Hunting 4/30/2013

CRH 4/23/2013 : More Dimes & a Silver Lady!

I was finally able to grab a handful of new dime rolls to search from my of my more successful source banks. I can't really share the details in case I have any local readers, but it's a location that's part of one of the major chains. I'm not a customer there since their account offerings are total trash, but the coins are nice so there's that.

I was only able to carry $230 in dimes and $10 in pennies back from the bank. It turns out that at least some of my penny rolls are filled with freshly minted 2013 coins, so these are likely going to be handed right to my dump bank without even getting cracked. Right now I've only opened 4 penny rolls and found a single 1953D wheat penny so far.

I did have a chance to get through all of the dime rolls, though. Even though I didn't exactly find a lot of silver coins in this haul, I did get an absolutely gorgeous 1942 silver mercury dime! I don't have a loupe, but I squinted extra, extra hard and sadly it's not a 1941/1942 overdate. I'll try to see if I can get a pic with my DSLR camera sometime, but you'll just have to accept my smartphone camera pic for now. I also got a single 1964 Roosevelt silver dime. That brings my silver count since 4/10 to 13 silver coins!

Silvers and Wheat Coin Roll Hunting Finds 4/23/2013

CRH 4/20/2013 : Dime Silver Skunks, but Postive Value!

I dropped off my mass of coins from my previous mixed search to my dump bank and picked up $260 of rolled dimes from my source bank. Here's a picture of the coins below.

$260 in dime rolls waiting to be searched!

I was able to get quite a few customer wrapped rolls which are typically the best place to get silver or old coins from recently found stashes. Unfortunately on that front, I didn't pull a single silver! However, I was pleasantly surprised that pretty much all of the customer wrapped coin rolls (CWR) had 1 or 2 extra dimes in them. These were in the "Cointainer" coin rolls, so my guess is that the person who submitted them was using some sort of automatic counter that is in need of some calibration. Accuracy on those automatic counters has always concerned me.

The 4 half dollars I was able to get my hands on today weren't special, either! I'm going to try to get some Pennies and Nickels action going for tomorrow so hopefully I can share some cool finds again!

CRH 4/12/2013 : $250 and 4 silvers

Quick post -- searched $250 and got 4 more silvers! The 1948 and 1957 are quite pretty. I love me some toned silver!

Silver Roosevelt Dimes found Coin Roll Hunting 4/12/2013

 In sad news, I got skunked on $110 of Half Dollars :-(

CRH 4/10/2013 : $100 nets Canada Silver

I do my best to try to limit the amount of driving needed to do this coin roll hunting thing since that would eat into the profit that this little machine generates so I walk to the banks when possible. This sometimes limits the amount of coins I can really pick up at one time. I decided to go with $100 at this location since I wasn't really sure how much I could carry in one go.

I peeled open my packs and uncovered these 2 gems:  90% 1961 Roosevelt silver dime and a 1968 Canada 10 cent piece (hey, it's a dime!). I'm usually not very excited to get Canada dimes since they mess up the edge hunting thing, but this one was different! The neat thing about the 1968 Canada 10 cent pieces is that some of them are 50% silver while others are just 99% nickel. This one is one of the 50% silver ones! There's some sweet toning on both of these guys.