CRH 7/25/2013 : Brinks Half Dollar Cube Silver Loophole!

Now, I've been coin roll hunting for a year or so before starting this blog and even though I always ask for half dollars whenever I'm at the bank I've never really had success searching half dollar boxes. I've tried many times, but I never really came up with anything worthwhile besides a heavy load of half dollars and a pile of clad Kennedy coins covered in up to 25 unique hunter's markings. Nonetheless, I placed my order for a box and figured I'd try it in my new city that I live in.

I picked up my super heavy box of half dollars at the branch closest to where I work and carried them over. From a quick display of my Google-fu, a box of half dollars weighs about 25lbs! Not exactly the heaviest thing ever, but it was a bit uncomfortable to carry down the street. I always keep my coins and boxes concealed since it says the monetary value in big bold letters on the side of the box for all to see. This bank uses Brinks as a supplier, which features clear rolls on the smaller denominations and a neat little cube half dollar box. I have heard rumors that Brinks is removing the silver from the coins that they sort, but my finds last week indicated that it's really not the case and you can still find silver in Brinks' coin boxes. Here's a photo of the cube box that I sorted through.

$500 Brinks Half Dollar Box for Coin Roll Hunting

I must admit that the cube box design is a lot better than the longer, flatter box that some coin box suppliers are using, such as the N.F. String boxes from Loomis. The Brinks half dollar coin roll boxes stack the rolls in 2 layers so the box is much shorter and easier to store. The only downside is that you can't count the rolls without opening the box. The inside of the box has some instructions for how to open the plastic rolls, but the half dollars are actually housed in paper rolls. Go figure. He's an image I was able to search out on TreasureNet. It's just like mine!

Brinks $500 Half Dollar Box without plastic rolls

 I searched through the rolls and thought I was going to be skunked yet again. The good sign was that I wasn't seeing nearly any coin roll hunter markings which leads me to think that the rolls weren't being hit as hard in my region. In all of my coins I was able to uncover a 40% silver 1968 D half dollar, which is my first ever silver half dollar coin roll hunting find that I pulled from a roll! So you actually CAN find silver half dollars in coin rolls. Those "5 magic words for free bank silver" guys aren't just pulling your leg that the half dollars are really the denomination to search! Here's a photo of my lucky find! For some reason the 1968 half dollars keep finding their way to me!

1968D 40% silver half dollar find Coin Roll Hunting - Silver Loophole!

That brings me to silver number 47 for my retirement since April!

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!

The 5 Magic Words for Free Silver Coins

If you're a reader on my blog then you're already in on the secret for scoring free silver coins from the bank: coin roll hunting. Today I heard an advertisement on the radio for someone looking to make money by sharing the secret with you. That's great for them, but I do it for free!

Their little spiel is that that they will teach you the "5 magic words for scoring free silver coins at the bank". In honor of them, I thought we could think what those 5 magic words for coin roll hunting might be. I never paid for their lessons and neither should you!

Some quick ideas that came to mind:

What are your 5 Magic Words To Get Free Silver Coins?

1. "Can I have a box?"
2. "Do you have half dollars?"
3. "Gimme all da silver now!"
4. "Heck yeah I'll take silver!'
5. "I'll take that in silver."
6. "How many rolls is that?"
7. "I know the secret words!"


I gotta run now but please add your own in the comments below and be sure to check out my latest coin roll hunting journeys here!

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!