Started CRH just this past October.
Bought 4 boxes of 1/2s from my bank and after being skunked on the 1st 3 boxes the 4th box had:
1 Franklin
3 90% Kennedys
64 40% Kennedy's
Right before Christmas I ordered 2 boxes of pennies, 1 box of nickels and 1 box of dimes from my bank.
I got them home, opened them and discovered that they were all uncirculated fresh from the mint 2007 Philadelphia coins, every one of them.
I was really dissappointed.
Looks like another big bag for my dump bank this coming week.
On New Year's Eve, I stopped by a bank near my house I had never come into before and bought 4 rolls of 1/2s that they were glad to get out of the til before the end of the year. It was definately worth the stop, one roll was entirely 40% silver Kennedys and there were 4 1964 Kennedys in one of the other rolls.
A couple of tellers said they had some Eisenhowers at home they would bring in for me to buy also.
I also have 4 bank managers who have my name and number and call me when they have 1/2s, Eisenhowers and 2 dollar bills. They are just as happy to get those out of their vaults, so its no problem for them.
This year I also came across 4 67 Kennedys in the same roll that had all been painted red on both sides. I called around to several coin dealers to get some kind of input on why and got the same story from them all:
Apparantly in the 60's, juke boxes took 1/2 dollars. The owners of the restaurant or bar would take 20-40 1/2s and paint them on both sides with 1 color. These were kept behind the bar in a box and when noone was playng music, they would toss one in the juke box to get the music going. A half would play about 10 songs back then. Each week when the coin box of the juke box was cleaned out, the colored coins were easily identified and returned to the owner of the bar for use the next week.
I thought that was really interesting.
