How has everybody been doing numbers wise with Half Dollars?

[JJDEMARAY]

Hello and HH,

I don't know if everybody else has been struggling finding silver in half dollar boxes, but I've never seen it this bad up here in Minnesota. I've been a large Half Hunter for over 10 years and the bottom has dropped out. I used to do as many as 50 boxes a week starting in 2011. Lately, it's been 10 boxes a week and the numbers have dropped from about 3-4 a box when I first started to about 2 per box three years ago, to 1 a box last year, to 1 every 3 boxes this year. It's just brutal. Just curious if this is a Minnesota thing or a National thing. How are you doing per box?

HH, JJ

 

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[TxAg]

I’ve see similar poor results this year compared to the 2 prior years. And there was no uptick at all over Christmas. What’s the deal?

 

[smokeythecat]

I saw the same thing. I haven't even bothered trying for awhile now.

 

[TheJaker]

Hello and HH,

I don't know if everybody else has been struggling finding silver in half dollar boxes, but I've never seen it this bad up here in Minnesota. I've been a large Half Hunter for over 10 years and the bottom has dropped out. I used to do as many as 50 boxes a week starting in 2011. Lately, it's been 10 boxes a week and the numbers have dropped from about 3-4 a box when I first started to about 2 per box three years ago, to 1 a box last year, to 1 every 3 boxes this year. It's just brutal. Just curious if this is a Minnesota thing or a National thing. How are you doing per box?

HH, JJ

From what I know, I have had the opposite!

 

[JJDEMARAY]

That's awesome! What part of the country are you from?

 

[Twitch]

Same in St Louis

 

[blueberra]

7 boxes so far in 2020 : 5 skunks and 2 with a single 40% half.

 

[Dozer D]

The same NEGATIVE count per box holds true in dimes., not even 1 per box anymore. Maybe .5/box and getting worse. I think if there was 2-3 in a box, then must have been from an old dump made at a bank.

 

[Zomotion]

I order 2 per week and it's been bad so far in 2020. Last year was the worst year I've had for boxes

 

[FormerTeller]

Last year was pitiful. This year, too soon to say, not enough data to draw a meaningful curve. I’ve had one good box which skews the data; take that box out and I’m averaging exactly one 40% silver per box.

 

[Twitch]

8 years of standing weekly half dollar orders, moving from Virginia to Georgia to Missouri, sad to say I’m shutting it down next week. Finds too meager, dump situation becoming harder. I’ve found essentially everything I wanted to find. This is the life cycle of a CRH’r.

 

[Johnny5]

Not only the halves are bad, but I went thru 6 boxes of pennies without one wheatie ##@$@#. But the thrill of the hunt is still there just like metal detecting. I love it when your heart starts racing because you found something good.

 

[CJ9]

This year has been fairly similar to last year in terms of hit rate of silver to coins searched. However as the years have passed, the pickings get slimmer and slimmer. I have CRHed halves since the mid-1990s, when I found out that you could find silver in rolls. Back then you could find plenty of silver in halves.

I am fortunate that I live in a large populated area with a lot of banks. I feed mostly off of CWR and loose halves from tellers. I don't search boxes, so I don't do the volume that others on here do.

So for the numbers:

2020 searched:
$190 CWR - nothing found
$40 MWR - nothing found
$108.50 loose (217 pieces) - found: 20 40%, 4 90% JFK, 3 Franklins

Rate of silver is just under 4% of all halves searched, and just under 12.5% of loose halves searched


2019 (didn't break out loose/MWR/CWR then):
Searched $1,480 halves (2,960 pieces)
Found: 85 40%, 16 90% JFK, 10 Franklins, 3 Walkers
Total silver hit rate of 3.85% of coins searched

 

[Wrapper Stacker]

32 boxes searched in 2020 with a 0.76 silver avg per box.

 

[Tommybuckets]

I hung up my spurs too. Finds were too slim and my time is too short. I accidentally dumped a box with some 40% in it because I was too tired and busy to search it properly. I saw three enders in the good lighting the bank provides and even bought one roll back to make sure I wasn't seeing things which confused the teller and i to no end. I need to get my head examined.

 

[Megalodon]

I think my results in 2019 were typical of some here and better than many. Of 153 boxes searched, 101 were skunks. That 66-67% skunk rate seems similar to what I've seen reported by others searching similar volume in the last year. There were still some good boxes early in the year and the 6 best boxes produced 215, or 54.7% of the 393 silver halves recovered. Of those 393, 94 were 90%.

That sounds better than it really was because skunks increased at the end of the year and continued into 2020. The change coincided with a change in the rolls themselves. The last 44 boxes from Brinks contained rolls wrapped in Dunbar wrappers. I found only four 40% halves in those 44 boxes. So I've quit the Dunbar/Brinks boxes and travel a lot further to get other boxes - which is probably not worth the gas burned. And I've substituted boxes of quarters for those local Brinks boxes of halves.