I started searching my parent's change around 1980 (I was about 6).
In about 1983, I started the theme for my collection...get a roll of each year and mintmark (I later added and intentional variety such as large/small mintmark). Again pennies only at that time other than to fill my folders.
I started getting rolls occasionally (pennies only) in the mid 80's...1984 I think.
I continued this until I finished high school.
In college I slowly started to work on other denominations though mainly through loose change. And occasionally I would go to the casino and play nickel video poker and pick through the nickels as I was playing and pick out a few old ones. I wish I had seriously checked out half dollars then.....oh well.
And then I would occasionally get rolls of various denominations from the bank for the next few years, mainly pennies.
And then about 4 years ago I moved to my current location and decided to go to the "local" casino late one night to go try and find a few war nickels as I felt I had a better chance there than at the bank. And lo and behold I found a couple that night. So then I started going more late at night and ended up with a few buffalo nickels, a couple V Nickels and some more war nickels as well as a wide selection of pre-1960 Jeffersons....
Shortly after that I started getting rolls of pennies from the bank....first $10 worth.....then $20....and eventually a whole box worth at a time. It wasn't too long after that I decided to try a box a nickels (not expecting much) and ended up with 4 war nickels and a buffalo.....I was shocked as it threw my whole concept of the casinos being better out the window.....
Well needless to say I really started in heavy with nickel and penny boxes for awhile (still hadn't ever found a silver dime, quarter, or half dollar in circulation). And then I picked up some dimes just the heck of it and found my first silver dime.....this is when I realized that the silver dimes looked like Canadian dimes from the edge.....guess I had just never paid much attention having never found one before. So I started asking tellers to see their dime and quarter rolls that they had in the coin condoms at the bank and buying the ones with "Canadian edges"....Did okay, but not great doing this.
I had tried halves a handful of times thinking that since they don't circulate maybe I could get lucky and find a silver one still mixed in, but had only found a couple of 40% ones for 4 or 5 boxes.
Not too long after that I found this board and after reading all the finds various individuals were having, I decided I needed to try some new methodology so I went around asking for halves and wouldn't you know it.....I had almost immediate success. Apparently I was slightly ahead of the point at which CRHing for halves became super popular because when I first asked around there was almost no competition. Now at the same banks I tried early on and had success I hear about the number of people that have started to look for half dollars. Half dollar bags have a waiting list that is more than 1 or 2 deep, etc.
And well I guess the rest of my adventures you can read about on TNet.
I was just wondering how long everyone has been doing CRH? 
