I haven't had a huge teller/cwr score yet, but I have had plenty of nice little scores. (ie, one time was 3x'64 kennedy's from a teller tray, another time a 64 and 8 or 9 40%'ers from a teller tray). I have heard on here to look in areas that have older people living in it etc. I've put a lot of thought into road tripping for teller tray scores and I have been on a lot of them (more unsuccessful than successful).
I think to find silver in a teller tray there has to be a perfect alignment of a few factors:
- I think all areas have some silver turned into tellers on occasion. I would bet that some areas have a higher frequency with which silver ends up in teller trays. For this portion of the puzzle, I seem to find more silver in trays of suburbs that border cities. These areas are lower middle class-middle class. I almost never find silver in the cities, both the city centers and the surrounding parts of the cities. I occasionally find silver in upper class areas, but it is rarer than in the lower middle class - middle class areas. I also infrequently find silver in truly rural areas (I think this has more to do with volume of customers more than anything else).
- You also have to find areas that are not pounded to death by other hunters. If I am asking for halves at a bank where 5 other guys ask for halves every week then my odds of getting silver are much lower than elsewhere. I think this is a small part of the "city" problem. The other part being that tellers in the city seem to snipe more frequently. I will say that my best teller tray score banks are not rural, but they are a little isolated from other banks (not major commercial areas).
-sniping tellers: The most critical part of teller tray finds are finding banks that do not have sniping tellers. I think most banks have sniping tellers. A key factor here is the size of the branch. If you compare a branch with 15 tellers to a branch with two or three tellers, the one with 15 tellers is MUCH more likely to have a teller that is sniping the silver from all the others' trays. Additionally, if I am at a branch that has halves and the teller looks down at them carefully before handing them to me then I know I am wasting my time every going back to that branch. I know a lot of members here get mad about sniping tellers. I do not. I'm actually grateful when a teller gives me a visual or verbal cue that he/she is a sniper. This hobby is about time invested and that teller just helped me not waste future time. Sniping tellers are a part of this game and I can't blame them for doing it because I would do the same thing. Now on the other hand, any bank that I have found silver at becomes a regular stop because that is an indication that this bank has all the stars aligned and I am likely to find silver there again. I never stop at these banks more than once every 3-4 weeks though. In my opinion, any more frequently is just likely to start conversation amongst the tellers about what I am doing and that leads to the possibility of a new sniper being created.
I will not say much about teller demographics because I really don't think it has much to do with it. The most detailed conversation that a teller ever started with me about silver was started by a foreign-born teller. Also, in my area there is a large part of the city that is populated by foreign-born people. The tellers at all the banks in this area are also foreigners. I rarely have luck at any of these banks. I have however found silver in the trays of foreign-born tellers. The same goes both ways for younger female tellers. As it also does for younger male tellers. And again, I have gotten silver/found snipers amongst the "little old lady" tellers. I would say that the bulk of my teller tray finds come from the "little old lady" type tellers, but I think that is simply a function of most tellers I encounter being the "little old lady" type tellers. Do you see where I am going with this? Of all the things I over-analyze about scoring silver from teller trays, teller demographics is not one of them.
Sorry for the long post, but I will close with this: Of all the hundreds (actually probably thousands) of banks that I have asked for halves at, I would say 80-90% of my teller tray finds have come from the same 6-8 banks that are in two distinct areas that are less than a mile long. I don't think I have asked for halves at any one of these banks more than two or three times each, but I do keep finding silver at them when I stop by these areas. There is a pattern to these areas and banks. The above is what I see as that pattern. They are not too rich, not too poor, not too rural, not too urban, somewhat isolated in location, but not off the beaten path, but most importantly they don't have sniping tellers and they don't have other hunters.
