Partial Catch Of A Collection Dump!

Zowie and congrats!

Very nice, especially the Eisenhower dollars, of course.

Well done and shows that people will dump collections at any time

Thanks! And ha ha, I do like finding them. Everyone seems to think they're inherently valuable--including, sometimes, the bank tellers--so they're extremely difficult to find where I am.

About 6 or 7 years ago, I was at a bank asking for them, and the teller who was attending to me offered to place an order.

For a while, it worked out quite well. I could order any amount I chose (it didn't have to be a $1000 bag), so I had a few dozen coming in each week for spending purposes.

Once, in a bag of 75 or 100 I ordered, there was even a 1900-S Morgan dollar and a 1926-S Peace dollar. I saw their characteristic silver edges as I was loading the bag in my trunk. You can bet I tore into that thing right then and there!

Unfortunately the story doesn't have an entirely happy ending. Whatever location they were ordering the dollars from eventually ran out, and sometime after that, the teller simply disappeared. No one who followed her retained her knowledge of how to order Eisenhower dollars.




Thank you! This was actually my first decent haul all year, so it was quite welcome.




Thanks! And yes, that they will. I've never actually stumbled upon a collection in its entirety, although I have come across pieces of them in the past (mostly individual half dollar rolls). Once I found a full roll of 40% silver half dollars, while another time I found a mixed roll of 10 40% silver half dollars and a few P and D pairs of mostly post-2001 half dollars (including the 1987).

My favorite "score" was a roll of 18 Walking Liberty half dollars and 2 Benjamin Franklin half dollars. What was strange about that find was that it was one of 2 identical rolls that came from the only teller on duty at the time. The other roll just had junk in it. I went back in the bank to see if there were any other rolls, but there was nothing else. My assumption at the time was that whoever cashed in the two rolls accidentally grabbed a silver one on the way out of the house (they were both in new, unmarked wrappers).




Yes, that is always an inherent problem--or, potentially, an economic disaster--that is perpetually on the coin collecting horizon. What I've done with my (purchased) junk silver is place the coins in a plastic roll, then tape a label on the roll itself specifying how much was paid for them. This serves to remind both me, and anyone who might eventually come into the rolls, that they are not simply "spending money."

Ha ha, I long since started saving them again! I spent them rather freely when I could order them (since I didn't see a point in not letting them circulate), but it's so hard for me to find them now that I can't bear to "let them go"- at least for the moment.




Thanks! They constituted my second-best overall find. The first was a roll of 18 Walking Liberty half dollars and 2 Benjamin Franklin half dollars. That was years ago, though; for 3 or 4 years straight now, the pickings have been so slim in my area that I get excited if I find just 1 40% silver half dollar. I can still remember the days when you could pick up a single hand-wrapped roll of half dollars and have a 50-75% chance of finding at least 1 40% silver half dollar in it...




Indeed. I've asked around occasionally, but no other banks really even know Eisenhower dollars exist. Last year, I figured out a tentative way to order them following a few call transfers around a coin vault: Regional Brinks office --> local Brinks office --> X Bank. The downside is, I'd have to order a standard 1,000-coin bag. I'm more them a little nervous about having that many bulky coins to unload. Half dollars are hard enough most of the time, so I can only imagine how many eyebrows would be raised if I brought in even 200 large dollars to a few different banks.

Yes, I've long assumed that it definitely would. Thus, I've been waiting to proceed with a possible bag order until I have $1,000 to spare long enough that it can sit around for a while as I spend it.

Earendil, make sure you check those wheats for Die Varieties like repunched mintmarks and doubled dies. Also, nice find

Thanks for the tip. I keep meaning to sort through them more extensively, but as you can see from the pictures, that is definitely going to be a more long-term project!

Thanks! Normally, I'm almost exclusively a half dollar person, but my accidental acquiring of this hoard certainly got me interested in cents for a while!




Thanks! In this instance, I was quite happy to pick up so many great coins for face value. Normally, this would constitute many, many years' worth of circulation and/ or roll finds.

Wow, it sounds like you had quite the awesome experience! Did you ever keep a tally of how many silver half dollars you found during that time period? It sounds as if that would have been a true golden era (or rather, silver!) for anyone who was interested in collecting them. I was personally active when loose/ teller tray 40% silver half dollars were rather uncommon, but when customer-wrapped rolls--if you could find them--had a roughly 50-75% chance of containing at least 1 40% silver half dollar.

I started coin roll hunting comparatively late, around 2002 or 2003.

The event, as it were, which got me started in this ongoing adventure was my father's passing-along of some coins he had collected in the 1970s. I didn't know about the 40% silver half dollars at the time, and neither, apparently, did he- they were just mixed in with regular clad half dollars in some rolls he had.

Some time afterwards, I found out about them, and pulled out the ones that were in the rolls. Looking back, I should have tallied how many there were compared to how many clad half dollars were present; it would have provided an interesting snapshot of at least one area's circulating coinage silver percentage ratio that existed during that time period.

Anyway, things stood as they were for several years after that. At some point, I started picking up half dollars from banks from time to time. I can't really recall what set me on this particular path, or how I learned it was possible to obtain them from that most important of our sources. On one highly significant occasion, I received a 1965 back. This completely surprised me, as I had previously assumed silver half dollars simply did not still exist in circulation!

From that moment on, I started purchasing banks' available supplies of half dollars on a regular basis, and have since accumulated a modest pile of 40% silver half dollars (perhaps 20 full rolls all told).

In 10 or 12 years of highly concentrated searching spanning multiple states and countless hundreds of bank trips, I've actually never been able to find much besides those- I still have yet to complete a full roll of both Benjamin Franklin and 1964 half dollars. With regard to the former, 9 or so of the 18 I currently have came from a single find, so they are rare indeed in the areas I frequent.

However, it's the treasure hunt experience as a whole that I most enjoy. The enduring excitement of finding silver in some form has far outweighed any meager monetary gain I might receive from the coins I come across.

Once, I found a roll of 18 Walking Liberty half dollars and 2 Benjamin Franklin half dollars, while another time, I came across a full roll of 40% silver half dollars. These are the only true "silver scores" I've ever made. So, this overall find was even more meaningful to me on a personal level. This is essentially because it almost represents something I've been searching for since I began coin roll hunting.