Searching For Silver Coins

I've searched $14k in change and have found 191 silvers this year. Halves have been the best producers, and these are all customer rolls. Dimes second best.

With silver getting harder and harder to find in rolls I would not even get into the car and waste the gas or my time to get a $1000 worth of anything to search. I will stop by one or two on my way home from work from time to time but they never seem to have anything these days.

If you plan on buying boxes, and if it makes any difference to you, then boxes of nickels are less expensive than boxes of the other denominations. I don't have the budget to buy more than $100 at a time.

I have found 20 silver nickels in the last 19 boxes I have searched.

Dimes then nickels then halves. Quarters are generally considered to be too rare to be worth the hassle. Many will claim halves produce more silver, but that really depends on your regional supply and how many other people are searching. Halves are certainly more lucrative, but it's REALLY easy to go for long streaks finding nothing and that can be very discouraging. Start with dimes. You'll find 1-2 dimes on average per box and skunks are rare. Once you get your process down and get a little taste of silver, then move to halves. Unless you like nickels (and I *love* nickels) they won't produce better than dimes. You get around one silver nickel a box, but 1 90% dime is more valuable than a 35% nickel and much more easily sold. 1.5 dimes per box and 1 nickel per box seem to be the average that's consistent for most people - please don't chime in with your averages if you've only been through a couple boxes (that's not enough to compare). Halves are all over the place. Some people pull silver all the time, some people rarely pull any.

a lot of folks have had success asking the tellers for any halves in their drawer.....pay them for those and see if you get lucky? just a thought.

I've had the best luck with dimes. I have 99 silver dimes, 35 silver nickels, and a measley one quarter. I don't do halves so I don't know how easy those are.

I stopped looking 2 years ago, but I would get 2 boxes of $500 each week. About 80% of what I found were the 40%, and I probably averaged 1-2 per box. It is probably a lower average now. I would also keep proofs and the 1987 and 2002 and later coins so I have 6 rolls of NIFC halves laying around. I never found a barber, but I probably found 1 roll of walkers and 3 of franklins in 1 year of searching (mostly from 1 really good box).