Road Trip

Enjoy your trip. Can't wait to hear about what you find.

Why would there be more silver coins in Nevada and Utah...

It's priced the same around the world

Thanks for the tip on Rust Coin, I will be in the Salt Lake area. As for more silver in these states, who knows? I'm willing to try. The old thread I remember seeing had hypothesized that there may be silver hiding in some rural banks that hasn't seen the light of day for a long time. Nevada ("The Silver State"), Idaho, and Utah are all states where silver mining (plus the other metals you find w/ silver) is and has been huge business.
I will test the idea since I have cleaned out all the banks in Monterey, CA.

I've visited a few old mining towns here in California and haven't noticed a larger percentage of silver in the banks. Some towns have antique shops with a display case or two. These tend to have higher priced coins - trying to capitalize on tourists in "old west" towns, I suspect. But you might have a different experience in more rural towns that don't get visited much. It will be very interesting to see what you come up with. Good luck with the road trip!

When you are in Salt Lake City I would suggest going to Monarch Coins, they are the largest dealer in town with a wide selection of coins, silver and gold. If you do be aware that they are only open Tuesday-Saturday. There are a few others but I can not remember the names at this time. If you are going through southern Utah then I would suggest hitting the small towns on the way because the next place to go for a store after Provo is St. George and that is about 4-5 hours away with a ton of small towns in between.

To answer the question about silver, here is a breakdown of a story I remember hearing about a few years ago: A fair amount of smaller towns have always had some form of gambling going on and slot machines are the easiest to deal with because you do not need a dealer and big payout do not happen that often. But, a few years ago a couple had stopped at one of these small towns and was playing the dollar slots when the wife noticed something different about some of the coins that were coming out. As her and her husband looked closer they noticed that there were Morgan and Peace dollars in the mix. After asking around they found out that a few machines in the area had little play over the last 40-50 years and some of the original coins were still in the machine. The news of this sent out a frenzy and people started swarming in on the smaller towns trying to get the coins for themselves. As some of them were going to local banks they were amazed more that some of these towns still had Morgans and Peace dollars that had been counted many times but never removed from the bank. Now, if this is true, who knows, but I do know that I have had family members try to find some themselves.

Good luck on the hunting and have a fun trip.