Picking Up My First Box This Week - What Should I Get?

I hear its hard to score silver with .25 , I used to hit 1or 2 box average on .10 ,and I could even hit a bank, edge seach and dump in within 30 minutes, halves are hit or miss , with more skunk like quarters IMO. I say you can't lose with cents. I used to do dimes and I figured just way more money in the cents.

I got a box of pennies and 95% of it was brand new 2011D pennies--I had 5 rolls with older pennies in them--I brought it back

When you're new, your best bet is either Cents or Nickels as you'll always find something interesting, old, or odd.

Nickels are my highest recommendation for your first run as you'll find at least one War Nickel, Buffalo, or something special per box, as well as a good deal of pre-1960s coinage.

Cents come in a close second because of all of the variety. You should find about a dozen wheats per box, and there are lots of varieties. I also recommend having a magnifying glass on hand as some of the fun stuff to rake for in cents requires an extra close look. :-)

Dimes, Quarters, and Halves tend to be very picked-over for older coins due to silver-searching. However, I would recommend them in this order:

Third place goes to Quarters, and I recommend that you grab a State Quarters album before you nab a box, as you'll have nearly every hole filled when you're done. There's a lovely variety of reverse designs to enjoy, and you have a 1 in 4-ish chance (per box) of scoring a silver quarter.

Fourth goes to Halves, strictly because of silver hunting, as the "payload" tends to be the "largest" when you do get a payload (and there's just something about the feel and sound of a silver half dollar when you flip it that is so satisfying :-) ). The biggest drawback is if you hit someone else's culls -- and you'll see it as they're all marked -- or get hit with a skunk (i.e. no silver) streak it tends to be a morale breaker.

Fifth goes to Dimes. Nothing very interesting happens with them except for the once-in-a-blue-moon Mercury dime (1 per every 4-5 boxes), 1982 no-mintmark, or just as rarely a doubled die (but there are so few DDs in this series that are easy to spot it's laborious). You might get 1 or 2 silver dimes per box, if that.

I saw you were working with U-2s,thought you may have been a blackcat, but I assume you spent some time at Beale chasing your U-2's on the runway ;) Anyhow thx for your service Sir <S>

2a353 here

Dimes are probably the most reliable way to find silver.