Your Experiences From Coin Roll Hunting Half Dollars?

Well, I hadn't searched rolls since the late 70's/early 80's, until 5 years ago. I still kept my eyes open for 90% in change though. I do remember one of my bank managers telling me that she was ordering boxrs of halves in the 90's and they were chock full of silver and 90%. You must remember tho, that silver prices were very low and 40%'ers were almost always thrown back.

I did a very limited amount of it back in the 70s. I was young enough I could not drive, but my grandfather (the one who got me collecting) thought it might be a good idea and kind of fun. Back then times were better - a lot better (even before the fake Carter Energy Crisis drove up gas prices) - and silver was not seen to be worth too much of an effort to try to find massive amounts of it. No one knew the Hunt brothers' situation was coming in 10 years. We never thought of ordering them by the box, but instead would take a 300.00 with us to make sure they had to empty the vaults (and this normally did it back then). We just drove around to different banks - no need for an account (great times!), and asked them for halves.

I do not believe we got many (if any) rolls without at least one 40%. We would only average around 10 rolls or so per bank. I remember one of the best groups we had were when we got a couple WL rolls. But we did not do this for too long. I think now of the huge amounts of silver I could have accumulated back then. But hindsight is always better. One of the main reasons we did this hunting was to find the only Ben he had not found in circulation - a 1948 Franklin and a couple 1970 D JFKs.

My grandfather never wanted to buy any coins - and had no desire to hoard silver (like I said - times were a lot better). He just wanted to see how close he could come to finding his sets in circulation. But my family decided one year to get him an UNC 1948 Ben for his birthday. He loved it although it was not from circulation. However, and ironically, it was not too much later he found an AU UNC Ben in circulation! So that ended the roll hunting!

I feel like I missed out on a lot, being born in the 90's. :(

I've found that this hobby is not exactly profitable unless you are willing to commit to a serious amount of coin searching. Yes you will hear people post amazing finds, but there are a lot of people finding very few or none as well. If you were to pick-up a part time job and work the same hours you spend roll hunting/buying/returning, you'd probably be able to make more money that way.

If you're not exactly in it for the money and more for the amusement of finding silver then it's a great hobby. This is not a good year for half roll hunting for me. I've had multiple weeks where all the boxes I'm searching are skunks.

Even in 2009 silver halfs were really still common in boxes. Now the percentage IMHO has to be floating somewhere around 0.001-0.0001%. But that's just from my returns this year.

i used to get a few rolls a week back in the 1990s saved some silver at the time but kind of phased in and out ashame I never saved anything I found back then ( college kid needed the money haha ) but I'm really enjoying it again wish I could have afforded a full box in the mid 90s

Lots of good finds as little as 4 and 5 years ago. I found my first Barber, 1894, in a customer roll my first week of searching. Lots of mixed 40 and 90% in rolls, and lots of solid customer rolls of 40%. Dimes also gave me a bunch of Barbers just 3 years ago in String and son boxes.