Questions For Half Hunters

I'm not sure if I'm entirely qualified to answer this but I'll give it my opinion anyways.

As for String & Sons separating silver. It's very possible. On a large scale it makes sense. I think I read someplace, possibly here, that there is a person buying pennies from one of the Armored Car Companies in large quantity. He is taking them to a warehouse and sorting out the copper. If someone is doing it for copper, I would think someone is doing it for silver.

I dumped $987 in halves today at my CU coin machine today. While one of the tellers was changing the full bags for empty ones, he told me that a customer was having trouble getting the coin machine to take his half dollar. The customer asked the teller if he would just buy it off him and save the customer the trouble of waiting in line to cash it in. Yep, it was silver.

I tend to change up where I get my halves. If I'm having a run of bad luck at one bank, I'll start ordering at another bank. I have gone about 10 to 15 boxes without finding anything. That's the longest. If you have another town close by that has another branch of your bank, try them. Maybe they get their coin from a different warehouse?

I think I average about 1 to 2 silvers per $1000 searched. I haven't kept track. I'm not sure I really want to know. If I found it was really low I might have second thought about searching halves.

Thanks for your inputs.

It's funny that you found 2 silvers per box not worth bothering with. After what I've gone through, I'd consider that to be stellar and I wouldn't stop until they started hitting me with a per box bank fee.

Almost all the banks in my area get their coin from one major commercial bank, so I it's looking like half hunting is a lost cause for me.

Does anyone ever notice the numbers on the s& s boxes.
That some boxes are always skunks and others have a good
Amount of silver.

Loomis supplies coin to the one major commercial bank in my area and just about all the other banks get their coin from that one bank. The few that don't probably deal directly with Loomis. It's the Loomis pool of halves that I've been getting continuously skunked in. Regrettably, that pool is the only act in town and I don't have any alternatives where I live.

I suspect there's a limited and stagnant pool of halves in my area. No outgo and no inflow - just a stagnant pool that's already been CRH'd dry of silver.

You've helped me think of something, though - my son lives 4 states away and will be visiting here soon. I think I'll send him $2K and have him bring up 4 boxes of halves from where he lives. His halves can't be any dryer than the local ones here that I've been seeing again and again...

You've probably got a viable game plan there, but the total effort, distances and expenses are a deterrent. As a leisure time-overloaded retiree I can just do my old thing as a 15-20hr/wk consultant for 4 or 6 months and use the income to buy the bullion I intend to accumulate. Don't really want to get back in the saddle, but it'd be infinitely easier and more productive than an endless stream of skunk boxes. Not to mention less frustrating, too...

Thanks for the idea, though. I wish I was traveling significant distances regularly and could just fit the coin-moving plan into my regular moves without any additional travel or expense.

its luck of the draw mainly, I've had a 19 box streak of nothing, so I know what you mean when finding 2 40s gets you excited I feel the same way. it does seem like you are getting the same coins back, so yea if you can try a different if you can. theres never been any proof of armored car services removing silver ( maybe in area 51 perhaps)