Roll Hunting 10, 20, 30, And 40 Years Ago

Heres my experience, starting about 1979.

First we had the silver run-up, along with a recession in the US.
My father built 28 homes in 1980, and only two in 1981, and then unemployment.
18% interest rates, and the Hunt Brothers sttempting to corner the silver market.
Long lines outside shops with those wanting to sell at $40-50 an oz.

I was a senior in high school and I bought rolls of halves, quarters and dimes.
Finds were slim and none, because everyone was roll hunting.

After the market tanked, over the years, silver trickled back into the vaults and collections got dumped.

I got back in with the price rise about 2007. I will say that boxes of halves for me were not that great, but the customer-rolled held lots of silver. I know of a couple bank managers ordering boxes and keeping the 90% halves, tossing the 40's back. Some of those boxes early on held 50-75% silver, mostly in the form of 40% coin. I switched to dimes about 2010, because halves were just lousy for me, and there were more hunters then than now.

The run up in 2011 made some collectors small fortunes. Price decline and more collections dumped, and silver continues to trickle back into the supply by various means.

I roll hunt today for the cheap thrill of the occasional silver find, and that is the only reason.

Fascinating stuff , come to think of it...that was around the time the movie Porky`s was released did you watch it then ? Back to the subject : were rolls back then wrapped in the same type of paper as they are today ?

Inflation is so bad, dimes back then were only $3 rolls!

I had one once, but had to spend it and sort of wanted to to see the look on someones face. I am still looking of reasons for the change? was it roll length so they are all closer? Was it roll count so it was uniform that a coin beginning with a "1" in denomination had 50 coins per roll and those ending in a "5" had 40 per roll? was it just to have a quick simple way to know the roll size: 50, 40, 50, 40; for the most commonly used coins?

I know I saw a lot more bicentennial quarters in the 80, so things have changed a lot. I could find a mercury per yer back then as well, but now, never see any. Only recently have been hunting, and only got such things in change. It has to be harder now with more people keeping them or the silver being melted, and the billions and billions of new coins made every year.

Recently I have gotten more wheat cents, but That is probably due to getting 2500 cents per box. I would say the ratio of my finding them hasn't really change from decades past, only the volume I search now resulting in finding more.

finding less foreign recently too. Was finding euro cent and 2 cent in pennies boxes an once found a 5 pfennig or something like that, but mostly now it is all US with maybe a few Canadian if I am lucky.

There are just so many more coins that the population density of the coins makes it much harder to find unless you are in an area that has a lot of older coins just sitting around, or sees a lot of foreign coins introduced.