Are Certain Coins Less Likely To Find Silver?

Not sure which is the best, but the worst coin rolls to find silver are the cents.

Here are my thoughts based upon a lick of experience doing CRH:

MORE PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING HALF-DOLLARS than any other denomination of currency! This is evidenced by the number of posts on the coin roll hunting threads for halves, quarters, and dimes on this board!

There are an ever-decreasing availability of silver half-dollars in circulation in bank boxes.
In 1965, 100% of half-dollars in circulation had silver.
In 1975, that number may have been less than 50%
In 2016, you can bet that number is less than 1%

In general, half-dollars were the best option because they circulated the least often. Therefore, silver half-dollars deposited into the banks never saw the light of day until collectors and hunters sought them out to grab at face value! Quarters, dimes and nickels all have been picked through more extensively throughout time because they're highly circulated coins. On average, half-dollars may in fact still be the best bet, but the pickings are slim!

In my experience, I searched through $1,000 Face Value of half-dollars and found TWO 40% silver halves.
This doesn't mean that hunting for silver isn't fun, can't yield a fruitful and rewarding stack of silver in time, etc.

I'll leave you with one final thought: if you have even odds at finding silver in each denomination, and you can search the same amount of coins in each denomination, which one will net you the most silver? I'd choose that one!

I'm sure it's much less for both dates.
Halves (BTW the term 'half dollar' doesn't have a hyphen) are generally considered to turn up the most silver. However, I can't really speak for experience since I have done only 1 box, which had none. If you can find silver quarters, that's great- you're extremely lucky. If I were you, though, I'd stick with dimes. I like nickels too, though, but not just for the silver.

It seems like the availability of Halves will continue to dwindle if the active searching keeps up; you can only have so many coins even though the mintage of all of the 1964-70 coins is still around 30% of the total of all Kennedy halves (including 1992-present Silver proofs and 1976 40%), and this isn't even counting the "bonus" Franklin/Walker/classic commemorative/Barber coins that are also found, which shows that there will always be some fool or crook who steals such coins just to spend them and therefore ending up back in circulation.

In contrast, the number of silver quarters minted since the establishment of the US Mint was surpassed by the number on clad quarters some time in 1968, and achieved greater than 70% of all quarters minted around 1976, 90% around 1997, and is around 95% today, meaning that naturally, around six times as many silver halves are still circulating compared to quarters, and since halves aren't accepted at vending machines like quarters are more likely to sit around in storage somewhere until they get dumped at a bank or wrapped.

Quarters (and dimes) get rejected if they are silver and more people notice this. Dimes don't circulate as widely as quarters and due to their small size, aren't as attractive as a denomination in terms of hoarding silver. Although the ratio of clad dimes minted to silver dimes minted is still much higher than halves and almost as high as quarters, they are easier to find and in general in terms of 90% silver, the most likely you'll find in terms of at least one per box.

Nickels are naturally low because they were only minted for four years, and the ratio of non-silver is naturally the highest. Average people don't understand that these coins were silver compared to the milled denominations due to their darker toning. I still view the Nickels as the best denomination though in terms of the potential for keys and semi-keys in terms of searching along with the occasional higher grade Buffalo or hobo.

That said, once us collectors take control, finding silver in halves will truly become scarce which will make variety/other denomination searching more practical. I honestly have much better luck with Halves with CWRs (I've even found a few solid silver rolls before) than machine-wrapped since the later will likely have more of the searched coins recoined.

For me in Canada, the numbers are different, but some ideas cross over the border. First off, up here, we have to contend with the almighty CRHer... the government, as they have been actively removing all pre 2001 coinage since the early 2000's.

secondly if you want to be successful in pulling silver you need to do volume (yes every one could get lucky and get a box loaded with silver, but not likely)

Over the past year I have been running at about 10 boxes of quarters and 10 boxes of dimes (we don't have silver nickels to look for) each week. This was facilitated by a lot of free time, and spare cash.

I was averaging just $2/week in silver

I'm a bank teller, and I seem to have had quite an opposite experience with halves than most of you. They BY FAR yield the most silver for me. I've probably found close to 3 rolls worth of silver half dollars in my time as a teller as opposed to maybe 5-6 silver quarters, 2 War Nickels, and 3-4 silver dimes. And this is considering that I see WAY FEWER halves come through my drawer than any other denomination. Like, whenever a bunch of halves come my way, it's a surprise when one of them isn't silver.

I have been hunting for 2 years by far quarters are the worst.
I like dimes for consistency, but halves do pay off big every now and then.

Mainly the 40% ers, 65-69.

Hope this helps