Half Dollars Harder To Order From Bank

From Jan 2015 to May 2018 I could not order halves from local banks serviced by Loomis because Loomis literally did not have any halves in their vault. The other local coin courier had halves, but given I had searched many thousands of dollars worth over the years and found no collectibles, I stopped ordering local halves. As of May 2018, I discovered Loomis again had halves. I ordered a total of 20 boxes of halves from banks serviced by Loomis from May through October 2018 until, once again, Loomis had no more halves.

It sounds to me like Brinks is not allowing any banks to order halves because Brinks does not have any halves.

Let me tell a story about the poor banks. I opened another account with a local bank, (I had accounts at six different banks, for roll hunting purposes). Using my father's reference, they gave me a free $50 savings account. Within six months, that free $50 was gone, eaten up in maintainance fees. I'd never even used their services!

Same with my other banks. Monthly maintainance, minimum balance fees, etc...I complied the best I could using direct deposit, keeping accounts active, etc, No matter what, the fees kept increasing until I finally dumped them all for credit unions.

Roll hunters have been around for a long time, I've been hitting the banks since 1979 (lot of competition back then too).

You can't say that I cost the banks money. If they aren't making money, they're doing it wrong.

Interesting topic - I can provide some facts:

Mdub - Brinks would never tell a customer (your bank) what they can or cannot order. They simply store/maintain/process/secure a banks inventory and transport currency/coin to various destinations. If one of their customers (insert name of bank here) places an order and the bank has that coin/currency in their inventory at Brinks then the order will be delivered per request. If a bank has no half dollars in their inventory at Brinks, they simply replenish their inventory by placing a FED order via Fedline. I know because I used to do this at my previous job . I have ordered halves as well as everything else for the various vaults I monitored. The order is usually ready for the armored carrier to pick up the following business day.

I get the whole cost idea for banks, but it literally costs pennies on the dollar per roll for the service from armored carriers. When I would do invoicing for the armored carrier fees it came out to be 2.5 cents per roll. Bagged coin was usually a few percentage points per dollar contained. It will vary per the contract with the vendor for each bank....Mere 'chump change' compared to the annual earnings reported by banks. I'm not trying to downplay that there is a cost for a bank, just clarifying that the cost is minimal in the grand scheme of doing business.
It is more of the nuisance they are trying to avoid such as having to store boxes of coin in the vault or having to break down rolled coin into bags for shipment out. I see no issue with a customer ordering a box or two per week. It is the customers who return coin to the same branch or order/ dump multiple boxes per week to the same branch of a bank that ruin the fun for the rest of us. Half dollars are especially tedious since these don't circulate and the branch has no other alternative but to ship them out to their main inventory.
Berto - the only reason you couldn't order halves from your bank is simply because they didn't replenish their half dollar inventory through an order with the FED. The armored carrier is happy to transport whatever is available in a banks inventory, but cannot place a FeD order for a bank, the Bank must order. An armored carrier can initiate a 'swap' of funds between two banks that have their inventory at the same armored carrier vault, but both parties must agree to it. I've arranged for this before and it is very simple to do.

Fist - you are on the right path about going cashless. Many banks are quietly exploring methods of eventually eliminating future cash transactions: P2P (peer to peer payment), depositing checks by scanning with a smartphone, online banking, debit cards, etc. They see cash as costly and a liability/risk.


Hope this helps,

Isn't it possible that after years of no minting of new halves for circulation that the supply is drying up? This would be similar to what happened with the SBA during 1999.