Coin Counting Machines

As one who used to work in the veniding machine business and spent many hours dumping bags of change into sorting machines, I have never seen a silver coin rejected, only Canadian quarters.
A silver coin will make a distinct sound when run through a hand cranked counting machine, you can hear a silver coin from far away. When I would have to bag quarters, every time a silver one passed through the counting wheel and hit the bag I could hear it ring. I found many silver quarters back then (I don't want to date myself but this was back in the 70's) when there were more silver coins around.
I say if the bank will let you buy the bag once it has been filled to the proper value, go ahead and take it home and dump it on the table, if there is silver you will spot it. If you just run change through the machines they use today, you will never hear the sound of a silver coin.

The bags are taken off and hauled into the back I belive to the safe till the armored trucks come to pick them up. The banks around me I know send them off.

andrew, the counting machines you go to...are they coinstar?

The credit union I use has a coin counting machine but its not a coin star. It looks almost like a washing machine, square, about the same size and you lift a lid on the top to dump the coins. It doesn't charge to use it at my CU but I was told I couldn't purchase the bags that they were sent back to the FED and if I wanted to purchase coins I would have to buy boxes.

One of the banks I used to bank at had big plastic bags. The sorted and counted this put them in these bags and sealed em waiting for pick up.
You could walk in and let them know you wanted a bag of pennies and like a bag of ice they would bring me a $50 bag

It's all kind of variable - some counting machines will reject silver some won't. Some banks will sell you bags, some won't. You'll all have to experiment and observe in order to figure it out for your banks.

I know the TCF's in the Chicago area use counting machines that reject silver (not sure if all of them do, but the little short ones in most of the branches do). They don't separate the coins into bags either, it all gets dumped into a big wheeled box that they probably ship out to be counted and rolled. Those particular machines collect anything magnetic inside and don't usually kick it back out to the reject tray and they can also tell the difference between bronze and zinc pennies. When the tellers go in to service the machines, they'll clean out the internal reject bucket and usually throw out all the coins in there!

Most of the Chase and Harris banks in the area use the commercial counters that dump into bags but I've been unsuccessful so far in purchasing the bags. I assume that these counters (which seem more robust) don't reject silver - if they kicked it out I imagine we wouldn't be finding it in rolls.

I doubt any of the machines will kick out War Nickels though. They have a similar weight and the same electrical conductivity as regular nickels.

I know for a fact that I have received 2 silver dimes from 2 different people using 2 different vending machines that both rejected silver

I saw a documentary on the tele about Coin Star. They showed that all the coins fall into a pair of hoppers that each weigh approximately 800lbs when full. They are picked up by Brinks, taken to one of their facilities then sorted, rolled, and boxed for shipment. Some how, somewhere, Coin Star gets paid.