Searching Partial Bags Of Kennedy Half Dollars

Great haul from a small bag!

Okay, here's a quick update on technique:

1) I have two bank branches where I have befriended tellers, mostly by being a nice guy, but also with chocolate and Starbucks cards.
2) Both will sell me coins in bags (full bags) or partial bags off the machine. Tellers at both branches
also watch for odd stuff that comes their way, old banknotes, steel pennies, wheaties, etc.

Teller relationships - and bank manager relationships - are a key. Send a letter to the branch manager telling her how wonderful her branch and employees are. Name names. This costs you nothing, but separates you from the crowd that comes to her bank.

Results:
pennies: I have pulled full bags of pennies regularly. Wheaties run about 14-17 per bag. Occasionally from the teens, seldom from the 20's or 30's, regularly from the 40's and 50's. Fun, but a lot of work. Canadian coins run about 12-15 per bag.

Nickels: Have searched twice. Average about 1 Buff every other bag, and one silver nickel per bag. Least fun, most work.

Dimes: running about 2 silver per bag, plus one foreign (everywhere, but most often Canada) per bag. Fun, fast, and will do more.

Quarters: Have never done so.

Halves: Buy what you can get. If it's over $30 face, I buy it. If you wait, someone else will buy the bag. Results are very good for me - almost always silver, and almost always a lot of trash, foreign, car wash tokens, etc.

The tellers are fickle. They sell halves, banknotes, etc. to their own friends, too, so I need to go in at least once a week.

If your bank won't sell the bags off the coin counting machines, ask if they have a policy written. Mostly, they don't want to bother. Shop around. Got to another branch and try again.

I have one bank branch and one credit union branch that will give me (or save for me) the foreign rejects from their machine. Wonderful stuff. I am averaging about $3 per week face value Canadian, plus about $2 value in Mexico per week. Lots of car wash tokens...

Have fun

Partial bag of half dollars, off a bank machine.
Face: $102.00
Results: one 1967 Kennedy half, one batting token, one quarter. Oh, well, came out ahead.

Partial bag of dimes - $424.00 face. Results: 13 silver Roosevelt dimes. Best I have ever done. Best before this was four dimes from one bag. One 10 cent (or equivalent) Switzerland 1970, two Canadian dimes.

My Best Find Ever Checking Banks For Rolls Of Halfs, 1 Bank Said They had 8 Rolls so I Bought 5 Rolls, Did Not Want To Burn Them Was Wanting To Be Able To Come Back Later Date, Stop Down The Road To Get Something To Drink, Wife Went In So What The Heck I Will Take a Look, Found 23 90% in 2 Of The Rolls Both Kenny's & Liberty's, So Straight Back To The Bank To Get The Other Rolls But Nothing There, That Was A Great Day

Very nice!

Take care of the tellers who take care of you. Gift cards and donuts are a nice way to say thank you.

Well, just back from Argentina. Trash from my credit union was huge, and searched two bags of dimes:

One bag: no silver, one 5p UK coin.
One bag: Three silver dimes, two X 1964, one x 1959

Here's the junk they gave me:
USA 4.70 USA misc coins, some slightly bent, some perfect
USA.$0.93 in really mangled coins
USA collectible: 3 steel pennies
Mexico 9 coins = 12.10 pesos
Euro 4 coins - EU 2.30
UK Three pence 1940
Canada about sixty coins = $13.04
France 1/2 Franc 1985
Australia 3 coins = AU $3.20
NZ .01
Philippines 2004 ten pesos

Three flattened pennies

1 golf token (for spotting your ball)
1 washer
2 batting cage tokens
1 Downtown Seattle transit token - good for one free ride
1 vacuum token from a car wash
2 Chuckee Cheese game tokens
2 misc. game tokens

Quite an interesting mess. It was fun to pick through. I left the tellers with chocolate chip cookies.

Nice find on the silver Ike. I've had very little luck getting anything good in those searches.

I've also had mixed results from buying coincounter bags. 1 was under by $30 and the bank refused to compensate me for the loss and stopped selling bags after the incident. The other was over by about $30. Both had very little silver and so I went back to boxes.

:)