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How do you track your sorting percentages? Per sort, weekly, annually? Normal vs. extraordinary finds?
I ran into someone at my local credit union who sorts and has for a long time. I struck up a conversation with them and was discussing what we sort and why.
I have sorted and mostly keep my finds(pennies, nickels, halves), he sorts dimes and sells most of his silver finds immediately. The part that was interesting was he said he finds approximately 1 in a hundred silver dimes. BUT he counts on rare special finds as part of this. He stated finding three solid rolls of silver dimes and also going 2 months within finding any.
For some reason I found this fascinating
I have found many great finds and have often felt luckier than most, but I have not kept good enough statistics to determine what percentages average out over the long run.
Is there long term data on averages on the tracking threads?
What are averages for:
Copper pennies?
Wheats?
Steel pennies?
Indian Heads?
War Nickels?
Buffalo heads?
Silver Dimes?
Silver quarters?
40% silver halves?
90% silver halves?

I think I have seen statistics on the older threads. I think the stats were done by the person who started the thread. It is a lot of work!

I was just surprised by his expectation of running into 'collections" being turned in. While it makes sense, because you never know how frequently you are going to find one or how big they are going to be...it just seemed sort of weird. I have recently had three "collection" type finds, therefore I have averaged a war nickel every $20, a war nickel every $25 and a silver half every roll. But previously, I would consider a war nickel every 100-150, a buffalo every 500, and half every 500 or so to be average. You just never know when you would find a "collection" type find nor how good it would be

I’m assuming one thing you said has to be a typo. To average one silver half in a roll of 20 is phenomenal and would have been so perhaps even 30 years ago. The only thing I can think of is this- maybe you are talking about a small sample size where you happened to find a few rolls that were all or almost all silver to skew the averages and you’ve only gone through, say, a few thousand halves total.

I use an Excel spreadsheet to track wheat and copper pennies as well as silver halves. I track virtually everything I go through. One thing that helps me when I go to a bunch of banks on the same day is this. Get a business card from each bank where you get coins and write the date and amount received on each card. Then, when you are on your computer weeks later doing the update, you will have much better record keeping.

If you get a small amount of halves (i.e., $10 face) and go through them on the spot, write down the results on the business card. For instance, 7/3/21- $10 face- got (1) 40%er plus (1) 90%er.

Also, I put a small note in the bag/box of coins. If I got the bag at a bank at 1234 Main St., I will simply write 1234 on the note. That way, when going through the coins, I will know where they came from.

This system works well for me. I’ve used it for well over 10 years.

P.S. I’ve done very little to no real tracking of nickels, dimes and quarters. The time it takes to go through them just isn’t worth it IMHO. I prefer Canadian.999 nickel nickels to U.S. nickels (only 25% nickel).

Look at the tracking threads here. We have assembled a very good sampling of sorting percentages going back many years. Presumably the bank friend would see silver collections come in and snag them which would greatly increase their sorting odds.

In Canada I can’t even remember when I last found a silver quarter in the wild. Barely even find American quarters. Dimes are better. You can find American dimes regularly and very rarely a silver dime. I found a silver half in a 100 batch I looked through recently. That was cool, but it has been years since I found a silver half or any silver in old dollars.

Recyclersteve wrote:I’m assuming one thing you said has to be a typo. To average one silver half in a roll of 20 is phenomenal and would have been so perhaps even 30 years ago. The only thing I can think of is this- maybe you are talking about a small sample size where you happened to find a few rolls that were all or almost all silver to skew the averages and you’ve only gone through, say, a few thousand halves total.

Not a typo, but yes a very small sample size.

I was just surprised by his "expectation" to have some great finds and therefore include those in the averages. I guess the other way of looking at it is; what is the frequency of a collection type find?

Let me answer it this way. I'm gonna discuss only halves as I think they are far and away the best item to look through in terms of bang for your buck.

I have an Excel spreadsheet where I have very conscientiously tracked halves gone through since 5/28/04 (over 17 years). I have tracked both 90% halves found and 40%ers as well.

There were a total of 1,832 times where I got halves from a bank. I didn't track the times when banks told me they had nothing. So I'd guess (just a wild guess) that the total number of banks gone to was somewhere between 5,000 to 7,000 banks.

For all those trips I highlighted on my spreadsheet anytime when I got 10 or more silver halves in the same trip. Right or wrong, I chose 10 as the number because that is where I felt I could be getting what was someone else's silver collection.

As of 1/17/14 there were only 27 times total where I got 10 or more silver halves in the same trip. Since 1/17/14 there has only been ONE MORE TIME (on 6/7/19) when I got 10+ silver halves. That was just once in the last 391 times I got halves. If you are going out of your way, you could argue it isn't even worth the gas and time it takes now.

Your friend who seemed to think the percentages of collections received are that much higher likely got really excited when they saw one nice silver hoard. I have traveled to many (33 that I know of) states around the country and gotten halves. I can assure you the unicorn experience isn't nearly as common as one would think.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Just trying to report the facts.

P.S. Don’t tell my wife about this post. She will respond with the following: “NO MORE BANKS. And Steve, I told you to sell those coins!”

I decided to pick up some coins today after reading this thread about sorting percentages. I was able to get one roll of halves. It contained 14 silver coins. That's a 70% silver roll. Finds like that really impact the percentages. I have had finds like this before but they are few and far between.

I also picked up eight rolls of dimes which yielded no silver all. That's too small of a sample size to state that there are no silver dimes out there to be found. The batch was 405 coins total instead of 400 for the eight rolls. That gives me a 1.25% return on investment. One of the coins was a British 5 pence coins so that 1.25% may have to be adjusted just a tiny bit.

Recyclersteve wrote:Let me answer it this way. I'm gonna discuss only halves as I think they are far and away the best item to look through in terms of bang for your buck.

I have an Excel spreadsheet where I have very conscientiously tracked halves gone through since 5/28/04 (over 17 years). I have tracked both 90% halves found and 40%ers as well.

There were a total of 1,832 times where I got halves from a bank. I didn't track the times when banks told me they had nothing. So I'd guess (just a wild guess) that the total number of banks gone to was somewhere between 5,000 to 7,000 banks.

For all those trips I highlighted on my spreadsheet anytime when I got 10 or more silver halves in the same trip. Right or wrong, I chose 10 as the number because that is where I felt I could be getting what was someone else's silver collection.

As of 1/17/14 there were only 27 times total where I got 10 or more silver halves in the same trip. Since 1/17/14 there has only been ONE MORE TIME (on 6/7/19) when I got 10+ silver halves. That was just once in the last 391 times I got halves. If you are going out of your way, you could argue it isn't even worth the gas and time it takes now.

Your friend who seemed to think the percentages of collections received are that much higher likely got really excited when they saw one nice silver hoard. I have traveled to many (33 that I know of) states around the country and gotten halves. I can assure you the unicorn experience isn't nearly as common as one would think.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Just trying to report the facts.

P.S. Don’t tell my wife about this post. She will respond with the following: “NO MORE BANKS. And Steve, I told you to sell those coins!”

Wow...That is impressive. So what percentage of halves have you found that are silver? Did you only do customer wrapped rolls? Or brinks/Loomis stuff as well? I have had a decent amount of success with customer wrapped rolls but basically zero when dealing with a box of halves

For everything going back to 2004, 1.61% of halves were silver. That’s about one of 61.9 halves being silver, but that is misleading. Let me explain why.

Total searched was about $86,000 in face value.

The 2004-2010 bonanza years had $67,307.50 face and included 2,643 silvers (1.96%). One of 50.9 halves was silver. That was broken down into 126 pre-Kennedy coins, 328 of the 1964 Kennedys, and 2,189 of the 40% Kennedys.

The 2011-2018 slump years had $18,658 in face value and included ONLY 131 SILVERS (0.35%). Only one of 284.9 halves was silver. That was broken down into 2 (pre-64), 17 (1964), and 112 (40%ers).

I haven’t updated the numbers the last 2 years, even though I have the data, because the results were so pathetic.

I did get some $500 boxes, but not that often. Sometimes I’d ask for $100 face in rolls when they had a box of $500. I’d go to my car and break open 2-3 rolls to spot check for silver. If I got a few silvers, I’d go back into the bank and tell them I changed my mind and decided I wanted the whole $500.

I’d take bank wrapped and customer wrapped rolls. If I recognized another collector’s markings on the rolls, I’d pass.

I loved it when I could see silver in the teller’s tray.

Funny story- Once my young daughter (perhaps 9-11 years old back then) was in the back seat sorting while I was driving. I told her “that one you just looked at was silver.” She said “Dad, keep your eyes on the road!” I proceeded to tell her I WAS WATCHING THE ROAD. I could hear the sweet sound of silver in the backseat!

Your data kind of follows his explanation... I would say that on "average," 1 silver per 3 or 4 rolls is high...but then when you find some...they are typically grouped together. But then when you do not find a group, the percentage is much lower.
The coin supply also is not infinite, so I think it is "somewhat possible" to "clean" an area out of silver in the short term until it is recirculated.

An area being cleaned out does make some sense. It’s been a few years since I was doing any significant coin sorting but I do remember long streaks of finding no silver. It was like the same big pool of halves were making up the boxes I would get and the batches of customer wrapped rolls that I would find. Once in a while someone’s collection would find its way into the mix and would often be in the form of multiple silvers per batch.

Halves circulate so little that any time you find a big batch at a bank it is likely to be someone else’s dump. Silver is out there but very very hard to find. One day a 3 years ago I had time to kill and no need to rush home so I hit every bank going North from Seattle on 99 until I ran out of banking hours. Picked up every half at every bank in multiple towns. I actually found a few random silver, but it is not worth the gas and time if you have anything to do that will pay you or you have to drive out of your way.

Following the "find a collection theory, yesterday I found 4 war nickels in $20 of nickels and a couple of rolls that looked very old...
so I went today and got $50 in dimes and $50 in pennies(they did not have halves)from the same location.
Feeling like just missed...2 rolls of dimes had all coins between 1965 and 1970.
Pennies had several solid rolls of copper, a bunch of Canadians and one roll of almost solid wheats.
Ended up with no silver dimes and 28% copper, an additional 8% canadian, and 1% wheat...did not sort canadians yet but most of them were copper, so probably over 35% copper for the bag in total.

Some of us including myself have posted sorting results/percentages in other threads. Ten years ago, I was finding one war nickel in every 20 rolls; now its more like 70 rolls. I was finding one Buffalo (with date) every 75-100 rolls. Now it's more like one out of every 250 rolls (5 boxes). A 1950 Jefferson nickel is much harder to find than a war nickel, and notice how I said 1950 and not "1950 D". As for copper pcts, it was 25 percent ten years ago. Currently around 16-18 percent today as some people such as me are draining it out of circulation.

Sorting boxes (any type of coin) today is not just worth it anymore. Too much time and effort for little to no reward.

Lately I've been buying copper pennies in large quantities from my LCS for 50% above face value.

I also ask friends and family if I can sort through any old change jars they have sitting around. I cull all the copper and nickels.

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:Sorting boxes (any type of coin) today is not just worth it anymore. Too much time and effort for little to no reward.

I am very close to the same thinking.

Of late I have only been sorting nickels. Silver has been nonexistent, but I'm holding the good ones and only returning the uglies.

My thinking is from Howard Ruff's book, preparing for price controls, have a way to boost "value" but remain in the "letter of the law." He was talking using junk silver. I think a box of nickels may out bid a crisp new $100 bill for some price controlled groceries, once or twice.

My last thought is to keep the wheels greased. For me there is only one bank left for me to get coin, and one left to return. I'm not ready to surrender, just yet. I enjoy the hunt.

coppernickel wrote:

Cu Penny Hoarder wrote:Sorting boxes (any type of coin) today is not just worth it anymore. Too much time and effort for little to no reward.

I am very close to the same thinking.

Of late I have only been sorting nickels. Silver has been nonexistent, but I'm holding the good ones and only returning the uglies.

My thinking is from Howard Ruff's book, preparing for price controls, have a way to boost "value" but remain in the "letter of the law." He was talking using junk silver. I think a box of nickels may out bid a crisp new $100 bill for some price controlled groceries, once or twice.

My last thought is to keep the wheels greased. For me there is only one bank left for me to get coin, and one left to return. I'm not ready to surrender, just yet. I enjoy the hunt.

I've been hoarding ALL nickels for the past couple years... worth close to 6 cents each now, that's 20% above the FV. Nickel is the main metal used in EV batteries. A few years ago investor Kyle Bass bought $1 million in nickels... he's no dummy.

Right now it's almost impossible to get even 1 box of coin from the banks I've visited. If they do let you have it, they require you pay a premium to get them.