Coin Roll Hunting Dimes, Quarters or Half Dollars: Which Yields the Most Silver?

Just beginning coin roll hunting?  It's a popular activity for the coin aficionado and for bullion stackers alike.  Hunters go their local banks and purchase boxed up rolls of coin at the prospect of making big on bullion metals or rare varieties, the possibilities are endless.  Cents yield lots of copper, nickels privide a nice and steady array of nickel content, but which denomination outside of that provides the most bang for you time?  First of all, hunters need to have the knowledge how deep dimes, quarters, and half dollars potentials are.  The following are quick pros and cons of each denomination and your possible returns on your money.

Dime Rolls - Probably the easiest denomination to obtain in larger quantities and will yield more individual pre-1964 silver coins than others.  Traditionally dime boxes come in either $250 or $500 groups.  Finding silvers by searching edges in Brinks clear wrappers or by breaking bank wrapped rolls on the ends will allow hunters to re-wrap them in the same wrappers.  Silvers come up frequently at a rate of 1-5 or more for a full case, which will build up your smaller bullion stacks.  On the other hand, the downsides are substantial and could cost more in time.  And how this works out is that these coins are small, if you have to re-wrap $500 worth of them using new wrappers, it could take lots of time.  And the amount of silver you find is quite small compared to quarters or half dollars.  One 90% silver dime at today's prices are worth about $2.27 ea. in melt value. 

Quarter Rolls - Quarters are more readily available at the banks and they will usually carry plenty of cases  because there is high demand among it's merchant services.  If a hunter is fortunate enough to buy Brinks boxes that have "clear wrapper" rolled coins, that will help anyone spot pre-1964 coins real easy by looking for the pastey white edges.  This will in turn eliminate the need to reroll them and all is needed is to return the rolls to a designated dump bank.  But beware, like the dimes, lots of foreign coins that size are also found in quarter boxes.  Canadian quarters are one such find and these generally exhibit the white edges that are indicative of silver finds.  Another negative to searching quarters is that since the advent of the state quarter program, these quarters have seriously watered down rolls of clad as billions were minted from 1999-2009.  Ultimately, this makes breaking into quarters for silver a difficult undertaking with less and less to be found.

Half Dollar Rolls - What makes searching rolls of half dollars so appealing is that there are tons of silver to find.  Even with the climbing spot prices of silver, these 50 cent pieces contain the highest content of silver and will get you the most for your money.  If anyone is lucky enough to come across older customer wrapped rolls, it's easier to find some older Walking Liberty and Franklin halves which are extremely desireable in the numismatic community.  Aside from the pre-1964 90% silvers to be found, there is also a bracket of 1965-1970 half dollars that contain 40% silver.  A little bit less, but still worth twice the amount in silver than two silver 90% dimes combined.  A huge advantage!  So what if any, are the downsides to searching half dollars?  The negatives are few and far between.  The biggest negative is the general availability.  Banks traditionally don't carry full boxes of halves because they are tough to store and get rid of.  The fed reserve charges banks a fee for returning and purchasing large quantities of unwanted coin, in this case all the clad halves.  So this makes it a challenge to go to any bank and order some.  Lots of tellers just won't allow ordering of cases, or they might charge you a fee for ordering.  Moreover, some banks have laid the stipulation out that you can't return the unwanted rolls to the same bank.  One more issue that's a growing trend, is that everybody is searching halves.  It's the quickest way to hoard silver and provides the most return out of any other denomination available.  I've found larger metropolitan areas are hardest hit because of the increase cost of living expenses.  All in all, searching halves is worthy choice if you can obtain them.