The Rush :-(

There has been a huge drop off in silver since 2009. As the price of silver goes up and the commercials crowd the TV, more people get wind of it and more silver gets pulled.

I just think sometimes you get lucky and hit someone cashing in. I don't think you'll ever see a "recovery"

I would try more banks, farther away from your home base.Buy rolls & loose coin that people cash in.You have to be at the right place at the right time,increase your odds of finding silver.Take a road trip and stop at every bank you see.Good Luck!

i know the bank manager already told me that her and her staff cherry pick thru the rolls before lettin them go, said they've been doin it for a while now. i'm sure alot of other bank employees are doin the same.

RI hi there!
And thank you all for the replies... :-)
Actually I road trip all the time...my work takes me up to 60 miles away from my hometown every day and I try to stop at several banks each day. Hitting the tellers and trying to find loose or hand-rolled halves is hit or miss, and I do occasionally get lucky there and pick up one or two. In this way I can intercept some of them before they enter the "system".
But the boxes are the bread and butter. I know when and where they will be, and it's my most reliable source of coin. But these have already been through the system. For a silver half to make it to me in the boxes they need to have gotten through the gauntlet:
1) The person cashing them in must miss them
2) The teller taking the coin in must miss them
3) All the other tellers standing around the above teller must miss them.
4) IF they make it to the coin machine they need to miss any coin machine auditors cherry picking the bags...
5) And if they pass ALL THAT and make it back to Loomis or Brinks they need to pass unnoticed by all the depot employees and get re-rolled, re-boxed and sent back out to me to be picked up at some bank within my area.
(Actually I believe the Loomis/Brinks/Garda guys may have rules disallowing them from messing with the coins as they are re-packaged, but I may be wrong about that)
I would have to drive at least 75 miles from here to get out of the area serviced by my depot...so all the banks in my area are drawing from the same pool of coin, once the coin has made it into the "system".

I have heard some people saying it's also harder because some banks are now refusing to order halves for people.

I have had one bank refuse to order coin for me unless I maintained a certain minimum balance, but others have been ok so far. And I have had another bank happily agree to order me halves for a $17.50 per box fee. (needless to say I walked out on that)

But most of the time I can get the boxes.

I do a few things to try and make sure this is sustainable. I have been trying to protect my banking network kinda the same way we protect our MD rights: make the bankers love you, and don't overuse, and they will keep serving us.

I tell ya the thing that keeps the machine oiled for me...

1) Cookies and Fudge: Every couple of months I make a huge batch of cookies and fudge. I make up platters and take them to my most heavily used banks. The tellers love it...they love to be appreciated, and they never expect a coin collector to care. So I have seen good results with this...

2) And for the head tellers at these banks...the ones who actually do the coin ordering and tracking, I bought a couple morgans at the coin store. I then get in front of the head teller in question, and ask them for change for a buck. ;-).
After they picked their jaws up off the floor, well...they give me all the coin I want.

3) I never pick up where I drop off and I try never to dump at the same branch more than once per month, to minimize my impact.

These are the things I have been doing to try and keep this sustainable...but the numbers in the boxes are distressing....or rather the LACK of numbers in the boxes.

I just hope that the number of people doing this in my area levels off or starts to drop. If it gets much skinnier around here I'm gonna start getting frustrated. :-(

Anyway...blah, blah, blah...listen to me ramble. :-)

Thanks for the input all.
Good hunting out there!
Davre

Maybe I missed it.When you get your boxes of halves are the boxes sealed? and machine wrapped rolls or boxs open and rolls rewraped?

Boxes

RI, hey...
Yes, the boxes are sealed and machine rolled.
I do buy up every roll I see, especially hand rolls, but at least with the machine rolls/boxes I know that no one has picked through the box contents.

Hey All,

Ive been a banker for 15 years. I also farm and ranch AND MD!!!

I have a couple of observations from th bank side of things:
Loomis, Brinks, and the Federal Reserve have all gone to selling and buying coin with the banks loose, and in 25lb bags. Nothing is counted at the depot anymore. They are counted by weight. +/- 3lbs.

Banks are responsible for rolling their own, or selling as loose back to Fed, etc. Some of Our machines can detect silver when counting, but are only 40% accurate. Vault Employees are "supposed" to throw the silver back.

Tellers are the biggest silver robbers. But it is only in small quantities. They just do not have the time to pick silver in bulk.

I have a confession:
I work in management. I'm no where near the vault or coin. I CRH as often as possible, but I have to go to he teller just like you! Some of the BEST advice in the world was given above. Take care of those who take care of you!

I live in the the worst area for finding work in the state of Colorado.....that said, people here do everything they can to scrape up a few extra pennies. The tellers at the banks don't work full time and get no benefits, so they make sure a silver coin is not going to slip thru their hands....CRH here is a joke.....

Dusty

I usually post on T-Net and do my MD here but ran across this and would seem it totally depends on your area. I was doing 16 boxes each week for the past few months and would have average results of 1 per box and many with 25+ in them. However, at the start of January, it totally dropped off to nothing. It was like there was a guy standing at the half hopper at the fed pulling out every silver before they were rolled. In the past 3 weeks, I received 47 straight skunk boxes and that was enough for me. I have move back to dimes and am getting my normal 1-3 per box.

Many on T-Net still post about great boxes being out there but in my area, it is bone dry. Veterans say to move on to another coin and go back later. Not sure how they explain it, but many say it will replenish and I will start to see silver again in the halves. For now though, it was nothing but a waste of my time and gas to continue with halves. The dumping process is hard enough with halves but when you are not getting a single one.....what's the point?

Hope you start to see better results and if not, move on to something that will give you better results.