Getting rolls (and boxes)
Start with your own bank: ask a teller for rolls, or order full boxes — $500 of half dollars, $25 of cents — which usually arrive within days. Small local branches and credit unions are often friendlier about big orders than large branches; being a polite, known customer smooths everything.
Customer-wrapped rolls (hand-rolled by the public) beat machine-fresh rolls for finds, since they come from jars and inheritances rather than straight from the Mint.
What to hunt in each denomination
Every denomination has its own targets. Halves are the classic silver play; cents and nickels are variety and hoard territory.
- Half dollars: 1964 (90% silver), 1965–1970 (40% silver), proofs and NIFC (not-intended-for-circulation) dates
- Cents: wheat reverses (1958 and earlier), 1943 steel, doubled dies like the 1995 DDO, and pre-1982 copper cents
- Nickels: war nickels 1942–45 (35% silver, big mint mark over the dome), Buffalos, and full-steps candidates
- Dimes and quarters: pre-1965 silver (check edges for solid silver), missing-clad-layer errors, W-mint-mark quarters from 2019–2020
- Any denomination: off-center strikes, die cracks and cuds, foreign coins mixed in
Workflow and dumping etiquette
Speed comes from edge-checking first: fan a roll of dimes or quarters and silver edges jump out instantly. Sort keepers into flips or tubes, log your finds, and re-roll or bag the rest for return.
Dump your searched coins at a different bank or branch than the one supplying you — tellers tire of counting back boxes they just sold you, and keeping your source branch happy keeps the pipeline open. Coin-counting machines at dump banks save everyone time.
Log your finds with CoinVault Pro
Roll hunting produces a stream of maybe-somethings, and CoinVault Pro is the fastest triage tool: scan a suspect coin and the AI identifies date, mint, and variety potential, with live sold prices showing whether it is a keeper. Confirmed finds go into your collection with a tap.
The app’s daily challenges, XP, and achievements pair naturally with the hunting grind — and the social feed is the right audience for that first silver Walking Liberty half.