Where are the better banks?

[Howeburger]

Where do you think the better banks are? North or south? Big cities, suburbs, or small towns? I have tried them all and have no glorious stories to share? Maybe it's my overall bad luck. Cheers!

 

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[coolpix9]

I heard that Minnesota was easy. LJ and I are thinking about coming up there and picking up all the silver.

On a more serious note, some of us have a lot of competition in our neck of the woods. I find I have to get out of the big city to find the good stuff. I can drive 20 minutes from home and fill my back seat with coins. But, most of the close coins have been searched at least once. For every person who post om the forum,there are 100's who just lurk and search. The lurkers maybe sucking up all your silver.
Something you might try is a group hunt. Get one or two close by to join you on a road trip. Split the gas and the coins you find and everyone wins. Gas is only 90 cents a gallon when 3 are sharing the load. I'll drive to Canada if gas only costs me 90 cents.
I have found that if I try a new town and several banks tell me that some lucky CRHer has already been there,I head for the next town.
I always go to google maps and search for banks near where I am going. It sure helps rule out a 30 minute drive for a speck on some map.

Good Luck, Jim

 

[GPURS]

I think you have some pretty stiff competition from someone else on this forum. It may be Gman000, or something along those lines. That guy sounds like he has pretty well cleaned out the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Of course you may be from another area. Like coolpix said, there are a lot of people out there doing this stuff, and most of them are not kind enough to post their finds here! I know of one old guy that claims to cover all of the banks within 30 miles of me, and he dang sure isn't going to post on a computer. It all comes down to timing. If you happen upon a bank where someone has just deposited some old halves and you are the first to walk through that door looking to buy some, then you are the big winner. Most banks I go to either don't have any or the ones I get have already been searched. But, ever now and then you hit a really good score. Just go back and read some of the posts by people like LJ, Texas Tim, and even Pat Houston in Memphis, just to name a few. They work really hard and end up with the big scores. Good luck to ya!

 

[fiatboy]

I don't know much about specific banks, but from rumor and hearsay, this is what I've heard as regards different parts of the country:

Chicago is well-searched, even compared to other big cities.

South Carolina and North Carolina still have a decent amount of silver left.

Colorado still has some good finds out there, especially outside of Denver.

Texas is difficult, but since it's so big, there are probably some good hot spots left.

I don't know about California.

Portland still has a decent amount of silver left.

New Jersey is ripe for the pickins.

Detroit is still pretty good, but not for long.


And on a very interesting side note, I read two articles (one on the internet and one in a newspaper) that say that there is a Caribbean country (I cannot, for the life of me, remember which one, but I'll try to dig up the article), the population of which actually uses American Silver Eagles in circulation. Yes, the 99% pure one oz. silver dollars. And they use them at face value. Allegedly, a rich American vacationed there and dumped large quantities of Silver Eagles into the local economy. Why? I have no idea. The population find the coins annoying because they're so bulky. Tourists who go there occasionally receive the silver dollars in change, and by more than one account, the locals were more than happy to get rid of them and happily exchanged large quantities of them for cash. The banks either don't take them (perhaps because the country uses its own currency) or they won't take them because they're universally unwanted---the articles weren't clear on this point. The subject of the internet article was exactly this. The subject of the newspaper article was about places in the world that still use gold, silver, or other commodities for money. I don't remember which newspaper, since I read a lot of them, but it may have been either the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Sooooo....if anyone knows anything about this or can find any links or anything, please please please PM me or post them here. As recently as a few months ago, I was able to find the one article using a Google search, but now I forget what I had searched for to find it. But I'll keep looking. HH!

 

[schramm]

Fiatboy,Did the article actually insinuate that the town or country was actively trading 1 ounce silver rounds for a single U.S. dollar bill,or multiple coins for larger bills?

That seems rediculous to me seeing that the world is tied together by the internet and any person of that country with minimal intellegence could do a quick search and find that they were worth at least 12-14 times that amount(depending on date of article-if it was recent) and buy every single one of them and make a huge profit-even if he had to pay shipping and insurance to a country that "wanted" them .

The article might be located on urbanlegands.com,I'll check

Seriously though,I wonder if the writer may have cofused silver eagles for Ikes.

I could see how a ton of Ikes could get "dumped" on a population who would get sick of using them,it happened in the U.S. in the early to late 70's .They would gladly trade them for paper bills,to get rid of them.

By the way,what country's did they site that actually use gold and silver based coins in active commerce today?I know many country's produce gold and silver coins today,but only for collector and for bullion,I believe.

 

[fiatboy]

Howeburger,
You know what, finding good coins is pretty much luck and persistence as far as I can tell. There is incredible inconsistency from bank to bank and from branch to branch. Good luck!

Schramm,
If I remember correctly, the time period for this was in the early 2000s. The country is poor, which might explain them having no internet, thus having no idea of the silver value. Perhaps by now people have caught on, but who knows? Gresham's Law would play out eventually, right? The articles did not imply that the silver coins were being actively traded, but rather that they passively float around among merchants and customers. I'd like to clarify that we're not talking enormous quantities, but merely the occasional coin one would receive in change. In other words, not enough to circulate widely, but enough to be noticed. I inferred that they circulate like dollar coins or $2 bills here. If one asks for them enough, you'll probably find them. Also, tourists are the ones who receive them the most, since the locals want to get rid of them. Perhaps the silver left with the tourists.

Regarding alternate forms of currency, the article in the paper basically said that all silver and gold is pretty much gone from commerce. It did mention that Venezuela and a few other countries do limited bartering. One of the Germanies (I forget if it was East or West, probably West) used silver in their coins until the mid 1970's. In some parts of Vietnam, gold is still used to buy houses and property. And in Myanmar, silver in non-coin form is still sometimes used in commerce. Finding data for this subject is difficult, especially in emerging markets where this type of activity is more likely to take place.

 

[Fruitbat]

I'm here in NC. I've only been doing this for a little less than a year.

Here it seems that if you go to a big city/town your not likely to find much in the areas near the malls, Wal-Mart, Targets, etc. If I go to the out skirts, closer to neighborhoods I do better.

If I go to a small town (3-5 banks total) and find any halves, there is really no need to go back there for a while. The last time I went through a small town, a lot of the tellers said they had, had the halves for well over a year.

I have had my best luck going to a town with 8-15 banks. I do a Yahoo Yellow Pages search of the town I plan to go to and just look for "banks". It will tell how many banks are there.

I got my eye on an mill town not too far from here with 9 banks total that I suspect should be a goldmine silvermine, but I just haven't had the time to go. It's a little out of the way for me. I plan on going in the next couple weeks.

 

[TxTim]

I think they are all over - it really depends on who and how you ask, in my opinion.
One bank I had gone to 4 times had a stash of halve sitting there the whole time that were 60% silver. The difference was the teller thought I wanted new Fed type rolls rather than hand rolled. Most tellers have their own drawers and their universe stops there. Try to find a head teller or a vault manager. Make sure you ask all the tellers (in a nice way). Go on different days and you'll find different tellers that may be more helpful. Run through the drive through if it is separate from the bank.
Believe me, I don't work hard at this (that would be no fun),- my job happens to take me through a lot of territory and if I see a bank, I'll stop by.
Good luck - if you don't ask, you'll never know!

 

[fiatboy]

Most tellers have their own drawers and their universe stops there.

Too true.

 

[GMan00001]

I think you have some pretty stiff competition from someone else on this forum. It may be Gman000, or something along those lines. That guy sounds like he has pretty well cleaned out the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Of course you may be from another area. Like coolpix said, there are a lot of people out there doing this stuff, and most of them are not kind enough to post their finds here! I know of one old guy that claims to cover all of the banks within 30 miles of me, and he dang sure isn't going to post on a computer. It all comes down to timing. If you happen upon a bank where someone has just deposited some old halves and you are the first to walk through that door looking to buy some, then you are the big winner. Most banks I go to either don't have any or the ones I get have already been searched. But, ever now and then you hit a really good score. Just go back and read some of the posts by people like LJ, Texas Tim, and even Pat Houston in Memphis, just to name a few. They work really hard and end up with the big scores. Good luck to ya!

Actually, I usually do very poorly in the Mpls/St. Paul metro area usually, if I can find any halves at all. I have better luck outstate, but even then I hear about competition almost every time I go out searching. Most of my luck is just persistence, a few here and a few there. I have only had 1 big day. And I have only been to a relatively small percentage of banks in the Mpls/St. Paul area as there is at least 50% of the cities/suburbs I haven't been to a single bank in.

Something you might try is a group hunt. Get one or two close by to join you on a road trip. Split the gas and the coins you find and everyone wins. Gas is only 90 cents a gallon when 3 are sharing the load. I'll drive to Canada if gas only costs me 90 cents.

Hmmm... true but the total silver value is still the same so your profit/loss is just spread. Less risk/less reward. That being said, road trips are always fun and I would only imagine they would be more fun in a group.

 

[fiatboy]

Most of my luck is just persistence

Bingo!