James and Hugh,
I stopped searching about eight years ago; I found that I used 1000 bucks eleven times. I found zero silver coins. (I’m not saying it’s all gone, just that I had bad luck.) My luck was bad enough that I decided that the only thing I was finding was a lower gas gauge on my little car while driving from my pickup bank to my dump bank. I did manage to get part of a walking liberty half book filled the year before. I’m just saying that the guys doing coin roll hunting for halves have a high probability of finding marked coins from other people’s dumps and not much more this late in the game. Everyone knows about halves now. Back nine years ago, I could and did walk into banks asking for rolled halves and walked out with complete rolls of 1964 halves for $10. Dumping the coins annoyed the tellers at my dump bank. The nicer tellers would be happy about the doughnuts but not happy about having to change the bag every time I came to visit.
At some point I decided it wasn’t cost effective to go coin roll hunting for halves. It’s just cheaper to go metal detect (if you have the time) or just go buy junk silver at the local coin/jewelry shop. I can go there any day I don’t find a silver dime and buy them for around $1.30 a silver dime. Guess what; I didn’t even have to break a sweat or get dirty looking for them. There’s no poison ivy roots either or ticks. Though I do enjoy hunting for old coins in the ground, and you never know what you’ll find. – Fitzy in Pa