Almost 50 years ago while working as a design draftsman at Columbus McKinnon Chain Corporation located in Tonawanda, N.Y., I spent most of my lunch hours going to the local banks and picking up rolls of coins to search through with one of the office managers, Raymond Huckles. Each day we would do one denomination. Of course this is way back in the "good old days" of circulating silver coinage. I think my favorites were Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes. Can you imagine being greatly disappointed after opening a BU mint wrapped roll of Morgans dated 1921 or Peace dollars dated 1922? Well at the time I certainly was. Back to the banks they went.
Semi-key dates occasionally appeared and they were checked to see if they upgraded either of our collections with the lower grade
specimen going back into the roll. We would press them in the inexpensive blue albums produced by Whitman in Racine, WI. These albums were found in various local stores such as the "five and dimes.”
A few years ago a very good friend, Istvan Hegedus, who lives in Hungary asked me if I could help him out with his USA coin collection. He included his want list by date and mint no less. Looking it over I noticed how weak his JFK holdings were so off I went to the local Iola bank returning with $100.00 worth of JFKs in rolls. Much to my amazement it did not take too many trips to other local area banks to start filling in most of the gaps with coins in pretty much AU – Unc. condition. I found one silver and three silver clad JFKs before I felt that over 50 different dates and mints should complete this task for my friend, Istvan.
Well one never gets over the fun of the search in coin collecting and half dollars are probably the only easy denomination to put together an AU - Unc. set of circulation strikes. I gave a call to an area dealer friend, Fritz Voecks at Fox Valley Coin, and asked if he had a used Whitman Classic JFK album kicking around and a week or so later it arrived in the mail. The first thing I did was re-label the dates eliminating the "S" mint proofs in the copper-nickel clad series. This gives one the "P" and "D" side-by-side two dates across.
So far I have accumulated over 40 different dates and mints in AU - Unc. condition and found two silver clad in XF condition dated 1967. The latest date I found was a slightly circulated example dated 2001 so my collection so far stops in 2000, but you can be sure the hunt will co
ntinue on. The nice condition duplicates are being sent to my "horse trading" friend Juozas Minikevicius over in Lithuania where they are rather popular, while the well circulated examples are all being spent here and there, giving them another brief period of freedom from a bank vault. It is very amusing to hear a young cashier look at them and say: "Oh, these are half dollars aren't they?" Their cash register drawer usually has rolls of dimes or quarters in the half dollar compartment or start with the quarters at the side.
While I was going through 20 rolls of Kennedy halves from one of the local banks, a co-worker went to the other branch bank in town for some Kennedy halves for a gift. Much to her surprise she found a Walking Liberty half dated 1940. Rather well-worn and with a large "ED" scratched in the obverse field it still has a melt value of about $7.00 or so. So why not try your luck at small town branch banks? One never knows what might be waiting for you.
