A relative of mine and I went through a big jar of her old coins last week, looking for pre 1964 dimes, which still had silver and are now worth around $3, just for the silver. It was quite a process, to go through them in bulk. Kind of like treasure hunting.

Sadly, we had no luck. We started out with that treasure hunting enthusiasm, but nothing.

I've heard and read numerous stories of how people who owned retail stores, back in the 60's, actively went through all their dimes and saved off the silver ones before giving the money to a bank. I guess that's what's happened. Probably banks had some kind of silver detecting machine they used, to segregate out the silver dimes.

(though that's illegal, right?)