Half Dollar Find & Giveaway Winner - JonMN34

Just wanted to let you know that we have a winner for the 2011 Silver Eagle giveaway. JonMN34 guessed that my oldest find was an 1893 Columbian Exposition commemorative. Turns out that he had the year and the type exactly correct. Closedloop also guessed 1893, but JonMN34 posted first. Here's a pic of the coin, as well as another commemorative I've found.



JonMN34 was the only one that even mentioned a "You Suck" award. Is it coincidence that he was the winner? Thanks everyone for your guesses, and for making my first giveaway a lot of fun.


-----Begin Original Post-----
Hey everyone,

I'm a long-time lurker that found these forums during the 2010 ATB craziness, and wound up learning so much stuff from all of the other threads that I wound up staying.

First, here's the half dollar find. For the past two years I've been searching two $1,000 bags of half dollars each week and using the finds to pay for nicer coins. About 60% of the bags are skunks, about 37% have 1-10 keepers, and the rest have had anywhere from 40 - 190 keepers.

Well, this week was my best week of searching I've ever had. Here's a pic of the results. Each stack has ten 40%'ers.



The first bag had 6 90% and 84 40%. The second bag was even better, with 1 90% and 354 40%, for a total of 7 90% and 440 40%!
This weekend I took my haul to my favorite coin shop, and traded the 447 keepers from the two bags for this.



Needless to say, I still can't believe it. I found more keepers in two bags than I had found in the previous one hundred bags I had searched.

Now for the giveaway part. To say thanks for everything I've learned from you all over the last seven months, I'd like to giveaway a 2011 Silver Eagle to the person that comes closest to guessing the year of the oldest half dollar that I've found in a bag of half dollars. If there's a tie we'll go with the guess that is closest without going over. I'll take one guess per person until I reveal the winner on Friday (7/22) morning.