That makes sense. JFK gets his melon opened up in a terminal way with about 5 weeks left in 1963. I'm presuming that to change from Uncle Ben F to JFK for the Half, it took Congressional action so by the time a portrait image and die made for the Kennedy Half, it would have been into 1964 a ways. That was back when they used to mint a good number of Halves and people still commonly used them. It looks like Kennedy Halves haven't been minted since 2017 and for about a decade, in the early 2000s, they were not minted for general circulation. This is an interesting web site

https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/kennedy-half-dollar-mintages-4075997

Yeah, maybe more 40% Kennedys out there if you go through a good number of $500 boxes. I only did that once after a Christmas a while back. Out of 1,000 coins, I found no 40% Kennedys but did find a 1992 proof. I did pull out about a dozen or more 1976 Bicentennial because I think they're cool but they might only be a bit better than face value. The local bedroom town bank people were a bit miffed at me because they got the $500 box for me without charging a fee because they thought I have a checking/savings account with them. I should have pushed back that they are still holding my mortgage and that makes them more money than any checking/savings account I would have with them. Maybe I'll buy another $500 Halves box come mid-Janaury and someone's gradn kids may have dumped some coin collections for cash and some more 40%'ers are floating around. If not, it keeps me out of the bars...

Henpeckped I"m not sure what you mean by this.

When a silver quarter was minted, it had .1808 of silver in it or approximately .723 oz troy in a face dollar(4 quarters). The industry standard for junk silver is .715 accounting for wear. Those figures are the same for half dollars and dimes. As of this moment, silver is 23.08 an oz, times .715 would be 16.69 times face value.

Silver dollars, ie morgans and peace, have more silver in them per dollar face than the other 3. At the time of manufacture, it was approximately .773 troy ounces of silver. Its silver value would be 17.84.

Coinflation is a good resource to find the melt value of coins. https://www.coinflation.com/silver_coin_values.html

Or else remember .715 for quarters, dimes halves, and .773 for silver dollars.

Markets dictate what percent of spot a man can sell his metals for to a dealer. In today's market, a person should be able to sell at spot or above outside of a pawn shop.

You can learn a lot from a decent coin collectors value guide. Don't sell anything till you check it out.

Thanks for the info guys, I really appreciate it.

Years ago a young kid started dropping silver coins at the local GasnShop. The nice manager contacted the kids Grandparents and suggested they hide their silver coins in a more secure location.

There are many coin value sites on line like coinbook.com where you can get the value of your coins. What you need to learn is how to grade a coin ie. good, fine, very fine, uncirculated and proof. Do this before you sell.

There is a coin shop in Harrisonburg,VA that buys old coins. I don't know much about old coins but I enjoy the research side of the hobby. Lots of great advice given so far.

Research is what he needs to do. Check to see if any coins are key date or error coins. Those two things will push the value way up.