I’m at it again!! Round two of looking for silver in coin rolls :) Only this time I’m raising the stakes a bit and trying a new route. ‘Cuz if you recall from my last shot at this, I failed pretty miserably, haha… But who knew coins from 50 years ago wouldn’t be in circulation anymore? Especially those worth 10x-40x their value? ;)
Yup, last time we tried searching through $40+ worth of quarters, dimes and nickels for this elusive silver metal content (coins minted before 1965, except for nickels which are in the 1942 – 1945 range), and when the hour was over I swore I wouldn’t do it again. I had a major headache and I lost interest after scouring my first hundred coins…
But now, 3 months later, and after working on filling all my Whitman blue books of modern coins (to help me learn more and appreciate the “sport” of coin collecting), I’ve gotten MUCH better at sorting and now I even enjoy it! Imagine that?
Here’s what my new Friday nights now consist of, haha:
So how do you do it bigger? You go after larger denominations of coins! In bigger chunks! :)
One day I saw rolls of half dollars for sale on eBay – which is funny cuz it’s like you’re paying money for MONEY – and people were marketing ‘em out as “un-searched rolls with the possibility of finding silver” in them. And of course marking up the costs from $10.00 a roll (which is what each one is inherently worth), to $12.50-$15.00. A nice little premium for the chance of finding something worth $8-$15/ea. (depending on silver content), or even better – a rare coin worth more by collectors.
Against my better judgement I bought two rolls at $12.50 a pop + shipping just to see what the deal was. And while I didn’t find anything spectacular (big shock), the adrenaline rush I got made up for it. Somewhat similar to when I used to pick up lottery tickets all the time, only in this case I was left with a pile of coins in the end instead of nothing ;) And again, since I was now collecting all the dates of modern coins anyways, I needed to start searching for them in order to complete my collection.
Where To Get Boxes of Half Dollar Rolls
And then I got to thinking…. Where are these guys finding all these half dollar rolls? Not at their banks right? ‘Cuz every time I ask for half dollars or silver dollars or whatever (while picking up my $2 bills, of course), they rarely have any. Especially during the holidays ‘cuz everyone picks them up for stocking stuffers!! A great idea, btw ;)
So the next time I went to my bank, I just flat out asked if I could get a roll of half dollars, knowing they’ll say no. And that they didn’t have any. And sure enough that happened. Only THIS time I asked if I could *order* any from them? Thinking maybe that will do the trick? And yet again I got shot down.
“Sorry, we don’t order them for customers anymore. Everyone kept getting them to search for silver, and then cashing them back in our coin machine and costing us money! So now there’s a company wide policy that only business account holders can order them.”
“Woahhh… what a great idea, I hadn’t even though of that! (Lie) People are crazy…. (truth). But actually, I *do* happen to run my business accounts through you all, and would love to pick up a few rolls for it. Can you hook me up?”
“Oh, that’s right – sorry. Well, we only do them in $500 batches I’m afraid as the orders come in boxes of 50 rolls each. You probably don’t want that… (Goes to help the next customer in line…)”
“Wait! That’s fine! I can actually use a lot of them for my flea marketing business I’ve started (90% lie, and 10% truth. I will be setting up shop at my fave flea market, but that doesn’t start until the Spring and I surely don’t need hundreds of half dollars for it). Order me a box!”
“Ummm… okay sure. Come back next Thursday and it’ll be here waiting for you. (Leaves with a confused look on his face…)”
“I love you!” (Okay, I didn’t really say that but I wanted to.)
And that, my friends, is how you get your hands on some half-dollar rolls ;) Not that I necessarily wanted 1,000 coins for my next silver test, haha, but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. And again – it’s still REAL money so I can use it/cash them in anytime! Just not at *my* bank, obviously, for fear of drawing suspicion and ruining my hook up ;)
And sure enough, after the two weeks passed, I went in and grabbed my new (deceptively heavy) box of 50 un-searched wrapped half dollars! Which is currently on my counter right now looking like this:
And before, this – when I was trying to be clever:
And now we unwrap! First searching for any halves made before 1970 (those under ’64 are mostly silver, while those between ’64 and ’70 are silver clad), and then concurrently for missing years in my Kennedy books. It’s safe to say that after this huge undertaking that we’ll know once and for all if it’s worth pursuing or not ;) At least until the next cockamaimy experiment…
And if you REALLY wanted to, you could order up a box and then sell them individually on eBay too – just like those others are doing! It takes a butt-load of time and patience, but you’d be guaranteed at least 25% in profit as there’s no shortage of buyers out there… For what it’s worth. (Too much for me)
What do you think of all this? Fun? Stupid? How many do you guess I’ll find? I’m 0 for 2 so far from my eBay purchases, but we’ve got 50 new ones to go now and I’m anxious to start. WISH ME LUCK! :) Praying it doesn’t do as poorly as my $100 Lottery Ticket Experiment from back in the day, haha… I’ll keep ya updated no matter what. It might take a while though…
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PS: You know what would be funnier than dropping them into a coin machine later? Buying groceries with them ;) Can you imagine the look on the cashiers’ face when you hand over 200+ coins?
Budgets Are Sexy has been lovingly prepared by me, J$, and motivated by YOU - the community! While this blog seems random at times, our main goal here is simple: To keep personal finance fun. And the earlier you start rockin' that money, the better! This stuff isn't just for old people - it's for ALL people. So whether you came to learn about credit cards, 401k, budget planning, retirement, or anything else relating to money, I give you a hearty pat on the back for seeking it out. The more we research, the more we learn baby!
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My dad has also recently started collecting money (although he’s more on the paper money side of thing…) and I helped him search through his coins last time I was home. I went through almost $1,000 in half dollars and nothing! I think the bank is onto something; so many people have done this now that we just kept getting already marked rolls, because that’s what’s left in circulation. I hope your search goes better than ours did!
I liked this post; it was interesting. I don’t collect coins, but kept thinking that the best place to try and find old silver coins may be in regular people’s biggy banks. If you there were some way that you could buy the contents of folks biggy bank, possibily by paying them +5% more than the value of the contents, you’d likely find more older coins that have been out of circulations for years. Good luck.
I used to search rolls. The trick was start a nice relationship with one bank to order the rolls and then deposit them at another bank. Rinse and repeat. I have since stopped because my success rate was basically zero (I ran into a couple other roll searchers in the area). From what I have heard, small banks in the middle of nowhere have higher success rates (less people looking) but even those are drying up. Good luck and I hope you find something good!
I’m not trying to be a downer, I just know my neck of the woods is pretty much used up. the other problem with “junk” silver is storage. We leave more of it out than we should because the safe holds some of the more valuable items. I guess I could do what my grandfater did and seal them up, place them in a PVC pipe and bury then in the crawl space, but that’s a little too extreme for me!
Oh also, if you really want to have a high success rate, search rolls of pennys and take out all the pre-1982 ones (they are actually copper). Of course you can’t melt pennys but hey someday you might be able to. They also are worth twice face value…
http://www.coinflation.com/
That’s pretty funny J! I think you can order $2 bills as well… they shouldn’t have any complaint against that.
These are fascinating… I know zero about coin collecting. That said, the most appealing part of the first picture, to me, is the Pabst! Even that’s a stretch though, haha.
I now put into question everything you write because you drink PBR from a can.
Everyone knows that the only way to drink PBR is from a 40 in a brown paper bag.
/shakes head in shame
PS… being real now… These money hack experiments are a pretty cool deviation from normal PF content… keep them coming!
Hurry up and un-roll those coins!!
Well…. What did you find?? Hello? Are you there? **dial tone**
I probably should have avoided reading this post.
“And while I didn’t find anything spectacular (big shock), the adrenaline rush I got made up for it.”
That same rush fueled my childhood/adolescent/young adult obsession with baseball cards. Methodically diving through a box of wrapped packs of cards to choose “the one” from the middle of the box, holding it in your hands and KNOWING this one had the Joe Schmoe rookie card, carefully peeling back the pressed edges, and diving in…
And now you’ve given me an adult-version of that same adrenaline rush drug. Look forward to seeing the follow-up post. For my wife’s sake, I hope you don’t find anything. ;) Good luck.
Where I live, the merchant going into the bank and asking for a roll of coin has to pay a fee. I have no idea if you are exposed to that but what I am thinking is that you could be the person that people get their coins from, they give you their excess coin in exchange for whatever they need and you have their coins to scan in return. You could offer to deliver their batch of coins in exchange for a lunch. LOL
My wifes brother goes to all the banks around where we live and takes out $400-500 and does the same thing you do. He has been doing it for a few years now and has found quite a few. He enjoys doing it and now at the bank they don’t think anything of it.
As an aside…PBR??? I wouldn’t have pictured you as a PBR kinda guy.
I have searched for silver in this exact method in the past. I would get a $500 box from my local credit union, sort through it, and then cash them back in for free at a local casino. I usually found silver in every case, usually in the form of 65-70 Kennedys, and an occasional 64. Never found anything older than that.
Hah! I’m surprised to see so many comments here today – I honestly thought only a few of you would like this one ;) But hooray!
@graduate.living – Oh wow, that’s no fun! I’m sure you’re right though – most banks know about it since it’s been going on for over 50 years, haha, but I guess we just pray for those who don’t so our odds get better :)
@Jeremy – Yeah, there you go! Especially those who have been collecting for yearrrrrrrs too. And who are probably too lazy to go in and cash them all out because it would take forever and/or they don’t know exactly how at least for free :) But if I stopped by and gave them 5% more to do it all FOR them? Shoooot… I’d take that deal myself! Glad you enjoyed the post :)
@Brian – Hah! I’m addicted, but not THAT addicted yet for copper ;) Good to know though…And I hear ya on the roll searching too – So far the best luck I’ve had was at a smaller community bank 15 miles away from my house, though I rarely have an excuse to go over there. The last two nickel rolls I picked up there I found silver in them!
@Lance @ Money Life and More – True, but there’s DEF no fun in that, haha… I like picking those up in small amts here and there since they’re not worth anything over the $2 unless you get REAL lucky and handed super old ones.
@Anne @ Unique Gifter – Haha… It only tastes different when you switch from another beer :) If you just stick to Pabst for a few hours you don’t know the difference!
@tom – Thanks man! Glad you like them :) I teeter back and forth whether to do more or less article on them, just ‘cuz they’re kinda niche, but since I get such a kick out of them I can’t help but to leak some every now and then :) So I’m sure there will be more around the corner!
@David Hunter – I will be now that I’m back from the NC trip! And I’m crazy excited!!
@Johnny @ Our Freaking Budget – HAH! I remember doing that too w/ baseball cards! Although more so with Basketball ones… And when you actuallY DO find something good in it you only get more obsessed! :) I once found an autographed Karl Malone card in a pack worth $150 (which, to a kid, is like a million dollars!) and from that point on I just dumped cash into them looking for more gems, haha… But that’s the thing with gems – you only ever find them once or twice! :)
@daveM – Believe me, that sounds tempting!
@Christopher @ This that and the MBA – Your wife’s brother is a PIMP – and you can tell him that from me too :) And what’s wrong with PBR?
@Talley – Nice! And even more so that you can just dump them at the casino! That would solve alot of my “not getting caught” problems, haha… nice trick :)
using them to buy stuff is always amusing to me…every now and then I’ll use a $2 bill, half dollar or Sacagawea and the cashiers always look at me like its fake money. HAHA
Yes!! And people have been arrested too, actually, if you can believe it :) Cuz some people really DO think they’re fake!
J$ – There are high speed coin count and sort machines, they go for anywhere between $3k and $5k depending on your needs, they are used by businesses that deal in large volumes of coins (vending machines, casinos, banks etc…). You can buy a machine that can sort through hundreds to thousands of coins per minute, they can be programmed to sort for metal content and pick out the silver coins for you instantly.
Now I know what you are thinking spending a few thousand to make the search effortless for possibly not finding anything may not sound so logical, if you set up a standing order with your bank for coins every 2 weeks on a $3k investment based on your $8 to $15 per coin found you would need between 200 and 375 coins to break even, maybe you do that maybe not, so probably not the best return on investment.
Obviously the more types of coins that you sort through you have more opportunities to break even just searching for coins.
Since you can get these counters to re-roll your coins, it is a bit shady but you can then sell them on eBay for a nice 25% return even though you know they have no silver in them, after selling $12k worth of rolled half dollars you pay for the counting machine.
Forgetting about the shady side of things, you can find plenty of uses for a coin counter as side hustles, exchanging coin denominations for businesses, or converting coins to currency, banks generally do this for free or low fees, but it requires a trip to the bank, that cost small business owners time and money, you going to them could be worth a few bucks. Coinstar charges 9.8% to covert coins for cash and no fee for eGiftcards, it is available in supermarkets across the country, TD Bank charges 6% to non-customers, and PNC Bank charges either 4% or 5% to non-customers and both charge no fee for customers, you can exchange coins for currency for 2% or 3% undercut the rate and carve out a nice local market.
You can also sell the coin counter on eBay or craigslist if it doesn’t work out…
It is kind of like playing the lotto the likelihood of really making a lot money is very slim, but if it does payoff it’s huge.
I love it! I did this with pennies this weekend and I found 3 wheatbacks. One 1946. Worth a whole 3 cents. I had lots in the 60s, 70s and 80s I just could not part with. Maybe if I keep them long enough.
I guess I should start looking at the silver too huh? Find my first Million dollar coin! What should I look for!?
Best of luck to you. I am with some of the other readers and know that if it works I am going to have to try it.
Also, I think the coin search equates to ripping wax well. I still grab some baseball cards now and again.
Refreshing to see a PBR can. PBR in a bottle is better. Plus there are playing cards under the cap, so you have a poker hand after 5 beers :-) Not sure why other companys have not done so as well.
My late husband bought some half dollar rolls from the bank once, after he went through them he sent me back to the bank to cash them in, not telling me how much was there, the bank ended up screwing us out of money! The bank manager admitted the machine was not working up to snuff (count your money somehow). It was a real fiasco and we stopped doing that practice.
I do recall he did find some silver, but this was over 8 years ago.
I still have all sorts of old coins and paper money he purchased through on line auctions etc, wanna buy some J$? Or I would at least trust YOU to sort through them!
I did this for about a year straight 2-4 $500 boxes a week. It was certainly more for a hobby but at the time (2008-2010) I was still finding some decent stuff. The trick is to continually go after it systematically and have a good place to dispose (dump) them. THAT is the really difficult part.
Bank branches will only be SO happy after you drop off $4,000 in half dollars into their vault.
Earliest I found was a 1930s half. Also some neat foreign stuff like Canadian silver halves etc. It was all purely luck of the draw. Sometimes Id go weeks without anything and others I could get almost 2 rolls of 40% halves out of a $500 box. I know that many more people have been searching since then, so the return rates are probably way worse now.
J$,
I work at a bank and the only way the manager would let me order a box of .50′s was if I promised to drop them off at a different location. Needless to say my wife was not very happy when I came home with our project for the night. It didnt take us too long to go through the box, I would say probably about 30 minutes or so. We didnt find any silver, but we had fun and I ended up dropping off the coins at a different branch the next day. I dont think they recognized me as a fellow employee, but I could tell they werent exactly thrilled with the idea of working through all those coins.
@Jay @ effumoney – HAH! That is so awesome!!! And if I were a single man I must might try it too, haha… but there’s no way the wife would agree w/ that one ;) Not to mention how much room I’m sure it would take. But man… what an idea… Thanks for sharing it bro, you really got me thinking there for a bit :)
@debtgirl – Haha… I have a ton of wheat pennies too now from all my searching through rolls – if you find any that have duplicated dates on them that kinda look 3-D those are worth a pretty… umm… penny! ;) Some in the hundreds/thousands of dollars even! Or coins with big mistakes on them – collectors love that stuff.
@Brian – Oooh really? I never knew that! Though I haven’t ever come across PBR in a bottle either, for that matter… Hmm… might have to go on a little search here later :)
@Sue D – Oh jeez. Yeah, gotta know how much is in there as tellers make mistakes too! And heck yeah I’d be interested in seeing what you’ve got over there if you really do want to part with them?! I went through my mother-in-law’s stash too just the other day (she’s older as my wife is the youngest of the brood), and she had a handful of coins worth $20-$30 each. Always fun to find and use your skills to see what people are holding :) I’ll shoot you an email back in here in a few…
@Scott – WOW! That sounds like great odds man! I can only *hope* to find a roll or so in total of 40% coins! Awesome you got a 30′s half too, man… What made you stop playing? Just got tired of it after a while? Wanna trade/sell any of your coins? :)
@Phil – HAH! Awesome! I bet you can find all sorts of good stuff too just taking money in every day yeah? At least if you’re a teller? That’s still a dream of mine one day… working as a teller part time just to sort through all the bills/coins for gems ;) I can’t even imagine the stuff that comes across those counters over time, jeez…
I bet you can’t wait till your little one can help! Great tip about business accounts for exchanging coins. I bet they’ll shut you down if you abuse it though.
Yeah, I’m gonna see how this round goes and then tread lightly from there. If this idea pays off (pardon the pun) then I’ll try and get on some sort of nice rotation where maybe it’s like 1 month on and then one month off or something, I dunno. But if we find squat, then I’ll move on to another hopeful hack ;) Either way it’s all stuff that’s fun!
how would you like to be this guy?!
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/calif-teacher-inherits-recluse-cousins-7-million-gold-192002163–abc-news-topstories.html
WOWWWWWW look at that! Talk about a nice shock – thanks! Totally tweeting/facebooking/linking to that in my future roundup – you rock :) Happy Holidays!
My wife was in 2 different banks last week and while there someone came in and offered to buy all the 50 cent pieces they had. I bet they were looking for silver (which I knew about) but also going to sell them on eBay for a profit from those less informed and willing to take the chance.
Hah! Awesome… Either for the silver, or for stocking stuffers as a lot of parents/grandparents do for kids :) I’ll be doing the same once mine get older!
i’ve searchd through THOUSANDS of dollars of halves and you really have to love it – the odds aren’t that good. i can tell you that i’ve gone darn near $4k dollars worth (~8 THOUSAND halves) with NO SILVER! BUT I still go back and keep trying – like i said you have to love it!
haha amen brotha! you’ve got more patience than me at this stage too – i’m not ordering another batch for quite some time ;)