Poll of the Day > Ive said it before but always check the return slots on coinstar machines.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Whenever you see one, be it the grocery store, department store, where ever, whenever.

You will find one of four things, if there is anything in there.

- arcade tokens/other tokens. these can be thrown out honestly unless its a local arcade you can use them at or something that looks like really old.

- clad change, such as modern US change. This can be kept and fed into a self checkout machine or whatever, point is its free money

- silver US change. older dimes, quarters, war nickels, etc.

- foreign coins. you might want to keep these its whatever.

The machine rejects certain coins and like a vending machine spits em back. A lot of people just leave this shit waiting, and sometimes its something good.

so last night I was at a grocery store and found two silver quarters(1964 and 1947) in a coinstar return tray. Theres like a 50/50 chance I find something, and of that like a 10% chance I find a silver coin. Definitely if you're looking for silver coins the highest rate ive found is coinstar machines.

So lets see. Not only did somebody throw away 50 cents, they threw away precious metal.

So we've got .1808ozt*2 = .3616ozt or 36% roughly, of one ounce of silver.

So they actually threw away, with todays spot price of 16.49, nearly $6. If you found a $5 bill on the ground, you'd pick it up and keep it if you thought you could get away with it.

If we calculate that using the modern record for silver spot in 2011(49.82) you get 18.01, nearly $20 somebody decided wasnt worth their time.

This is how you nickel and dime the world until everything is yours. dead horse: check you dang coin star machines.

You have a problem

yeah i got 6 bucks in precious metal content for free, and i didnt even have to steal pounds and pounds of copper wire or plumbing to do it!

When the machines take over they probably wont be happy with anyone that robbed them
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How does one convert that silver coin into real dollars?
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You sell it at a cash for gold place or maybe if you know somebody personally you sell it to them.

But I won't be selling these for a while because silver price is fairly low right now. you'd sell when the price is high. which means you could have these for years, but theyre also face value of 25 cents each and you got em for free so its really not putting you out in any way

of course this doesnt reference the collector/numismatic value which is like 4-5 dollars or so per coin. I dont care about that so much because that is speculation. silver spot price isn't.

MICHALECOLE posted...

You have a problem

No, hes just a collector.
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I haven't seen a coin star machine in years.
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There was a Coinstar at the Walmart I worked at. After two years, I collected around $25 in coins. Not too shabby.
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jramirez23 posted...

MICHALECOLE posted...

You have a problem

No, hes just a collector.

I guess I morphed into a collector though I never intended to be one.

I saw some videos on the numismatic value of coins and currency and figured I could make decent side money, since as a cashier i already deal with money anyways. turns out finding stuff worth good money isn't super easy, but it IS possible, and that I kinda want to wait and see what the future holds. I won't lose any money doing this(outside of related costs like driving to the bank and shit) so its essentially free to keep and i get my money back if i offload, or even more if i sell. I would never offload silver coins to a bank, but i have a decent bit of paper money hoarded up that doesnt have much collector value. Though before I'd ever do that I'd convert the paper money into silver bullion or something else so I still get a higher ROI than face value.