Are you interested in investing in physical silver? What if I told that with a little bit of work each week you could get it for practically free? Interested?

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today I am going to share with you one of the best kept secrets of the US Monetary System and show you how to use this information to your advantage. Though it is fairly common knowledge, many people still don't know that common coinage such as Half Dollars, Quarters, Dimes, Nickels, and Pennies used to contain precious metals before a certain date. Once the demand & price for silver started to rise in the 1950's early 60's, the mints decided that it was no longer prudent to use silver and switched over to using the Nickel clad design that we are familiar with today. None of the newer minted coins contain silver or copper unless it was made for special reasons (such as collectors sets).

At the beginning of the year I had noticed that Silver and Gold were starting to rise and felt compelled to start investing in precious metals. Sadly, at the time I didn't have thousands of dollars to pour into the silver market. So, I decided to search around to see what kind of tactics I can dig up in order to obtain cheap silver and ended up finding the hobby "Coin Roll Hunting" or "CRH" for short. The idea is to ask banks to give you rolled coins in exchange for your paper currency and then look through them for any old coins containing silver. After that, you return the coins to another bank and exchange them back to paper currency (there is major tricks to this last step, I'll cover that shortly).

I started my new hobby around January 15th, 2016 and only do it 2 to 3 times a month. I have searched around $2,500 worth of coins (mostly Half Dollars and Dimes) and so far have found: 

• 13 x 90% Half Dollar (Cost = $6.50)
• 9 x 40% Half Dollar (Cost = $4.50)
• 3 x 90% Quarter (Cost = $0.75)
• 7 x 90% Dime (Cost = $0.70)
• 1 x War Nickel (Cost = $0.05)
• 1 x Silver Peace Dollar (Cost = $1.00)

This equals a grand total of 7.906 Troy Ounces of silver. The only cost was the face value of the coin, so $13.50.

Just to reiterate, I took $13.50 worth of Fiat Funny-money and turned it into $154.32 of real value. If that doesn't get you as giddy as a school girl inside I don't know what will! Especially when you take into account that silver could rise heavily in the future due to inflationary and economic woes. Now is the time to get on it!!

The cool thing is, this method can easily be scaled up by having multiple bank accounts at different banks and having each bank order you one or two $500 boxes of half dollars each week. You could easily search thousands of dollars worth of halves a week if you have the funds and the means to do so. 

Don't be discouraged though if you can't afford a $500 box yet. Even though it is more work traveling around to banks and asking for half dollars, it tends to get you more silver coins per dollar anyways. This is because banks only carry half dollars when customers bring them in for deposit or exchange and most people don't realize that some half dollars are worth more than others. They could be cleaning out a deceased loved one's belongings and find tons of half dollars not knowing that some might be silver and turn them into the bank. There have even been situations where people find rolls and rolls of silver half dollars that someone deposited not knowing that they were a coin collection! It happens way more often than you think.

Now without further ado, let's begin the guide.

Here is a complete list of coins to look out for:

• 1965-1969 Half Dollars - Contains 40% silver (0.1479 troy ounces)
• Pre-1964 Half Dollars - Contains 90% silver (0.3617 troy ounces)
• Pre-1964 Dime - Contains 90% silver (0.0723 troy ounces)
• Pre-1964 Quarter - Contains 90% silver (0.1808 troy ounces)
• 1942-1945 War Nickel - Contains 95% silver (0.0563 troy ounces)
• Peace/Morgan Dollars - Contains 0.7735 troy ounces of silver
• Pre-1982 Penny - Contains 95% copper / 5% zinc (2.95 grams of copper)

First off, I typically focus on half dollars and dimes. This is because for the majority of time CRH has been a hobby (since the 70's) Quarters have always been highly targeted and because of this it is much much harder to find pre-1964 quarters in circulation today. War nickels are another heavily sought after coin. This is because it was only made for 3 years, from 1942 to 1945, and was only produced because the military needed the Nickel content for use in armor during WWII. The War Nickel consists of 95% silver and 5% zinc and typically has a darker coloration than your average nickel. Since War Nickels were only made for 3 years and are heavily collected, they are also extremely hard to find in circulation today.

This leaves Half dollars and Dimes for searching, as well as pennies (which I will cover next). Half dollars are by far the best coin to search for silver because it was not the main focus of CRH's until the last decade or two. Dimes fall into second place as best coin to search because they are small and this has always turned CRH's off from searching them. The downside is they also contain only a small amount of silver and still are much rarer than a pre-1970 half dollar.

Step 1: Take $100+ and a bank bag and head to multiple banks in your area. I looked on google maps and figured out a giant loop to and from my house that hits the most bank branches possible. Be warned, I have found that the smaller banks such as credit unions tend to want you to have an account before exchanging where as the larger banks, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, will let you without. The first trip will be a bit of trial and error until you figure out which banks are willing to work with you.

Once you get to the teller, ask if they have any "Morgan or Peace dollars" as well as "half dollars" that you can exchange for. They nearly always will have the small Susan B Anthony dollars and the golden Sacajewea dollars (not real gold) and sometimes even the large "Ike dollars". You only want Peace and Morgan silver dollars, all the rest are not worth your time. This is why I always asked specifically for "Morgan and Peace dollars, as well as half dollars" instead of "Dollar coins and half dollar coins" which in turn will get you them all. 

If you ever get asked why, never mention silver!! Say that you are a coin collector and that you look through coins for rare dates and minting errors. This is important for two reasons, first, some tellers don't like CRH's and will tell you no since we represent extra work for them, and secondly because you do not want to create competition for yourself. If the teller doesn't know about CRH before she meets you, asking her about silver halves will definitely clue her in. 

Once she brings you halves, buy them all, even if they are unrolled and you can tell there is no silver right away. You want to keep them happy with you so they don't mind doing this for you in the future so don't waste their time by looking through the coins for silver and then turning her down! You might have a hard time finding tons of half dollars so as I go I also pick up rolled dimes and a box of pennies. This way you have many things to search even if your local bank branches don't have many half dollars in stock. Once you have all of their halves, repeat at the next bank until you have spent all of your cash on coins.

It should look something like this:

Step 2: Once you get home, dump out your rolls of coins and start by unrolling one roll of half dollars and holding the stack in your hand. Look at the edges of the coins to see if any of them are solid silver.  If you find a coin with solid silver sides remove it from the stack and check the date to be sure it is below 1970. If it is dated below 1970 it contains silver. Using this method will drastically cut down on your search time.

In the picture below, notice how a few of the coins have a completely solid silver edge. Can you spot the silver coins in the picture below?

You are correct if you chose these two coins:

I typically do a preliminary edge-check and then sort through them by hand afterwards to check for key dates and minting errors. Its definitely worth it to search for minting errors and rare dates as some of them are worth major money. You can find a detailed list of minting errors and rare dates @ coinflation.com (Bitnerd has no affiliation with this site).

Step 3: Find a bank to "Dump" your searched coins on. This is a very important part. Most banks do not like coin roll hunters because it costs them money to transport and roll all the coins we search. If someone is constantly dumping coins onto their branch, they are constantly having to take the financial burden of sorting them, rolling them, and transporting them to a more easily-accessible storage facility. This makes sure the coins will be available for the next bank branch to request a box of coins in that denomination. Knowing this, you now can see the value in dumping your coins wisely.

What I recommend is that you have a "Dump" bank and a handful of "Pickup" banks. The rule is you never dump your coins at a pick up bank and you never pick up coins at your dump bank. This helps insure you don't get yourself kicked out of any bank's branches as well as making sure you don't search the same roll of coins over and over.

You have two options for dumping your coins. The first and by far the easiest is to get an account with a bank that allows their customers to use their coin counting machine for free. This machine is exactly the same as "Coinstar" but it doesn't charge you 5-10% each time you use it. This is very important because you do not want to lose 5% each time you cash in because you will be doing this very often and it will cut into your profits majorly. 

The second option is to use banks like Wells Fargo which allow you to exchange up to $250 dollars worth of rolled coins each day. The caveat here is that you will have to roll the coins yourself before you go in to exchange them. None the less, this method works very well and most the time doesn't require you to have a bank account. Some Wells Fargo banks will want you to have an account with them but I have had branches that just want my ID and phone number in order to exchange coinage for paper currency. It depends alot on your current location and the standards of banking in your area.

                                                

Pennies: Pennies deserve their own section as many people focus on them solely. Any penny that is pre-1982 contains 95% copper and is currently worth 250% it's face value. It is very easy to find pre-1982 pennies still to in circulation and technically any money you are able to put into them you have effectively "Doubled" in value. The main idea is to hoard tons of copper pennies and wait for US coinage to be legal to melt for it's metal content, which has been rumored will change in the future. If you are impatient like most people though, you can easily sell your rolls/boxes of copper pennies on Ebay for a quick 150-200% gain.

Here is the main problems you will run into when searching pennies: 

1. They are extremely bulky to store, $1000 dollars worth of pennies is 100's of pounds worth of weight and takes up quite a bit of space. 
2. About 50% of the time when buying pennies from the bank you will receive a 25$ box of completely brand new uncirculated pennies which is completely of no use to you (except for searching through them for brand new mint errors). When this happens, I recommend saving the box unopened and just turning them in over and over until you receive a box of circulated pennies.
3. It is extremely embarrassing putting 10,000+ pennies into the loud ass coin counting machine for 15+ minutes while everyone in the branch is trying to count money and staring at you in utter frustration, lmao. 

If, after all of that, searching pennies still sounds good to you it is definitely one of the easiest ways to make profit with coin roll hunting. If you are willing to do what others aren't you will be handsomely rewarded.

That is pretty much it! Coin roll hunting is a extremely fun hobby that actually gets you paid! I like to think of it as a mini-lottery that I don't have to pay for. You don't win every day but most the time you win something small and even have the chance to make 10-20 grand. You just have to be extremely lucky and find a error or rare year!!! I am always satisfied when I find a new silver coin or four that I get to add to my collection.

Finally, it is you that is positioned to profit from the banks instead of the other way around.

P.S. This trick also works in Canada. ;)

  

 

Here is some silver bars I also purchased for the hell of it :)