Bitcoin Forum

Since there seem to be a fair number of 'hard money' enthusiasts interested in bitcoin, does anyone here "roll hunt" for older silver, copper or nickel coins to sell for more than the face value? It seems like there are a number of similarities to bitcoin mining, in both cases you are 'finding money', competing with others for a limited pool of winnings. And in both cases the startup costs can be very low or you can ramp things up considerably with enough capital.

My grandpa has a collection of old coins with some silver, and a whole bunch of X-rays, from which he also wishes to extract silver.

Looking for silver coins in miscellaneous change was popular around 30 years ago, but that resource is rather mined out.

I check each coin that comes into my possession.  Been doing it for about 10 years now, and I have found 3 silver quarters and 2 silver dimes.  Oh, and maybe about 20 bicentennials, and a few wheat pennies.

People actually do coin mining on a larger scale too.  Check the kitco forums, survival forums or other places with a lot of metal enthusiasts, and you'll find posts from people that pick up boxes of rolls of coins from their local banks every day and check them all.

Silver is pretty hard to find but it does get back into circulation, when I search dimes I get one or two per box of $250. In the US you can do halves and nickels too but not so much in Canada where I am. Quarters seem trickier because they get noticed by more people. You never know when you might luck out and find the mother lode though. For copper pennies and (.999 Canadian) nickels some people use machines to sort. I have thought about buying one but they're fairly expensive. Coinflation.com gives metal values for US and Cdn coins based on industrial spot prices, market value may not be quite that much for various reasons but you can make some money at it. Etiquette with the banks is important too, some will cut you off if you do too much volume or bring back the coins to the same place you got them.

Copper is the new silver. realcent.org

I've done this with pennies and dimes. I found one dime in the box and decided that I would never do it again. Pennies aren't so bad though. Plus, I've found a dime in every box of pennies I've dug through. 

I'm sad and embarrassed to say that I found my mom's silver dime collection when I was a child, and only saw them as dimes, and stole them to buy a bunch of candy.  I still regret that, but have never told her.

I live in Vegas and have made a bit of spare change doing a variation on this.

The trick here is to find a "locals casino" that caters to the elderly - in other words, one that still has slot machines that accept physical coins. There is a larger than average number of silver coins in circulation among certain age groups and buying rolls of quarters, half dollars and silver dollars from the casino cage has proven quite a good investment in the past.

I almost never sell them back to the cage either, there's something cool and old-timey feeling about paying for a meal in giant half-dollar coins.