That Old Jar of Change May Be Worth More Than You Think.
If you’re like most people, you probably have some kind of coin collection at home. Whether it’s an old jar filled with change or a junk drawer filled with leftovers from past cash purchases, somewhere in your house there’s a ton of cash that you may never use.
Cashing out these coins often feels like more effort than it’s worth. For example, if you switch to a Coinstar machine, you could lose 12.5% plus 59 cents per transaction . If you try to cash out your coins at a bank, you might be charged a fee or even rejected – and you’ll have to roll them up ahead of time, so you’ll be paying yourself a pretty low salary for some pretty boring transactions. Job. And if you try to spend it, you may also encounter resistance ( there is no law forcing businesses to accept certain forms of payment) and you will only get a one-to-one estimate.
Although, you may be able to overcome this. Some of your pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters could be worth a little more than their face value if you know where to sell them. These are not rare or collectible coins, but rather old coins with melt value.
Precious metals
As you may have noticed, US coins are made of metal, and metals have their own value. Most modern coins are made primarily from low-value metals such as zinc or nickel , but older coins were once cast from more valuable materials such as silver and copper. Silver coins—dimes, quarters, and half dollars—dated before 1964 were 90 percent silver, while pennies cast before 1983 were about 90 percent copper. This makes these coins worth significantly more than their face value.
You can’t melt pennies (or nickels) because it’s been illegal since 2007 (the government is trying to keep these coins in circulation because they’re expensive to produce). But you can actually melt silver coins; this was briefly banned in the 1960s, but is now legal (probably because there are very few silver coins actually in circulation, so melting them down would have no economic impact). Here you can see some “melting prices” of old silver coins.
This means your jar of change could be worth a lot more than you think if you sell those coins to the right place.
Bulk pennies and junk silver
When people talk about coin sales, they are usually talking about rare coins and collectibles that can be worth staggering amounts of money. The likelihood of having a rare and valuable coin in your change jar is of course slim, so it’s best to separate out the old coins (you can also keep an eye on the rare ones while you’re at it, just to be on the safe side). in case you got into the coin lottery) from new ones and sell them in bulk:
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A penny. The copper value of pennies issued before 1983 makes them attractive to people who are betting that the government will at some point lift the ban on melting them down – if in the future the value of an old penny reaches about 10 cents (currently worth just under 3 cents apiece ), and they become legal to melt, and having a full trunk will pay off in a big way. As a result, you can find wholesale copper coin buyers on eBay , Craigslist , or local coin stores and collectors (you can try checking out the CoinSales section of Reddit to get some information). Last year, a Los Angeles family found a huge amount of copper coins ( about a million !) and sold them quite easily.
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Silver. If you have a stash of old quarters, dimes or half dollars from before 1964, you can find many places to sell them. It is not uncommon for silver coins in varying conditions to be considered “junk silver” but are still worth more than their face value. You can also sell junk silver coins on eBay or Craigslist, but you’ll probably be better off at your local pawn shop or online dealers like Kitco or APMEX . It’s a good idea to find out the cost of melting your coins just for reference so you know if the offer is right.
Keep in mind that you will have to pay taxes on these sales as they are taxed at capital gains rates . This will take away some of the profit, so make sure your math is correct before you start doing all this work.
In the worst case scenario, with a jar full of change, it’s worth exactly its face value. But you might be able to get a little more out of it if you put a little time into it.