My memory is not as good as it once was but I think it was either the late sixties or early seventies that there was a penny shortage and some stores were forced to round sales to the lower nickel because they didn't have any pennies for change. There were places that were paying a premium for rolls of pennies. I would go to banks and get as many rolls of pennies that I could. I would search through the rolls and pull out any better dates for my collection and then resell the rolls for a premium and start all over again. It didn't last for very long but as a kid it was fun building my coin collection and making a couple of bucks at the same time. Joe.
I just went thru my collection and pulled out a bunch of boring doubles (Roosevelt dimes, Washington quarters) and will cash them in soon. I forgot I had them and I'm sure I only paid 5 times face at the most. Kind of amazing how much just a pocketfull of silver coins are worth.
fwiw, and as I recall in reading "Barton Biggs's "Wealth, War & Wisdom" he mentions value of various coins (metals, jewelry, etc) during ww2 black market trading for food or whatever throughout history. I was left with the impression that one might be better off with "junk silver" types of hoarding. Reason being, people are going to rip you off, you'll get the short end on some uncirculated silver coin whereas a silver coin with basic iv silver value ( not really a collectable) should get you a trade in like value.
Discovered this site. After browsing others, this one is nicely organized and provides the best renderings of currency. http://www.kcshop.com/foreigncurrency/Default.htm
If you're hoarding silver, then hoard silver. But while you're doing that, you can *also* collect coins. Buy good quality stuff. I used to characterize it as buying "the stuff you never see", but rarity has been re-defined by E-bay. The other thing about coins is that the margins on them are so thin there is immense pressure within the hobby to make money by any means necessary (i.e., there is a lot of cheating, overgrading, and fakes). Even reputable sellers might overgrade a tad. So if you buy investment grade stuff, buy slabbed coins, and even then, try to get the best coin you can find in the slab. SM
I own one of the largest collections of high grade Wisconsin Error Leaf quarters in the nation. Look them up, very interesting coin. Rennick Rothschild out