I saw on youtube somewhere that if you go the bank and ask for 50 cent pieces, there is a good chance you might get a few silver pieces. So i go to the bank last week and ask if i can buy their 50 cent pieces. They tell me they dont have any but they can order them but i have to order a minimum of $500. Well...its only $500 bucks and it not like i cant spend the worthless 50 cent pieces whenever i hit the fast food places, or buy soda at the 7-11. So this morning they called me and told me my coins were there (this was a great free way to treasure hunt because they pay for the shipping and i get to treasure hunt face value coins for nothing more than my time) I was a little disappointed in how much silver i found, but i got a few extra surprises. I found 3 silver 50 cent pieces although only one was pre-1964(90% silver) and the other 2 were pre-1970(40% silver). Total silver value....$12.16 I also got a 10 peso mexican coin...value 76 cents. But the biggest surprise was an 1862 copper french coin with napoleons picture on it with a face value of 10 cents(i think 10 cents...it said dix centimes which i guess is 10 cents in french) which when i looked up is worth somewhere around the area of $10 (i was hoping it was going to be worth alot more but oh well) I was actually hoping to get like 20 or 30 silver coins but it was fun morning and I made a 4% return on investment.
You can order those gold colored dollar coins from the mint - 5000 at a crack. Some (a very few) don't have the edging and are worth considerably more than a dollar.
It's been a while but some guys were buying 3k bags of unsorted dimes and were having good luck. I'd like to be the coinstar guy.
Another way is pennies too. There is a virtual gold mine in pennies. Every 1 dollar of pre-1982 pennies is worth $2.45 in copper melt value. Although sorting through 1000s of pennies and straining to see the dates isnt too fun. But you do get lucky with lots of wheat pennies and the occasional indian head. Its alot easier for someone that doesnt have much cash to start treasure hunting with pennies as it only costs 25 dollars per box. You never know...one day the dollar might become so worthless that a 1982 penny is worth more than a paper dollar.
I've actually gotten a mercury dime in change from mcdonalds once. Happened about 2 months ago. Even though the dime is only worth about 1.50, its really exciting to get free silver
Assuming you can examine 1 penny every 3 seconds and assuming 25% of the pennies are pre-1982s, your average hourly profit is $7.35 per hour, or about min wage. Not very good, but pretty good if you are from a 3rd world country i suppose. Buts its not really about the money. Its about the treasure hunting. Looking for that needle in the haystack. Besides...I got plenty of time on my hands to do that kind of stuff when im trading forex and waiting for the currencies to move, plus it doesnt require a great deal of my attention to be taken away from the screen at any one time. its the perfect hobby for a forex trader because watching that screen all day can get so boring!
We weren't talking about "how much can you make by breaking the law." We were talking about searching fruitlessly through bags of coins looking for silver. If you want to go illegal, there are much more profitable venues.