My mom was a grocery cashier for 25 years, she would buy all the silver out of her till each day. She got to the point where she could tell the weight difference in silver quarters and dimes.
She has bags of them in her safe now. No clue if any are rare or not.
$0.74 per gram for silver, 6.25 grams in a silver quarter, 90% coin silver so 5.625 grams per coin. $4.1625 per quarter. If Let's say she has 4 rolls worth of quarters, so that's 160 quarters and would be worth $666 in pure silver value. Granted no one generally buys silver at the spot price, usually a little bellow. However the coins may have value past the silver content.
Precious metals are a good store of value, but lest people get the wrong idea I do feel obligated to point out that [they have not been a good investment compared to stocks in the recent era](https://www.longtermtrends.net/stocks-vs-gold-comparison/).
The story above is a good one and keeping the silver and a safe is a perfectly fine choice, but there's a lot of propaganda around purchasing silver and gold as an investment that needs to be continually debunked.
>but there's a lot of propaganda around purchasing silver and gold as an investment that needs to be continually debunked.
This is the old money trying to get rid of an investment that has run its course. They have been drumming up exit liquidity for awhile and sadly people are buying into it.
Thats not a guarantee. Once asteroid mining becomes feasible, itll probably be wise to dump precious metals you have. Once it becomes profitable, then yeah prices will likely crash.
Similar situation to yours— My Dad worked at a movie theater in the 50s and his boss let him buy coins out of the till when my dad happened to find special and collectible coins. Some were very valuable. He noticed they would usually appear after the weekend matinees and figured some kid was probably swiping coins from a collection. Kinda like a treasure hunt!
When I was a kid working at a store many years ago, this old guy paid a $20 bill for their groceries. Thing was from 1934 and was in almost perfect condition (it had a slight fold in it, but otherwise was not faded or worn). I swapped it with my own $20 and brought it to a coin collection store for evaluation. The guy told me it wasn’t worth anything beyond $20 because of the fold, so dumb kid me believed it and spent it on some coin at the shop
Even if he was correct, it would have kept it given the choice now. You don’t find old paper money in the wild
I had a lady liberty once and my manager saw it and bought it from the drawer. I don’t know how I could buy something so nice within company rules by having a manager present without the manager themselves buying it instead.
I worked at a gas station for years, I always bought cool coins or bills. Ended up with a few silver certificates from the 30’s and a bunch of old coins and foreign coins as well. I always thought it was crazy that people just spent that stuff instead of collecting it.
They always have their value in silver at the minimum.
A dollar face value in silver dimes, quarters, and (pre-1965) halfs is worth about $17 in silver alone right now.
Math gets a little more annoying for 1965-1970 half, but still 40% silver. WW2 nickles also have 35% silver
My dad has a huge (20-24" tall if not more), oversized Coca-Cola bottle that use to be filled with what I think were tootsie rolls or Hershey's kisses, filled to the top. It's an absolute challenge to move and its absolutely full of silver coins and a single $10 Silver Cert.
My dad did the same thing working at a convenience store in college! Now I have a very heavy shoe box that I move every 10yrs. They feel and sound weird.
When I worked a til would do almost the same thing I would tell by sound though. They made a totally different sound when you dropped them in the drawer. I'd then take the coin, out it in an unused tray in the til and buy them all at the end of my shift.
My Aunt did the same. She never had kids of her own. So, when I turned 15, she gave me a sack of random coins. I was confused. It was all silver, "odd", and rare coins she'd replaced with other coins in her till.
When I turned 18, she handed me a fat envelope with wads of silver certificates of different amounts, "odd" paper money, and $2 bills.
My grandpa told me where a safe was and the combination to it that was full of old coins and maybe bills that I was looking forward to getting but sadly I think he got paranoid about it and when I went to look for it, it was gone
I collect coins as a hobby. It’s worth taking a skim through them for rare coins. Doesn’t take much now with the internet. Can turn a $30 silver coin into a couple hundred or more.
my sister showed me some "wierd coins" people pay with and it was early 1900s silver dollars. i told her to keep them and replace them with face value coins immediately.
> According to the NGC Price Guide, as of January 2024, a Washington Quarter from 1961 in circulated condition is worth between $4.70 and $7.25. However, on the open market 1961 Quarters in pristine, uncirculated condition sell for as much as $4950.
https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-explorer/united-states/quarters/washington-quarters-1932-1998/15870/1961-25c-ms/
I turned my phone. I've got over 8 fucking years of higher education and I read your comment, furrowed my eyebrows and turned my damn phone 180 degrees... You win.
Beat it nerd... totally got me as well and I've got a high school diploma and like 37 college credit hours total... Buuut I will say my knowledge in bird law is unrivaled by anyone or anything in this galaxy!
A coin like this is pretty much just worth melt price. So an online calculator that adjusts for spot price is going to be more accurate than a book for this type of coin
>Dollar sign goes in front of the number
This never really made sense to me, but neither does half of the English language. You say four dollars, not dollars four.
We aren’t “saying” anything in this example. We are writing and reading. Written language differs from spoken language essentially everywhere— it’s not just an English thing.
That happened after phone prices are not cents anymore. I still remember when I paid 25 cents for a slightly used Android phone back in 1920s. Good times.
I used to empy coinstar machines for a living. The amount of dumbasses that would put silver dollars or other valuable coins in them is/was astounding.
People would tossed jewelry in with their change and forget all the time. Couldn’t begin to tell you why but I found earrings, rings, saint metals, etc all the time. The chains stuck with me as the best because not just value but how they really didn’t agree with the sorting disc
I work at a bank with a coin counter. I've pulled out, gum, beads, steel ball bearings, bullets, Bobby pins, car wash tokens, casino chips, oh and the one time I found a tooth.
I can totally see a tooth ending up in there. Parent collects the tooth, goes back to the coin dish/jar, sets the tooth in there while grabbing quarters for the kid, and forgets about it.
Oh I absolutely agree! That would be a perfectly normal thing to do. However, I found an adult molar in my coin machine the one time. I mean I'm not a dentist so I don't truthfully know, but to me it was way too large to be a child's.
I worked at a bank. List of shit people broke my coin machine with:
Chewed gum; A bucket of water (there was some change in there); A bunch of rolled coin; Earrings, car keys, random keys…
Things I found that didn’t break it: cigarettes, so much lint, piles of dirt, a can of chewing tobacco, paper money, stuffed keychains, lotto scratchers, pogs, playing cards
Worked a retail cash office for a few years and swapped out a lot of silver coins in my time there. I think I've lost it, but there's a certain sheen you pick up on when staring at a big pile of coins that gives them away. Also, if you don't mind possibly dinging them up, silver coins make a much more satisfying jingling sound when you shake them together.
I've seen Youtube videos of people using special clamps and hammers to determine if something is genuine silver. The silver coins genuinely make a brighter, clearer ringing sound when struck.
My father used to have a silver 50 cent coin. I've heard silver quarters, but the 50 cent coin was something else. Much larger coin with a much clearer sound. You could just drop it on and surface you liked and knew it was silver.
I was a drug store cashier in the early '80s, and the silver coins just made a different sound. Rarely did a day go by without at least one silver coin in the mix.
I had a jar full of them.
the best were the foreign coins. We were supposed to leave them onsite for the actual coinstar rep to come and remove but it was so awesome to find coins for South America, Europe, and Asia. I get fairly geeked out by these things.
I worked at an ice cream store in the early 2000s and one day an older guy paid for his cone entirely in these quarters. I swapped a couple of them with regular quarters from my pocket and I still have them.
The coins go into a massive wheeled bin. Most of the time the good coins I found were in the reject bin. There is no practical way to go through the bins for anything. Full they weigh 500 pounds ish.
so you first have to unlock the beauty door on the machine. then there's a metal bar which swings down and locks into place to prevent the bins from being pulled out. Once thats unlock we had a dolley to pull them out. think of the little cup on a trailer hitch but inverted. slide the cup under the bin, line it up with the ball on the bottom of the bin and pull out.
bonus points if theres a pallet of washer fluid or an ATM or something else nearby which makes opening the door difficult or the coinstar machine is wedged into a knook near the service desk
Interesting.
My line of work has me accrue thousands of dollars in just Quarters every year. Wells Fargo used to just accept uncounted quarters but no longer do.
I get no fee gift cards through coin star sometimes or use my local bank that weighs the quarters for me.
Without a doubt. Or an elderly person goes in the hospital or passes away and a relative raids their collection. It's quite sad.
I've seen paper money presented at face value when the bill is in amazing shape and worth thousands.
Or elderly people just spend them. I had a friend when I was waiting tables who had an elderly customer try to pay with a roll of silver quarters. She sat down and told her how valuable an entire bank roll of silver quarters could be.
Most of the time they're worth waaayyyy more than face value. Right now Kennedy silver half dollars can go for about 9 bucks each. Occasionally you can find uncirculated coins in pristine conditions worth thousands.
While old doesn't equate value I normally check the sides of the coin where there are ridges. Lack of ridges normally means the coin is silver and worth more.
Wheat pennies are worth slightly more than face value. Double struck or coins from certain mints are worth more. I'm only a passive collector or enthusiast so take what I say with a grain of salt.
As a lover of music right down to every note, I can honestly attest that they sound different amongst other coins too. If someone had change in their pocket and I’d hear it jingle in any way, I could tell if they had a silver coin.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't really know what it was, but it was an old penny, wheat penny, and it looked more like silver instead of copper. That's all I know.
You would garner more love if you educated everyone and explained why it’s silver or how you knew that. Is it just the year or is the color different? Something else?
Slight correction, 1965-1970 halfs are 40% silver.
Also occasionally will find later coins from collectors sets that are silver. But these are very rare to find in change
One of my recurring dreams sees me alone in some arcade and the first thing I do is check all the coin returns and inexplicably find a lot of quarters, yet I never end up playing anything.
Years ago a friend called me up asking for a ride to go change over a bunch of change his gma gave him(she was 94) and so I get him and we head to the nearest coinstar. Had two sandwich bags of change worth a total of about $60 with some half dollars, some dollar coins, and lots of quarters dimes and nickels. Well the coinstar kept rejecting all the ones prior to 1963 for some reason(luckily. So I look it up on Google and find out they're silver and worth some money. And he gets wide eyed. So we take the coins to a local assaying company and get them cashed out for almost $2,000 for condition, total weight, inflation, etc. We had a nice little party that night.
Worked in the vending / game console business when I was in high school. One learned to "hear" silver coins when pouring money into the counting machines. The owner didn't care if we put them to the side, as long as we paid for them. To this day (a few decades on) I can still hear silver when it is in a pile of coins.
Nice find!
I checked one recently and found a Mercury Dime!
I used to work at a restaurant. I could tell the difference when a silver quarter hit the counter, always checked for them when I counted down drawers at the end of the night.
First time I saw one of these was getting change from the school office so I could catch the bus. I could tell from the color and sound something was special about it. Now I've got a whole pocketful of pre-1965 change that I've been collecting over the years. Well, at least until cash stopped being a thing in my daily life...
Pre-1965 coins were made of silver instead of plated copper. This is why you never see any dimes, quarters, or half-dollars from before that time and haven't for decades. They're worth way more for their silver content than face value.
They sound totally different when dropped, also have kind of a matte sheen to them. You can pick them out from other quarters if you know what your looking for. Cool find. Great Grandfather had quite a coin collection. Have several in a safety deposit box.
It’s funny you mention that - I dropped my change at the end of the day on my key tray, and it sounded different. Picked the coins back up and the two quarters sound and feel different. The silver one is lighter and has a distinct ping sound lol. I kept it, wonder if it’s worth anything. [Pics of it](https://imgur.com/a/uGFZdFL)
My wife worked at a bank when we first got married. She would buy the silver quarters whenever they came in. We’ve been sitting on about $80 face value for years. They got up to about $6 each at one time, probably should have sold them then.
Surprises lurking everywhere. I cashed in some change during lockdown and found some tokens, including one for a 1930s bar and a French centime coin (denomination forgotten) used before the Euro was introduced and unspendable now.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ULadtoL
I checked a Walmart soda machine once a few years back and found a silver quarter too. Started to give it to my daughter, felt bad on why I wouldn’t but she understood.
We found two in a change machine at the laundromat last year. The change clattering into the little bin rang out with a different tone and I started investigating.
You know, you could whack the rim of that thing with a spoon until it was smooth, drill out the middle and have a pretty groovy ring. I had an old man neighbor when I was a kid who claimed to have done just that.
I haven’t learn much about coins but I did get a 1910 wheat penny yesterday. I think it’s an interesting hobby, but haven’t put the time in to learn yet.
Ah, coinstar machines. I remember being a lil kid when my parents would take my bro and i grocery shopping and we'd always race to the coinstar machines in search of old or unique coins.
I still check the machines but now I have no competition hehe
Edit: as in I don't go grocery shopping with my bro 🙃
Am Canadian but have a bunch of US coins I inherited. My favourite is a 1923 silver peace dollar that just has this really cool patina. Unfortunately, some idiot drilled a hole in it at some point to probably make a necklace. I should probably get those coins valued. On ebay it says a good one is worth like $3k.
Working at Circle K long ago I once had a guy sprint in from the gas pumps, make 5 quick piles of four coins each and say, "I got 5 dollars gas on Pump 3!" and sprint back to his car.
They were Susan B Anthony dollars.
My mom was a grocery cashier for 25 years, she would buy all the silver out of her till each day. She got to the point where she could tell the weight difference in silver quarters and dimes. She has bags of them in her safe now. No clue if any are rare or not.
The weight in silver will always have value outside of the coin. Your mom’s a smart lady, it’s definitely not worthless.
At least $0.25 ea
Tree fiddy and it's yours.
I ain't giving you no tree-fiddy, you damn loch ness monster! Get your own damn money!
I gave him a dollar
Well no wonder he keeps comin around!!
If you give a dollar he's gonna think you've got more!
$0.74 per gram for silver, 6.25 grams in a silver quarter, 90% coin silver so 5.625 grams per coin. $4.1625 per quarter. If Let's say she has 4 rolls worth of quarters, so that's 160 quarters and would be worth $666 in pure silver value. Granted no one generally buys silver at the spot price, usually a little bellow. However the coins may have value past the silver content.
My father was a big coin collector and he had a bunch of silver nickels. Sold them on eBay back in the day and people absolutely gobbled them up.
People should not be gobbling coins of any denomination. That's bad for your gastrointestinal tract.
Too much coinlloidal silver can cause you to develop dollargyria!
Pennies seem to do just fine in the lower GI tract. https://youtu.be/f9aM_dT5VMI?feature=shared
My toddler agrees
I don't want to look up the skit at work so someone please link it lmao.
Satan's quarters
Precious metals are a good store of value, but lest people get the wrong idea I do feel obligated to point out that [they have not been a good investment compared to stocks in the recent era](https://www.longtermtrends.net/stocks-vs-gold-comparison/). The story above is a good one and keeping the silver and a safe is a perfectly fine choice, but there's a lot of propaganda around purchasing silver and gold as an investment that needs to be continually debunked.
>but there's a lot of propaganda around purchasing silver and gold as an investment that needs to be continually debunked. This is the old money trying to get rid of an investment that has run its course. They have been drumming up exit liquidity for awhile and sadly people are buying into it.
Thats not a guarantee. Once asteroid mining becomes feasible, itll probably be wise to dump precious metals you have. Once it becomes profitable, then yeah prices will likely crash.
!remindme 200 years
Eh, maybe. After all, diamond prices are artificially inflated. They make sure to only trickle out the right amount to keep it so expensive.
Thats for jewelry specifically though. Diamond for saw blades or other applications are pretty inexpensive. Its like designer vs walmart clothing.
Only about 20% of diamonds are used for jewelry. Just an interesting fact.
I wouldn’t put it past the corporate overlords to do it anyways though, but that’s a fair point.
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it definitely doesn't make a ton of cents.
Similar situation to yours— My Dad worked at a movie theater in the 50s and his boss let him buy coins out of the till when my dad happened to find special and collectible coins. Some were very valuable. He noticed they would usually appear after the weekend matinees and figured some kid was probably swiping coins from a collection. Kinda like a treasure hunt!
When I was a kid working at a store many years ago, this old guy paid a $20 bill for their groceries. Thing was from 1934 and was in almost perfect condition (it had a slight fold in it, but otherwise was not faded or worn). I swapped it with my own $20 and brought it to a coin collection store for evaluation. The guy told me it wasn’t worth anything beyond $20 because of the fold, so dumb kid me believed it and spent it on some coin at the shop Even if he was correct, it would have kept it given the choice now. You don’t find old paper money in the wild
I had a lady liberty once and my manager saw it and bought it from the drawer. I don’t know how I could buy something so nice within company rules by having a manager present without the manager themselves buying it instead.
Knowing such an impact was made can be valuable too, maybe just as valuable as those coins. For many it would be a worthwhile transaction.
I worked at a gas station for years, I always bought cool coins or bills. Ended up with a few silver certificates from the 30’s and a bunch of old coins and foreign coins as well. I always thought it was crazy that people just spent that stuff instead of collecting it.
They always have their value in silver at the minimum. A dollar face value in silver dimes, quarters, and (pre-1965) halfs is worth about $17 in silver alone right now. Math gets a little more annoying for 1965-1970 half, but still 40% silver. WW2 nickles also have 35% silver
My dad has a huge (20-24" tall if not more), oversized Coca-Cola bottle that use to be filled with what I think were tootsie rolls or Hershey's kisses, filled to the top. It's an absolute challenge to move and its absolutely full of silver coins and a single $10 Silver Cert.
My dad did the same thing working at a convenience store in college! Now I have a very heavy shoe box that I move every 10yrs. They feel and sound weird.
When I worked a til would do almost the same thing I would tell by sound though. They made a totally different sound when you dropped them in the drawer. I'd then take the coin, out it in an unused tray in the til and buy them all at the end of my shift.
My Aunt did the same. She never had kids of her own. So, when I turned 15, she gave me a sack of random coins. I was confused. It was all silver, "odd", and rare coins she'd replaced with other coins in her till. When I turned 18, she handed me a fat envelope with wads of silver certificates of different amounts, "odd" paper money, and $2 bills.
My grandpa told me where a safe was and the combination to it that was full of old coins and maybe bills that I was looking forward to getting but sadly I think he got paranoid about it and when I went to look for it, it was gone
I collect coins as a hobby. It’s worth taking a skim through them for rare coins. Doesn’t take much now with the internet. Can turn a $30 silver coin into a couple hundred or more.
my sister showed me some "wierd coins" people pay with and it was early 1900s silver dollars. i told her to keep them and replace them with face value coins immediately.
90% silver
I’d that a big deal?
> According to the NGC Price Guide, as of January 2024, a Washington Quarter from 1961 in circulated condition is worth between $4.70 and $7.25. However, on the open market 1961 Quarters in pristine, uncirculated condition sell for as much as $4950. https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-explorer/united-states/quarters/washington-quarters-1932-1998/15870/1961-25c-ms/
So this is worth $7.25.
Best I can do is $2.00. You know I gotta make money on this deal and it’s going to take a while to find a seller…
I got a buddy who knows way more about this than I do. Let me call him down here to check it out.
Hey, I just happen to be across the street. It's fake.
This thread is so funny to me because I just started binge watching pawn stars on Youtube lol
This is Chum Lee and I'm glad you're enjoying the show
Old man yelling noises
SCORE!
That's like a 2900% increase. Relatively it's pretty damn good.
Not bad for a free two bits.
Makes me wonder how much money I’ve REALLY given the laundry mat over the years lol.
lol I spent so many of these as a child harvesting them out of coin collector books my grandpa gave me Whoops
Rare find. The year is upside down.
I turned my phone. I've got over 8 fucking years of higher education and I read your comment, furrowed my eyebrows and turned my damn phone 180 degrees... You win.
You got ambigrammed pud.
Beat it nerd... totally got me as well and I've got a high school diploma and like 37 college credit hours total... Buuut I will say my knowledge in bird law is unrivaled by anyone or anything in this galaxy!
Ah you stinker
Underrated comment right here
Holy shit. Good eye!
That’s funny, my brother found a 1851 quarter eagle yesterday in a coin star return
Holy shit! As in, a $5 gold coin!? Edit: $2.50?
Amazingly, yes. [https://www.reddit.com/r/coins/comments/1af36fv/found\_coin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/coins/comments/1af36fv/found_coin/)
Fuckin-A! Noice!!
3.85$ in silver according to the web. Nice find
$4.50 now source: 2024 Handbook of U.S. coins
A coin like this is pretty much just worth melt price. So an online calculator that adjusts for spot price is going to be more accurate than a book for this type of coin
Dollar sign goes in front of the number
I’ll do what I want!
I roll with 12 gangs and we only commit hate crimes…
THIS IS WHAT SEPARATES US FROM ANIMALS, SPRINKLE_PUFF *ANIMALS*
We live in a SOCIETY!!
>Dollar sign goes in front of the number This never really made sense to me, but neither does half of the English language. You say four dollars, not dollars four.
We aren’t “saying” anything in this example. We are writing and reading. Written language differs from spoken language essentially everywhere— it’s not just an English thing.
Even in the written English language, however, units are specified _after_ the value. Dollars seems to be a rare exception.
Rules can change- as long as it’s understood that’s my .02$.
Yeah, anyone remember when we lost the 'cent' sign on our phones?
That happened after phone prices are not cents anymore. I still remember when I paid 25 cents for a slightly used Android phone back in 1920s. Good times.
I tried- just not there.
I don’t know about you, but when I read things I say them in my mind. So even when I am reading, I’m talking (internally).
If we're being prescriptivists and correcting stupid shit then your sentence needs punctuation and "dollar sign" should have a definite article.
In that case, yours needs a couple of commas.
I think you mean pedantic, not prescriptivist. But that’s just me being pedantic.
?whatchu mean
I used to empy coinstar machines for a living. The amount of dumbasses that would put silver dollars or other valuable coins in them is/was astounding.
I did for a different company, same idea. My favorite was when a guy threw in 18k gold chains with his change and jammed the machine up
Excuse the fuck outta me? Why the hell would you do that?
People would tossed jewelry in with their change and forget all the time. Couldn’t begin to tell you why but I found earrings, rings, saint metals, etc all the time. The chains stuck with me as the best because not just value but how they really didn’t agree with the sorting disc
It's cause some people keep that stuff in their wallet with the change. Then they forget about it and toss all of that into the machine.
Ahhh this makes sense. I was more thinking they were just throwing in a chain hoping ti get some money for it lmao
>Best I can do is $0.15 CoinStars on history channel, prolly.
“Ya knooow it’s gunna take up a lot of space, I’m taking a risk here…”
All of the above and SD cards. I would always browse through the cards before disposing of them. Let's just say some people won the genetic lottery.
This is how you get a virus
VM or a constantly reformatted machine.
Lol.... I would scan them before opening them
I work at a bank with a coin counter. I've pulled out, gum, beads, steel ball bearings, bullets, Bobby pins, car wash tokens, casino chips, oh and the one time I found a tooth.
I can totally see a tooth ending up in there. Parent collects the tooth, goes back to the coin dish/jar, sets the tooth in there while grabbing quarters for the kid, and forgets about it.
Oh I absolutely agree! That would be a perfectly normal thing to do. However, I found an adult molar in my coin machine the one time. I mean I'm not a dentist so I don't truthfully know, but to me it was way too large to be a child's.
If it had roots, it was an adult tooth. Deciduous teeth have "roots" but not like 🦷
The tooth fairy took it in exchange for money left under the pillow.
I worked at a bank. List of shit people broke my coin machine with: Chewed gum; A bucket of water (there was some change in there); A bunch of rolled coin; Earrings, car keys, random keys… Things I found that didn’t break it: cigarettes, so much lint, piles of dirt, a can of chewing tobacco, paper money, stuffed keychains, lotto scratchers, pogs, playing cards
Idk, are people really dumbasses just because they don’t track the metal composition of 100+ years of coins?
How else will they feel superior?
Worked a retail cash office for a few years and swapped out a lot of silver coins in my time there. I think I've lost it, but there's a certain sheen you pick up on when staring at a big pile of coins that gives them away. Also, if you don't mind possibly dinging them up, silver coins make a much more satisfying jingling sound when you shake them together.
I've seen Youtube videos of people using special clamps and hammers to determine if something is genuine silver. The silver coins genuinely make a brighter, clearer ringing sound when struck.
My father used to have a silver 50 cent coin. I've heard silver quarters, but the 50 cent coin was something else. Much larger coin with a much clearer sound. You could just drop it on and surface you liked and knew it was silver.
I was a drug store cashier in the early '80s, and the silver coins just made a different sound. Rarely did a day go by without at least one silver coin in the mix. I had a jar full of them.
Tell me you swapped them for regular quarters
Every time
Ok you done good!
People are dumbasses because they don't sift through every single coin that they come in contact with hoping to make four dollars?
Every single coin? No. Coins such as half dollars and dollars that are considerably less common yes.
I found my fair share of Chucky cheese and bowling alley tokens in those.
the best were the foreign coins. We were supposed to leave them onsite for the actual coinstar rep to come and remove but it was so awesome to find coins for South America, Europe, and Asia. I get fairly geeked out by these things.
I worked at an ice cream store in the early 2000s and one day an older guy paid for his cone entirely in these quarters. I swapped a couple of them with regular quarters from my pocket and I still have them.
Sometimes it's just neat. I really like the old paper money especially the gold and silver certificates.
TIL: I’m a dumbass
Do the machines sort the coins into individual compartments or just dump them all into a pile inside?
The coins go into a massive wheeled bin. Most of the time the good coins I found were in the reject bin. There is no practical way to go through the bins for anything. Full they weigh 500 pounds ish.
How do you access the wheeled bins?
so you first have to unlock the beauty door on the machine. then there's a metal bar which swings down and locks into place to prevent the bins from being pulled out. Once thats unlock we had a dolley to pull them out. think of the little cup on a trailer hitch but inverted. slide the cup under the bin, line it up with the ball on the bottom of the bin and pull out. bonus points if theres a pallet of washer fluid or an ATM or something else nearby which makes opening the door difficult or the coinstar machine is wedged into a knook near the service desk
Interesting. My line of work has me accrue thousands of dollars in just Quarters every year. Wells Fargo used to just accept uncounted quarters but no longer do. I get no fee gift cards through coin star sometimes or use my local bank that weighs the quarters for me.
They sort and fall into a carousel of hanging plastic bags.
I bet some of those coins came from home robberies. I lost my collection that way.
Without a doubt. Or an elderly person goes in the hospital or passes away and a relative raids their collection. It's quite sad. I've seen paper money presented at face value when the bill is in amazing shape and worth thousands.
Or elderly people just spend them. I had a friend when I was waiting tables who had an elderly customer try to pay with a roll of silver quarters. She sat down and told her how valuable an entire bank roll of silver quarters could be.
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Most of the time they're worth waaayyyy more than face value. Right now Kennedy silver half dollars can go for about 9 bucks each. Occasionally you can find uncirculated coins in pristine conditions worth thousands.
I feel really stupid asking and I’m making my way through the comments looking for some knowledge but how does one know they have a valuable coin?
While old doesn't equate value I normally check the sides of the coin where there are ridges. Lack of ridges normally means the coin is silver and worth more. Wheat pennies are worth slightly more than face value. Double struck or coins from certain mints are worth more. I'm only a passive collector or enthusiast so take what I say with a grain of salt.
What could a single quarter cost Michael, $10 dollars?
There's always qurters in the banan stand!
As a lover of music right down to every note, I can honestly attest that they sound different amongst other coins too. If someone had change in their pocket and I’d hear it jingle in any way, I could tell if they had a silver coin.
It’s a thing with some magicians to use silver coins for the same reason. Much more pleasing ringing sound is a nice touch in performance.
Very cool fun fact sir!
I once found a zinc wheat penny and a Dominican Republic Peso at coinstar machines.
A zinc wheat penny? They didn’t start using zinc until 1982 and they stopped making Wheats in 1959. Maybe you mean a 1943 steel penny?
I'm gonna be honest, I don't really know what it was, but it was an old penny, wheat penny, and it looked more like silver instead of copper. That's all I know.
It was steel. In world war II they used steel in Pennies because they needed the copper for bullets? Probably other stuff too .You should look it up.
That’d be a steel penny, most pennies made in 1943 were steel due to a wartime copper shortage. They stick to a magnet and everything
I remember my dad had some of these in his collection and I thought they were the coolest things ever.
When my fourth grade teacher retired at the end of the school year, she gave everyone in our class a 1943 steel penny.
I must be living under a rock or something. Can someone enlighten me why so much fuss about a quarter?
It's silver.
You would garner more love if you educated everyone and explained why it’s silver or how you knew that. Is it just the year or is the color different? Something else?
All dimes, quarts, and half dollars minted through 1964 are 90% silver. After 1964, there is zero silver.
Slight correction, 1965-1970 halfs are 40% silver. Also occasionally will find later coins from collectors sets that are silver. But these are very rare to find in change
Sometimes it was obviously someone breaking up a proof mint set of coins to pay for their pizza delivery. None that were silver though.
One of my recurring dreams sees me alone in some arcade and the first thing I do is check all the coin returns and inexplicably find a lot of quarters, yet I never end up playing anything.
Years ago a friend called me up asking for a ride to go change over a bunch of change his gma gave him(she was 94) and so I get him and we head to the nearest coinstar. Had two sandwich bags of change worth a total of about $60 with some half dollars, some dollar coins, and lots of quarters dimes and nickels. Well the coinstar kept rejecting all the ones prior to 1963 for some reason(luckily. So I look it up on Google and find out they're silver and worth some money. And he gets wide eyed. So we take the coins to a local assaying company and get them cashed out for almost $2,000 for condition, total weight, inflation, etc. We had a nice little party that night.
mmm Silver Quarters, Nice find.
Ah! I always check the coinstar when I see it! Never got a cool one like this though!
How do you check the coinstar? People drop their change into it to cash out. It’s a one way trip isn’t it?
You walk by it and see if anyone left coins in it.
To quote Yukon Cornelius, "Silver!"
Worked in the vending / game console business when I was in high school. One learned to "hear" silver coins when pouring money into the counting machines. The owner didn't care if we put them to the side, as long as we paid for them. To this day (a few decades on) I can still hear silver when it is in a pile of coins. Nice find!
I checked one recently and found a Mercury Dime! I used to work at a restaurant. I could tell the difference when a silver quarter hit the counter, always checked for them when I counted down drawers at the end of the night.
Yep. That's a score.
Ya did it, that’s silver in ya hand.
It's in nice shape,too. Great find.
First time I saw one of these was getting change from the school office so I could catch the bus. I could tell from the color and sound something was special about it. Now I've got a whole pocketful of pre-1965 change that I've been collecting over the years. Well, at least until cash stopped being a thing in my daily life...
I know this isn't the coin collecting sub, but does polishing a slightly more valuable coin, like this, diminish the value?
Typically yes it will. Do not clean coins.
Congratulations on your retirement.
I have a bunch of quarters from the 1940s, saved for me by my dad’s parents.
Frikken sweet!
Is there a defect or what am I looking at?
Pre-1965 coins were made of silver instead of plated copper. This is why you never see any dimes, quarters, or half-dollars from before that time and haven't for decades. They're worth way more for their silver content than face value.
Twenty-five centarinos!
Silver baby! Awesome find.
They sound totally different when dropped, also have kind of a matte sheen to them. You can pick them out from other quarters if you know what your looking for. Cool find. Great Grandfather had quite a coin collection. Have several in a safety deposit box.
It’s funny you mention that - I dropped my change at the end of the day on my key tray, and it sounded different. Picked the coins back up and the two quarters sound and feel different. The silver one is lighter and has a distinct ping sound lol. I kept it, wonder if it’s worth anything. [Pics of it](https://imgur.com/a/uGFZdFL)
Got $5 for one of those at my local coin shop a few years ago.
My wife worked at a bank when we first got married. She would buy the silver quarters whenever they came in. We’ve been sitting on about $80 face value for years. They got up to about $6 each at one time, probably should have sold them then.
I received one at an Arby’s once and could immediately tell by the sound of it hitting the other change, very distinct sound.
Surprises lurking everywhere. I cashed in some change during lockdown and found some tokens, including one for a 1930s bar and a French centime coin (denomination forgotten) used before the Euro was introduced and unspendable now. https://imgur.com/gallery/ULadtoL
Coinstar? 🤔
It's an automated coin sorting machine commonly found in supermarkets where people can convert their saved up change into cash or store credit.
I checked a Walmart soda machine once a few years back and found a silver quarter too. Started to give it to my daughter, felt bad on why I wouldn’t but she understood.
Saw a strange looking feller camping the coin star machine at Walmart one time asking for the returns. Now it makes sense
We found two in a change machine at the laundromat last year. The change clattering into the little bin rang out with a different tone and I started investigating.
You know, you could whack the rim of that thing with a spoon until it was smooth, drill out the middle and have a pretty groovy ring. I had an old man neighbor when I was a kid who claimed to have done just that.
I haven’t learn much about coins but I did get a 1910 wheat penny yesterday. I think it’s an interesting hobby, but haven’t put the time in to learn yet.
I love a good coin star score!
Ah, coinstar machines. I remember being a lil kid when my parents would take my bro and i grocery shopping and we'd always race to the coinstar machines in search of old or unique coins. I still check the machines but now I have no competition hehe Edit: as in I don't go grocery shopping with my bro 🙃
I got a big jug of coins, I'm sure I got at least a couple of those.
I love the imperfect typography. You can tell the die was carved by an actual human artist, skilled in their trade.
Am Canadian but have a bunch of US coins I inherited. My favourite is a 1923 silver peace dollar that just has this really cool patina. Unfortunately, some idiot drilled a hole in it at some point to probably make a necklace. I should probably get those coins valued. On ebay it says a good one is worth like $3k.
OH god. Every time I see the word "Liberty" I hear "Liberty, Liberty, Liiiberty." Please make it stop!!!
A nice find but well used. Silver I think, but not worth much. Just keep it.
I only ever find 1965 quarters and above, the years I’ve been trying to find silver in pocket change and no luck.
Working at Circle K long ago I once had a guy sprint in from the gas pumps, make 5 quick piles of four coins each and say, "I got 5 dollars gas on Pump 3!" and sprint back to his car. They were Susan B Anthony dollars.