With Silver prices sitting around $35 currently, it even approached $50 a few weeks ago, some money can be made by sorting out these silver coins.
Many are beginning to hoard copper old copper pennies as well. Copper Pennies 1982 and earlier contain 95% Copper and 5% Zinc. Starting in 1982 the metal content flipped and started being made with 5% Copper and 95% Zinc. For years Copper prices hovered around $1 making collecting or hoarding the coins not worth it. These days however Copper has been consistently above $4 making collecting Copper Pennies a potentially profitable endevour.
A few years back the Government put into place a melt ban making it illegal to melt down Pennies. That doesn't mean that there isn't currently a market for them at maybe a penny and a half a piece. True Copper value of a penny is closer to three cents though. Most people saving Copper Pennies are keeping them not for the short term but for the mid to long term.
Copper is an important metal. Some metals can be replaced by others, Copper however has some properties which make it unique and tough to replace. Copper conducts electricity, doesn't corrode, is easy to work with, has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. There's also hasn't been significant or good Copper finds in a number of years either; meaning Copper could potentially get more valuable.
Though you may thinking people hoarding Copper Pennies may be the types to wear tin-foil hats it's really not a bad investment. The Penny will always be worth a Penny so no matter what happens to the price of Copper you can always get your initial investment back. There's no downside aside from having some money tied up in Pennies and the upside is a commodities play on Copper.
Some people would argue in order to make a significant amount of money you would have to have rooms of your home filled with Copper. This is true to an extent but who would have though back in the 1960's that today people would be paying $10 for a 1964 Quarter.
As for sorting coins you can hand sort or if your a little more serious can invest in a Copper/Silver sorting machine. The best machine on the market is clearly the ones made by Ryedale. These machines are a work of art and do a fine job sorting HUGE amounts of coins very quickly. They aren't cheap though, there are two models which sell for $500 and $800. I recently heard they put out a machine for somewhere between $100 and $150 that's not automated that's called either the "Ace" or the "Sniper".
On EBay you can find some cheaper models but they are no where near what a Ryedale is. Coinalyzer makes a decent machine for the money though. From time to time you can also sell people selling various homemade machines, some seem to be more well put together and work better than others.
You can also make your own type of machine. How much time you want to spend and how clever and handy you are will determine how complicated you want to make it and how quick you want it to sort. Incorporating a hopper to auto feed coins will really speed things up.
One frustrating thing when trying to get info and reviews on other machines is that everyone on message boards and forums says anything besides a Ryedale is crap and not worth having and refuse to accept that anything besides a Ryedale could possibly sort coins.
Not everyone is looking to buy 20-25 ; $25 boxes every week so the large investment for a Ryedale just isn't worth it. I made my own machine, I believe I have the same coin comparator mechanism as the Ryedale; though I could be mistaken. The frame is made of wood. The power source is made from an old 12v charger for a radio or razor or some odd household electronic. The feeding ramp or shoot is made of Hot Wheels tracks.
I personally only do 1-3 boxes per week so the cost of a Ryedale just isn't justified at this time, however if I up the numbers I would definitely invest in one down the road. I tend to be able to make it through an entire box of Pennies in 20 minutes just casually sorting while watching TV.In the picture below you can see a platform on top of the sorter. That is so I can make some type of hopper or feeder to automate the feeding of the coins.
As for numbers overall I tend to average around 12-13 Copper Pennies per role so that's conservatively speaking 25%. Lately however I have been averaging about 16, finding many rolls with 22 Copper Coins. I believe my last box yielded about 3.8 lbs. of Copper coins.
Keep in mind these sorters can be made to sort silver and copper coins.
We'll be doing some follow up articles on how to build a coin sorting machine, more info on collecting silver and copper coins as well as some info on prices and how to buy and or sell coins.
If your interested in this subject matter I'd also recommend you check out the website RealCent. Good luck hunting!!!
I am looking for a cheap silver coin sorter, Can you still find Silver coins if you get bank boxes? ardorlan@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteAs for a cheap coin sorter just look around on the net for a "Coin Comparator." You'll find it at websites that sell vending/slot machine parts and supplies. You can find them as cheap as $15.95 new those these are generally the cheaper chinese ones.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a guy on EBay who sells a product called the Coinalyzer which is a basic coin comparator but not on any setup or platform. He does have it connected to a power source so you don't have to solder on a makeshift one with an old cell phone charger or anything like that.
As for silver vs copper sorting. Make sure you check or ask before buying but most will sort pretty much any coin. They take a sample coin to compare the others to so whatever the sample coin you put into the machine be it dime, quarter, or half it will reject the coins which aren't like it because of metal content or weight.
As for finding silvers, it's really hit of mass, really spotty. Sometimes you find a ton of them in just a pickup of a few hundred bucks. Othertimes you could drop two grand on halfs and not find a single silver.
I've read that 99% of the silver in coins is already pulled out of circulation by people. I'll occasionally find a silver quarter or a silver mercury dime in pocket change but buying rolls you really have to buy volume to get a decent number of coins, especially with halves.
I would recommend sorting rolls or boxes of dimes. I havn't done an experiment to run the numbers on this but I imagine there are probably more dimes than quarters and halves. I think more people sort halves and quarters but even when you consider looking at pocket change the rim on dimes is a lot smaller and you just tend to not notice the silvers quite as easily as with the larger coins.
Also, if your interested in sorting higher volumes look into a Ryedale, I believe they could also sort silver if you change the coin, double check on that though.
Ryedale says nothing on their site about sorting silver. Have you actually tried sorting silver?
ReplyDeleteI don't believe I said Ryedales sort silver. For the price people shell out for these things they should. My machine I made does however sort silver. The coin comparator I used has a slot where a coin is placed for compairson. I can put in a copper coin if I want to sort coppers or a silver coin if I want to sort silvers.
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