hoarding quarters dimes and half dollars for their silver content?

Question

Is this a good idea? How much silver is in our coins anyway? I wish to melt them down.

Answer 1

Contrary to the answers you've received thus far, modern US coins contain ABSOLUTELY NO SILVER whatsoever. None. Zero. Nada. However, pennies and nickels contain more copper than their face value, so hoarding those makes some financial sense. Sadly, you'd need a lot of those coins to make it worthwhile, and in January 2007 the US mint made it illegal to melt down pennies and nickels, apparently to prevent Americans from capitalizing on this little predicament. Perhaps the US mint should stop devaluing our currency so these things wouldn't happen.

Answer 2

The last date of 90% silver dimes, quarters & halves for circulation is 1964, and 1970 for the 40% silver halves. So I guess you'll need to pay the coin dealer a visit or exchange for rolls of coins hoping to find silvers if you plan to hoard them for melting. Either way, you'll end up losing money and wasting time.

Answer 3

Today's coins have very little silver. The pre-1964 coins had some silver and do have some hoarding value. The govt just past some rules regarding the exportation of pennies and nickels for their melt value as well as prohibiting their domestic smelting. You now cannot take out of the country something like more than $5 worth of the coins and cannot out sent out by mail more than $100 worth. Its not for the silver but the other metals. A penny is actually worth about 1.7 cents. Its is mostly Zinc. The copper is just an outer coating or a cladding. A nickel is worth just over 7 cents in nickel. The govt's restriction will create some hoarding of these coins contrary to their intent with this law. This is the same thing that happened in 64. Whenever the govt tries to do something it generally results in the opposite reaction taking effect. Is it worth it. Probably not. Concentrate your efforts on more worthwhile pursuits. If you believe Silver is going to up in value then gather it up in real silver coinage like eagles or Aussie kukaberras. When you go to sell the metal it will need to be assayed to determine its real silver content and you could lose out on the fees. Coins avoid that. Although trading silver is taxable as a collectable which comes in at a higher bracket versus a capital gain as what you could get with gold. If you can afford it go for the gold. Its rising and going higher. Plus it is Real money and has value worldwide. In the past, now and in the future.

Answer 4

Not worth it at all.

Long ago the government stop using large amounts of valuable metals in their production of money for the very reason that people would hoard them and not circulate them. So the government purposely only puts minuet amounts of valuable metal in each coin so they are more valuable being spent than hoarded.

I don't think there is much silver in even silver dollars, and I don't there is any silver in other coins. Even pennies have very little copper because copper is somewhat valuable.

Much smarter to put that money in a bank, buy internet stock, or buy lotto tickets or something.

Answer 5

Most of these coins contain very little silver in them anymore. In order for your plan to succeed, you would have to find the coins that had silver in them. I believe they are the ones pre-dating 1963. Those would have some silver in them; however, it still would not be much.

One word of caution is that you may want to check on laws as to whether you can melt these down. It recently became illegal to melt down pennies because the price of the copper and zinc was worth more than a penny. It is now a federal offense to melt them down or transport more than a certain amount of them out of the country. I believe I heard talk of something similar happening with the nickel.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Answer 6

You will be able to sell your silver regardless of the silver price usually the more you sell the closer to spot price you will get you should be able to get 5%-8% less than spot price without a problem at a reputable dealer. Ebay is going to be 9% plus paypal fees so its going to cost you more, if you have some key date coins ebay might bring you more money but junk silver wont matter.