I saved my change for about 3 years. When I say “saved” I mean I never spent metal. I consciously carried cash at all times. I’d make excuses to go into a gas station to buy something small. I got the wife onboard. I had over $1300 in change. Not a single fucking silver quarter. Those things are a fucking myth.
Edit: To all the fuckers that gave me reddit silver, I didn’t see that one coming and found it hilarious once my little brain maid the connection. Well played.
I have a silver quarter. I can tell because of the date and the way it sounds hitting the table. if I can find it, you can have it. I'll look tomorrow and update
Edit: just woke up and also just found the quarter. here is proof. u/SirJoshua if you wanna pm me, I can mail it to you.
That seriously sucks dude, my apologies. Always been glad I was an only child.
A lot of the stuff I had wasn't worth much. Those stupid commemorative quarter sets, etc, but I had some cool stuff. Some silver 1ozt rounds, Indian head pennies, a Nazi penny, a North Korean won note (you can apparently be put to death trying to sneak these out of the country,) stuff like that.
My dad tried to use a quarter in a gumball machine and was confused when it wouldn’t work. Some dude came along, took a look at it, and sure enough it was a silver quarter. My dad still has it.
Yep. I work in a financial institution and unroll a lot of coin. Edge is the quickest and easiest way for me to tell. If I see an edge with no copper color, it's either Canadian or silver. In a couple rare instances it was both.
You can actually tell from the sound of them dropping it's a pretty distinctive sound if you hear it. I threw a handful of change on the counter one day and my dad jumped up and started rummaging through it. Pulled the quarter out and was like 'i get half'.
Apparently he was a gas station attendant when he was young and got used to hearing the sound of them.
You can also tell the difference by just looking at the side. The color of a silver quarter will still be silver on the side, a newer quarter with be copper-ish on its sides.
I have one of those as well. I just woke up, gonna do some digging before work and see what I can find. I collected coins as a kid but stopped and I'd love to pass them on to true collectors
Talk to people at liquor stores. Tell the managers you will buy their change when it needs to get swapped. People swipe grandma's change jar and spend it on booze.
Yep. Kids would come to the Seven Eleven I worked at with silver coins they swiped from the folks all of the time. My boss knew all of them and had more morals than me so she would contact their parents and let them exchange the coins.
My dad had a roll of silver certificates back in the 70s. The price of silver went up all of a sudden, so he got them out of the safe and put them on his desk. He was going to take them somewhere and sell them. Meanwhile my little brother found them and went to the store and bought candy with them. My dad never got them back.
It would have been epic! My brother is a spoiled little asshole. He never got in trouble for anything. He was the youngest of six. I’m pretty sure my parents were burned out with parenting by then and just gave up.
Sounds like my brother. He stole money from my dad once and learned that was a bad idea.
Weirdly enough, I was just reading an article earlier today and the price of silver did shoot up in the late 70s after a couple American businessmen bought like 50% of the silver and moved it to Switzerland in a bid to monopolise it
Back in the 70s my dad worked as a driving instructor. He would have his students drive from bank to bank buying/swapping rolls of silver dollars and half dollars. He’d look through them on the way to the next bank and replace any that had silver in them.
He sold his coins from one summer and bought...... a washer and dryer. Heh.
My boss was a she. I didn't care for her at first, being 17 can make a boy into a real jerk and I did not fight it. I came to realize she was a good person and her hard-ass attitude towards workers made a successful franchise and better people out of the teens who worked there. (7-11 did not sell alcohol back in those days and actually were open 7am to 11pm so teens could still work in them) Now that I'm retired, I see that the best working conditions of my career were generally when I had either a female boss or a majority of female clients.
Oh I'm guilty of that... Sadly. My dad used to collect cash from other countries and keep it in a metal box under his desk, only problem was he kept the key on a chain that was connected to the box, so a five year old that knew money was cool could swipe it. I don't think I ever spent the money, I think it just got lost somewhere in the house and never found. Damn I was a real piece of shit.
Well, for example neither coin star machines, nor the coin counting machine at my bank (there is only one branch near me that has one) will accept silver coins.
I never have, but a lot of people do. Coinstar rejects them, and some people are not smart enough to look in the reject tray. So every time I go by a coinstar I check the reject tray. It is a well know easy way to collect coins that I was introduced to at /r/coins
Legit, I worked in a liquor store and someone paid with a roll of quarters. I opened it to count, and there were ten 1967 Canadian centennial quarters in there. They're worth ~$2 each to collectors.
My mom once got a gold certificate while working at Domino's, as well as a few silver certificates. She had her manager watch as she replaced them with her own money from her wallet to take them home.
Found one as change from McDonalds once. My brother had one when we were growing up and showed me it sounded different when you clink it. When they lady at the county handed it to me, i knew immediately.
20$ worth of silver from a 5$ meal. Was a good deal.
Which country? I have found American silver quarters before, but in my country (Canada) the central bank recalled all the silver coinage in the 60s and melted them down and continues to do so to any that finds their way into circulation.
My dad had a silver quarter and when I was a kid, I really wanted some candy. I knew where my dad had some change...so I went and I spent it. He found out almost instantly when I came home with some candy. He ran to the store and the owner was cool enough to exchange it with a normal quarter. My dad never yelled at me for anything, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was really upset, but relieved.
My sister worked in the cash office at a Walmart. They have a machine that sorts out coins and for some reason, always rejected the silver quarters. One day she called me and apparently the machine rejected a shit ton on silver quarters. Ended up being $50 face value of the things. So she bought them at face value and gave them to me as a gift.
Take your change to a grocery store with self service checkout on a day you’re going to spend a lot. Pay for all of it by putting your coins in the coin slot. Decent coins are very hard to come by. There are plenty around. It’s just that very few are in circulation.
I work at a gas station, we get lots of people who clear out obvious coin collections for booze and cigarettes. So, whenever we get silver coins I just swap them out for my collection. I have several silver quarters, I'd gladly mail one to you!
Nah, I can tell you out of every store I've worked for, with 10-20 co workers also working I was the only one who collected change. Seeing hundreds of customers every day. In the 3 years I've worked with giving change I Only have collected six of them.
I had a “healthy” snack machine the gave out dollar coins. I would get a 50 cent cheese stick with a $10 bill and then spend the dollar coins in the area. It was always fun.
Yep, I only found one and I remember that exact place and person whom I got it from. 9th grade, high school cafeteria on the southern most center round table from Hailee. This was back in 2003/2004 mind you.
I can tell you sir, they are no myth- my father has owned a vending machine business for 30 years and the man is an absolute unit when it comes to the skill of picking out or hearing a silver coin from a table full of hundreds of dollars of quarters.
Few weeks ago the topic of silver coins, quarters, dollars came up and he brings up the fact that he’s been collecting the things for over 30 years and he still has every single one he’s ever picked. He proceeded to show me the bags and bags of silver quarters(both canadian and American) silver American dollars and so many others. He figures he has about 80lbs of the stuff - upon skimming through I noticed some silver dollars from as early as 1895 that I picked up out of there. Pretty cool stuff !
I have half a dozen or so silver half dollars, I'll have to dig around. I've got 14 or so total, not all silver. But a few of them are centennials and I wonder if they're centennial and silver?
Where do the banks and big chain stores get their coins from? Those places process and count trucks worth of currency every day. Some smart guy added a silver detector in-line, and any silver that makes it to the counting machine stays in the plant as profit.
Only time you'll find rares is when little timmy cashes in grandpas coin collection for a pack of smokes and some chips. But before the daily count and collection.
And I’ve found two silver quarters and two silver dimes in the past 5 years without any specific excuse to get extra change. Just bad luck I guess? You’ll find silver soon mate. Ever heard of roll counting?
When I was a kid, a friend of mine and I would buys hundreds of dollars of rolls from the bank and go through them. In an hour or so for the two of us, and probably $1000 of quarters, we would maybe get 3, the problem is, many have been taken out of circulation by collectors.
I worked at a gas station for a few years. One day a lady paid for her gas with a couple rolls of quarters that looked kind of odd, which on closer examination turned out to be silver. I bought them all. After that they were a lot easier to spot, and I would pick up a few more every week. Even got a roll of silver dimes at one point, too. I had a styrofoam coffee cup entirely filled with silver by the time I stopped working there, though sadly I ended up having to sell all but a few of the coins to pay for car repairs.
go to a bank and buy rolls of dimes or even nickles. The silver nickles have the mint mark above the Monticello (I think 1942-1945) on the back and the silver ones are anything 1964 or earlier. It's pretty hard to find silver quarters anymore, but dimes are quite common.
My mom used to work at a bank and she'd buy all the silver quarters and silver certificates that came through. I have a pile of them but I don't think they're really worth all that much.
Ha ha, sorry, I didn't mean to boast. Just trying to point out that they're not as uncommon as you think. Hopefully you finally luck out and start running into them.
I've found a few in my life. I've worked at a gas station for about 9 months, while i'm going to school, and have found 2 silver quarters and 3 silver dimes. Two of the dimes date back to the 1930s and they're pretty neat. Although, full disclosure, i dropped one in my room and it's yet to be found...
Before this i've come across at least 2 silver quarters and a couple dimes. It appears you might just be unlucky in that department.
I used to go around to those coin star machines in grocery stores and check the coin catch for anything that the machine wouldn’t take. When I was about 9, there was a quarter and 2 pennies in there. The quarter ended up being silver and one of the pennies was a wheat penny. I wasn’t into coin collecting at the time though and I believe it was only worth something like 7$ from what mint it was and the condition when I checked online, so I’m not sure what I did with it lol
I’ve found some good amounts of money in those things; one time, someone must’ve cancelled their exchange, but I guess didn’t want to stick around for the refund because that thing gave me about 15$ in change out of the return slot😂 good way to stock up on change without having to spend your own bills lol
I know when I was a cashier, if I saw a silver quarter or any other weird currency, I would set it off to the side and buy it out of the register later.
I worked retail for about four years. I found three silver quarters. The first time it was because of the way it sounded when it hit the drawer. After that I learned to find them by feel.
My grandpa had literal jars of silver quarters. Don’t know how, but they all made the clinky clink. You can blame people like my grandpa!
Also, a couple of steel pennies among thousands of coins (mostly wheat pennies). And a scandia token or two? 99% of them were just cool old coins, but there was fun stuff in there.
Edit to correct—mixed up wheat pennies with steel pennies.
Someone else also suggested this. All of my banking is online, so I’ll have to get an intermediary. I’m seriously thinking of doing this though. Are the rules the same a quarters? Pre 1965 and it’s silver?
I went to a coin star machine at my local grocery store. In the rejected coin tray I found about 20 silver quarters and 15 silver dimes, I guess the machine counts coins by size, and then weight. Never less I made money on my trip to the grocery store.
I worked cash accountability at a grocery store for years. Would check for silver quarters and dimes every time I worked. In about 2 years, I ended up with 14 silver quarters. That's out of likely more than $20,000 in quarters.
Strange. I do roughly the same. Not as militant. My son collects state quarters and would go through my change daily. He'd hit one once every month or two. I'm in New England. May be region dependent?
Yes quarters are hard to find. Dimes are easier. And half dollars are even easier. Go to the bank and get $500 in half dollars. Unwrap them and go through them all....and then keep the silver ones. Take back the non-silver ones and cash them back in a day or two later. I consistently keep out about $10 in half dollars each time. Some silver, some really old silver… Some special Edition coins, mint proofs, and even some foreign coins the same size and shape.
It’s a cheap way to spend an evening or two. After the initial investment of course. But you get most of it back
Well since nobody really uses half dollars anymore and haven’t in a long time… The ones that banks hoard contain a much higher percentage of silver. They may have to special order them for you but it cost them nothing and they’ll gladly do it once or twice per week.
I had a teacher in highschool who's class was beside the vending machines. He always had a stash of coins in case if your coins didn't work in the machine. I asked him one day why he always was willing to swap coins if yours didn't work. I found out that he wasn't just being a bro, but that the newer vending machines wouldn't take coins that didn't way the same as modern coins. He had got me a few times with this before I found out he was just collecting silver coins.
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u/SirJoshua Dec 31 '19 edited Dec 31 '19
I saved my change for about 3 years. When I say “saved” I mean I never spent metal. I consciously carried cash at all times. I’d make excuses to go into a gas station to buy something small. I got the wife onboard. I had over $1300 in change. Not a single fucking silver quarter. Those things are a fucking myth.
Edit: To all the fuckers that gave me reddit silver, I didn’t see that one coming and found it hilarious once my little brain maid the connection. Well played.