There Could Be Treasure In Your Change!

Change

Ever since I have been a precious metals guy, I check my change. Yup that’s right. There could be precious metals in your change. Silver to be exact. The other day after I bought a coffee, I quickly looked over my change and found a silver dime! Score! It was a 1963 Canadian dime and at current silver spot prices its worth 1.01 usd. So basically 11 times what its face value is.

Now you may be thinking that our change is made out of Copper and nickel and not precious metals. Now a days that is the case. In the U.S. silver coins were removed from circulation in 1965. Although the half dollar was 40% silver until 1970. Canada kept their silver coins until 1967 and in 1968 they lowered the silver content to 50%.

Junk Silver

So the dimes, quarters, half dollars and dollar coins are the ones you should be quickly skimming for a date under 1968. These coins could be worth 65 cents to 10 dollars each in silver value alone. Coinflation is a great site to find out the spot value of “Junk Silver”

So you may be wondering why we had coins in precious metals in the first place. Well Gold, silver and bronze or copper were the coinage metals of the ancient world, and most medieval coins. Our money used to actually be worth something. Now its basically all on consumer confidence that someone will exchange that dime for 10 cents in value. Another problem was that precious metals were soaring in value and like today those coins were becoming worth more in silver scrap value then the face value on the coin.

Quick Fact – The reeded edge on coins was actually created in 1792. People would file the edges on their gold and silver coins and profit. So the government introduced reeded edges to avoid this problem.

Bullion

Today if you want physical silver or gold, you need to purchase bullion coins or bars. I think this is another great investment to diversify your portfolio, although it has no return on investment. I like to think of it as a insurance plan. =) When the stock market crashes or in general the financial situation worldwide doesn’t look good. Precious Metals tend to do really well as people move into that as a store of wealth.

There is no question, it is getting harder and harder to find junk silver in your change. Governments are removing them from circulation and people are keeping them for scrap value. I remember being a kid and always having the Mackeral dimes. I wish I would of been told to save those silver coins back then. I’m sure I just wasted them on penny candies!

Conclusion

Well I hope you learned something from this post and start quickly looking over your change. It sure does feel good finding a little piece of silver in my change. I put it in a baggie with the rest of them and smile! Have a fantastic weekend and good luck treasure hunting!

Did you know about junk silver? Do you keep any bullion for diversification?

Cheers!

Rob

Hey I’m Rob, creator of Passive Canadian Income.

In 2011 me and my wife had almost $60,000 in debt and a negative $7,000 Net Worth. Through hard work and financial education we paid all that off. Now we are focusing on increasing our Passive Income Streams to make the money work for us. Feel Free to Follow along the Journey by clicking the Social Media links below or subscribing to get notified of new posts on the sidebar.