Turning Dollars Into Nickels

Unfortunately, I have this knack of turning dollars into nickels at our little local casino. Nothing big, mind you, just a little entertainment in an area that doesn't have much else to offer. Limiting my entertainment dollar at the casino lets me spend money on the meaningful stuff such as food fuel, silver, etc.

 More often than not, the slot machines turn nasty so I cash out, visit the redemption machine for whatever dollars and coins (mostly nickels and pennies) are left, stick them in my back pocket and take them out when I get home.

On a recent trip, my little pile of nickels presented me with a nice surprise. A 1917 S Indian Head (Buffalo) Nickel in decent shape. Now if you know a little about U.S. nickels, you know there were very few years that nickels were minted with any amount of silver in them and 1917 wasn't one of them (see my article on US Silver Coins). So this nickel is probably worth about five cents, right? Not so fast. Here are the stats on this nickel...

The San Francisco mint produced 4,193,000 Indian Head nickels in 1917, less

than half of the Denver mint's production of 9,910,000 and less than 10 percent of the 51,424,019 produced by the Philadelphia mint. After consulting the latest Coin Dealer Monthly Supplement Newsletter (Greysheet.com), I found out this coin has a bid/ask price of $15.50/$17.00 if graded as just "Good". But I think this coin would grade higher than that. A "Very Good" (VG) grade coin would be worth $30.00/$33.00 and a "Fine" grade would be worth $60.00/$66.00.

The only other Indian Head nickels I have are in this mint set pictured at left. The set contains a 1930 S (mintage 5,435,000), a 1936 D (mintage 24,814,000) and a 1935 Philadelphia (mintage 58,264,000, no mint mark) and would all probably be graded "Good" as they show a good amount of wear. In that grade, the 1930 S is worth $1.00/$1.10 bid/ask, the 1936 D $.065/$0.75 and the 1935 Philly nickel $0.75/$0.85. Only in the higher circulated and Mint State grades would these coins be worth much more.

So the lessons I was reminded of from this little experience are: 1) you never know where you might come across an old coin worth more than its face value so keep your eyes open to that possibility; and 2) when you find an old coin, you can't just assume the coin has little or no value over its face value so refer to reputable resources that will let you know a coin's value.

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After enjoying a record year in which 44,006,000 were sold in 2014, the American Silver Eagle is off to a strong start with 5,127,500 being sold so far in 2015. Typically January is a strong sales month for ASEs as a crowd that grows larger every year wants to get their hands on the 2015 coins. Have you got yours yet?

Thanks for reading and keep the faith.

Looking For Cheap Silver At Coin Shows

Before getting to the main topic of this post, a free promo for my newly revised A Guide to Buying and Selling Peace and Morgan Silver Dollars has been scheduled for November 7 and 8, 2013. If you have a Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows PC or Windows 8 tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone and the free Kindle reading app for your device, you can download this eBook for $0.00 on these two days only. It is written for the casual investor of Peace and Morgan dollars as well as those persons who already may own some of these coins and don't have a clue as to their worth. I hope you are able to take advantage of this free 2-day promotion.

One of the things I like to do when attending coin shows is to look for the one-off silver coins and bargain with the dealer for a good price. As you might guess, these are coins that are not well known which means the demand is low to non-existant and the dealer is willing to bargain so s/he can concentrate on the popular, higher-demand coins. One such coin I found recently is a 1993 20 Crowns silver coin from the Turks and Caicos Islands commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The obverse features the image of Queen Elizabeth II and the reverse has the image of an astronaut (Neil Armstrong) stepping on the moon from the Lunar Module. This is one of the more attractive silver coins I have seen and I could get it at the current spot silver price with no premium.

So far, so good. I found an attractive silver coin for a good price. But there is a potential problem with this coin without doing some homework. And that problem is that nowhere on this coin are markings to indicate the silver purity or troy weight. Without seeing a .999 (or .9999) purity marking plus some kind of weight designation, I could only assume it is a full one-ounce pure silver commemorative coin. So I asked the dealer to "prove" it was what I assumed it to be. And he was able to by showing me the coin details in a huge reference book he had on hand. So I bought the coin.

At the next coin show you attend, keep your eyes open for deals like this. The dealer I bought this from is a one-man show whom I know and trust. But I still wanted the assurance of knowing the coin was as I expected. If a small dealer like this can have the resources to identifying a wide range of coins, whoever you deal with should be able to also. If not, go elsewhere. Once I got home, I took out my handy Neva Pocket Scale and weighed it just to be sure. It weighed 480 grains (gr.) and 31.1 grams (g.) which is what I expected to see. On a more precise scale I would have seen 31.1034 grams. As you probably know, One troy ounce=480 grains=31.1034 grams=1.097 avoirdupois ounce.

The October sales of Silver American Eagles stands at 3,087,000. For the year so far the total is 39,175,000. Don't look for the premiums of these popular bullion coins to go down anytime soon. The US Mint has notified its Primary Dealers that all sales of Silver Eagles will be suspended for 4 weeks beginning the second week in December. Guess what that will do to the premiums. I hope you have yours.

Happy investing.

Silver Eagles Off to a Strong Start in 2013

At the time of this post in mid-January 2013, sales of Silver American Eagles stand at 5,132,000 with lots of month to go. This is on course to mimic 2011 and 2012 in which January was the most productive month for Silver Eagles at 6,422,000 and 6,107,000.

The mint ran out of 2012 Silver Eagles in mid-December so buyers had to wait until January 7, 2013 to get their hands on additional coins, those bearing the 2013 date. So that 5,132,000 was achieved in less than half a month.

Dealers are reporting great demand in not only silver Eagles but silver Maple Leafs, 10 and 100 ounce silver  bars and 90 percent silver coins. If you are running into a shortage of silver pieces to buy, you might have better luck shopping for silver rounds and one-ounce silver bars. Anything with a Engelhard or Johnson Matthey stamp or hallmark is a plus.

Other options are lesser known government issued silver coins such as the one-ounce silver Mexican Libertad. Upon first seeing this silver coin, I thought the obverse was the reverse and vice versa.  It is the reverse that features The Angel of Independence (a reproduction of the one that stands atop a victory column commemorating Mexico’s War of Independence) with two volcanoes (Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl) in the background. The obverse displays the current coat of arms of Mexico surrounded by the historical Mexican coats of arms.


 The Mexican Libertad comes in both gold and silver in various sizes beginning at 1/20 of an ounce but I like the one-ounce silver coin as it has the heft and feel of a "real" coin, not the clad coins we usually have to deal with day in and day out.

In my last post I mentioned my first eBook on Amazon titled "The Last U.S. 90 Percent Silver Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide" which can be found at Last 90 Percent coins

I have just published the next in the U.S. Silver Coin Series titled "Tips on Buying and Selling Peace and Morgan Silver Dollars". In this eBook I expand on the Peace and Morgan dollars to include more grading information, where wear marks first appear and even a bit on cleaning these coins (with warnings about doing so). Priced at just $.99 you can find out more at Buy/Sell Peace and Morgan Dollars

Thanks for reading.