Every stacker loves the idea of free silver. But free silver is hard to find, because most people with silver will not even sell it below the current spot price, let alone give it away for free. However, there are a few ways a resourceful stacker can acquire some ounces for free, or at least for a significant discount to the current spot price. The following are three techniques I have tried to get free silver. I'll tell you how well they worked for me.
Metal Detecting
You don't have to be a retired senior citizen to comb your local beach or park with a metal detector. Your success in finding silver (or gold, platinum etc) items will depend on your location, the quality of your equipment, your perseverance, and some luck. Probably the most important factor is going to be where you are hunting for metals. If there aren't any metals in the ground, you won't have much luck.
Some locations, however, do have silver to find. Try to research the history of a location, if people were frequenting the location before 1964, some of them may well have dropped some pocket change, and the dimes and quarters will be 90% silver. Busy tourist areas on beaches may also be good spots to scan for lost jewelry.
I live near a lightly trafficed tourist beach, and I've gone metal detecting there many times, but I have never once found precious metals. I have found a lot of interesting junk, quite a bit of pocket change, and I've cleaned up a lot of beach trash. While metal detecting is a fun outdoor activity, I cannot make the claim that it is a particularly good way to find silver.
Coin Roll Hunting
Search through enough coin rolls and you will find some genuine 90% silver mixed in with the modern clad coins. You can pick up boxes of dimes, quarters, or half dollars at your local bank branch. Open them up, and begin checking the edge of each coin to see if it is clad, or 90% silver. Once you're done, you can roll the coins back up and deposit them at the bank, or take them to a coin counting machine.
I've had some moderate success with coin roll hunting. In my experience the most silver will be found in boxes of half dollars. In one box I once found several 40% JFK half dollars. Searching through all of the coins can be time consuming, and silver coins are quite scarce. If you enjoy the process of coin roll hunting and have some time to devote to it, it's a great way to snag a few extra ounces for just the face value of the coins.
I personally prefer hunting through rolls of pennies (which almost always have a good amount of pre 1982 low premium copper bullion), but thats a topic for another post.
Garage Sales And Estate Sales
This is where I have had the most success finding low cost silver. Check craigslist and estatesales.net for sales near you. Sometimes listings will mention coins or silverware etc, but if they don't thats ok. The key is to visit as many sales as possible as quickly as possible. It also helps if you have a few other things you can look for at the sales to resell profitably.
For example, I used to resell books on amazon. I found a lot more books at estate sales than silver, but I always made sure to ask about coins, silverware and jewelry when speaking with the sellers. Many times the people putting on the sale said "hold on a minute", and came back with some old coins, jewelry, or silverware they'd been hording for a while. Usually some hand-me-down from a distant relative, or some old "junk" they'd acquired through happenstance. By playing it cool, buying a few other items, and making a casual offer for whatever type of silver they had, I've successfully purchased silver significantly below spot price on several occasions.
When scanning through garage sales and estate sales, you need to pay attention and sort through everything. I was once at the estate sale of a retired engineer & inventor. I picked out a few pieces of laboratory equipment to resell on ebay, and then began sorting through some old boxes of transitors, switches, and random electrical components. At the bottom of one box I saw a sealed cardboard container labeled "AG". After a small amount of haggling, the seller accepted $10 for the boxes of old electrical components. Once I got the boxes home, I ripped open the box labeled "AG", and sure enough there were a number of oddly shaped silver bars inside. I had them tested using a local coin shops spectrometer, and they were pure 0.999 silver. I'm not sure what the application of the small bars was, but they were made of 6 oz of pure silver.
Conclusion
There aint no such thing as a free lunch. Finding free silver takes significant investments of time and effort. For the smart stacker with some time on his hands however, some of these techniques can be an enjoyable way to spend time, and add a few low cost ounces to your stack.
If you're serious about investing in silver, the free ounces you find aren't going to be enough to build your whole stack. If you want to see the best deals out there from reliable bullion dealers like APMEX, JM Bullion, Bay Precious Metals & more, follow me on twitter @stacksmarter or look for hashtag #stackeralert , I'll be posting whenever I see great sales or special pricing.
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