It's fun to find even non-collectible coins if the price is below face value. Today's 25 and 10 cent bin haul: Top left: Modern 500 yen (Heisei 12 = 2000) worth $4.50 to spend . Top right: 10 sen Showa 18 = 1943, but in nicer condition than most Lower left: Korean 5 fun, country founding year 505 = 1896 Lower right: 2 sen Meiji 15 = 1882 It seems any Asian minted coin that's not made of silver has a good chance of winding up in the junk bin.
I have found UK 50p and pound coins, Canadian $1 and $2 coins and German 5 marks in junk bins. All still legal tender, and can be spent on vacation.
Nice coins! Those are pretty impressive for junk bin finds. I grabbed these for 20 cents a piece the other day: I love finding stuff like this in the 20 cent bin, especially since I don't even need to sell them for face value to make a decent profit.
You can find great deals on Asian and Middle Eastern coins in junk bins if you know what you're doing because many dealers don't know what they are and don't care enough to find out. I've told this story before but I found a gold Turkish 50 kurush in a junk bin because the dealer probably figured it was a token or something.
Nice older stuff there. I'll admit I'm one of those mostly-clueless people who often can't be bothered to take the time to "stare at the squigglies" and scratch my head over dating these with online charts, but I do at least recognize the 19th century types and would've probably scooped those up if I had seen them in a junkbox.
Good luck with the 5 DM piece. Since they are still redeemable, a few places may accept them. But unless you happen to run into one that does, you would have to go to a Bundesbank branch office which for individual customers are closed in the afternoon and on weekends ... With the British coins, it depends. The large 50p piece and the round £1 have been demonetized but you may still find stores or banks that take them. Pieces that are currently in use may still end up in junk bins of course, simply because (except for Canadian coins in the northern US maybe) it is a hassle to turn them into, hmm, usable money. Now for a collector that is a different story of course! Christian
