Recovering money from scrapped vehicles

Passing along an interesting website about processing coins from scrapped vehicles. Apparently each vehicle scrapped has $1.65 on average kicking around from their book photo.

The website is photo heavy with details on adding polishing stones to clean up coins, sorting by damage, etc. Looks like the place is in Hong Kong.

http://www.globalmetalsandcoinrecovery.com/exchange-scrap---damaged-coins.html

 

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No idea what the website is for really. They seem to have their business model nailed down, just not sure why they need a website for it.

 

During my artsy-fartsy days (1970's) I had a deal with the owner of a large wrecked car lot. He would let me go through the cars removing pop bottles. These could be
returned to local stores for 10¢ each. An afternoon hunt and cashing in could pay for a hamburger & fries.
Beside some spare change usually found under back seat I found a roll of 1960
Canadian quarters. If remembered correctly they were BU. I know I found this roll but cannot recall what I did with them.
DOAH!!!!,
J.T.

 

Growing up as an Italian family in the 60's and 70's, it had been an old tradition to throw coins into a cars back seat when someone we knew got a new car. I continued this with my kids as they began driving in the 90's. I'm guessing soon, kids won't even know what coins are, never mind why we did this tradition.

Finding coins under the back seats of cars may be coming to an end

 

I had a friend who used to work at a wrecking yard. One time my car club went to a wrecking yard that was going out of business and he was explaining how if you look hard enough you could find drugs under the seat...usually the kind that you use a rolling machine for. He then proceeded to search the cars in the wrecking yard until he found some.

 

About 5 years ago, a couple of Chinese firms were making millions of dollars a year off the Mint by sending back damaged US coins from scraped cars. At one point they were getting about $900.00 in loose change from each car. They also reclaimed more clad half dollars than were ever minted. Someone the the Mint finally figured out they were sending us counterfeit damaged coins.

 

I'm still amazed this scam went on so long. The coins in cars reflect the coins in circulation except there are higher chances for smaller coins and smaller denominations. Half dollars in scrap car should be rare and they were sending back shipping containers full of them.

In this country you'd have to fin a $100 bill in every car to pay for the workers to look for coins and then clean them. Almost all of these coins from the 10,000,000 cars per year being scrapped end up melted in the steel. While this number of scrapped coins may seem staggering it is nothing compared to the number that end up in the garbage stream or lost on the ground. Fires and floods consume the most US coins. Many more coins are intentionally destroyed by being tossed somewhere or used as supplies. Pennies for instance are much cheaper than washers even though they cost the government about 3c each to make.

If you don't believe the extent of this destruction just try to find something like a 1971 quarter in pocket change. If that's too easy for you try finding one in VF condition that doesn't look like it's been through the Battle of the Marne.

 

I would bet that the coins in that Chinese fake damaged coin scam were not made of pure copper and pure nickel, and that when the returned coins were melted down and remade as new U.S. coins the new coins contained all sorts of interesting trace elements more commonly found in "pot metal."

 

I thought the mint obtained planchets or planchet strips/rolls from outside vendors for cents and clad coins. And I think worn or defective cents and clads are sent to outside recyclers, perhaps after being defaced. Not sure mint refines any metal but gold, and maybe not much of that. I know at least some silver planchets are bought from outside vendors, perhaps gold too.

Cal

 

When I was living in Uruguay (many, many, moons ago), when a family member or a good friend would die, family and friends would drop coins in their casket so that they would have enough money to pay the guard at the "Golden Gate". Sadly, many of these caskets would be dug up and the coins stolen.

 

Yup, we're slow learners on some things. Valuables have been put in graves for millennia. Then robbers later open the graves and take the goodies. Sometimes it's archeologists who open the graves and take the goodies. The viewpoint of those who did the burial would be that archeologists are also robbers. That was then. Personally I support archeology including with donations.

Cal

 

I freely admit that I remove every scrap of metal I find while metal detecting. I’m talking even the metal bands that attach erasers to pencils. At home I sort all of this into barrels keeping the aluminum together, iron, copper, brass, etc. Once a year I haul it to the recycling center. It’s generally a trailer load as it can really add up. I average $90_$95 a year. Pays for batteries and gas.

 

That was how they detected the fraud. The redeemed coins had a high silica content and other trace metals which aren't found in US coins.

They do. Cent planchets are received from Jardan Zinc ready for striking, nickel and clad strip comes in from an outside supplier, I don't know the name, and the blanking and upsetting is done at the Mint.

The strip for the dollar coins is supplied by Olin Brass and once again the mint does the blanking and upsetting.

Ready made planchets for the gold and silver coins are fabricated by outside firms from metal provided by the Mint.

Defective coins are waffled. Those coins and the chopped waste webbing from the strip after blanking is sold as scrap by the GSA and is typically repurchased by the strip suppliers and recycled into new strip.

 

I used to frequent a car wrecking lot for parts for whatever clunker I owned at the time. I found all sorts of stuff in the cars. Sometimes, after finding my part I was looking for, I would cruse the lot just checking them out.

 

Thanks for all the info. I know some silver planchets have been supplied by the Perth mint. And I would guess the silver for them originated there and was refined to US mint specs.

Cal

 

At one time, maybe even now, there was/is a company in Greenville, Tn.
that supplied cent blanks to the mint.

 

It would be logical if mutilated clad coins returned to the Mint via the banking industry were sold to the manufacturers of the clad strip to be recycled as new copper-nickel cladding, with the addition of extra nickel to bring it up to 25% nickel. I am just wondering how much of the fake clad coinage got recycled this way before the Mint wised up.

 

I'm not sure I'm getting my allotted average of coins from cars.
Usually when I buy a used private party car it has some change and spare parts when I do the general.clean up.
The change goes into the general change jar till full.
What do I do with all these gaming and chuckEcheese tokens though?

 

i have gotten alot of coins out of old cars and old furniture. as we did and still doing it now cleaning up properties that have been abandon for lots of years be surprise what you find in old junk cars