Trying to Make a List of How to Get Cheap Silver

For the past few days i've been trying to brainstorm a list of all the ways to get free/cheap silver. Have come up with quite a few so far;

Coin Roll Hunting
Metal Detecting
Coinstar rejects
Checking change
Bank teller trays
Garage Sales
Antique shops
And buying bulk, selling small lots, and keeping extras as "profit"


Anyone have anything else to add?

 

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How about your dentist? Most don't know this but when your dentist fills your teeth and drills out an old gold or silver filling there a trap that catches the old medal as he suction out your mouth.
Most have a company whom comes to the dental office a few times a year to clean out the trap ,and buy the medal.
One must be able to refine the medal ,or have an company do it for you. Plus there is a mercury factor as old dental fillings contain mercury !
A busy office could contain over a pound of medal in the trap.
But will admit pretty gross !!! But is reclaimed silver, and has been done for decades !

 

How about garbage picking TV and electronics ..

 

You can use reverse electroplating, but at present I don't think it's economically viable for silver.

 

I'm no dentist, but I'm pretty sure this would be a non-starter, for the following reasons:

1) I expect the contracts with the reclamation folks are exclusive.
2) As I understand it, the dental practice gets some money back from the deal, so you'd be cutting into their bottom line.
3) There are biological safety issues, since this is stuff removed from a human mouth.
4) There are environmental safety issues, since, as you say, there's mercury present.

Of course, it probably doesn't hurt to ask...

 

I like to buy at around 12x face, if I can lately. It's hard to find, but it sure beats paying $15 for a silver half dollar at retail!

 

I don't know if it's a good tip in general, or if I just got lucky, but I scored a small 18k gold ring for $5 a few weeks ago at a lost and found sale.

 

Rob "We buy Gold" locations, coin dealers etc.

 

Stake a claim, buy a pick and shovel and start digging.

 

Don't do that. They hate people cutting into their line of work.

 

Post an ad in the local paper. Pretty much everyone has some old coins that they want to sell.

 

That worked before the internet age. Now posting an ad is just inviting douchebags pushing fakes.

 

Like any other business Dentist are in business to make money! If your offer is better than the other oh well.

 

Not a bad idea. Too bad it wouldn't work for me. As both a clean freak and someone with a phobia of dentist it would take bottles of k-pins for me to even go in there and think about asking for used dental silver. Lol

 

I've thought about that before, especially since my dad used to run a store that both repaired and disposed of people's used computers. When i asked if i could try it at one point however, the older man who had been working there for many years before my father told me he had also tried to do that when he started taking in disposal computers. He told me it was dangerous because of the chemicals he was dealing with and didn't bring him any profit though.

 

This is what i've been doing as well. It's getting harder and harder each month to source them out at those prices though.

 

I've found a few gold bracelets for under $10 at garage sales over the past few years as well. What's a lost and found sale though? That sounds pretty cool.

 

Out here there are lots of old silver and gold mines. I work at Eisenhower Tunnel, and I bet there is a lot of gold and silver in the rock the tunnel was bored through.. too bad it's setting under I-70!

 

By rob, do you mean stand out front and offer the people walking in a bit more money than they'd get inside or do you mean to pull a stickup on the store owner? Both seem pretty profitable. Maybe i'll actually try the first one some time, a really good idea actually. Don't think i'm very cut out for the stickup though.

 

You should try metal detecting around there then, there are quite a few that can find gold nuggets. Might get lucky.