Effect of Fed Taper on Silver and Gold

FTIdeas threw out a great question on his YouTube Channel: What effect with the Fed's recent $10 billion taper have on gold and silver? I find the whole topic infinitely fascinating, so decided to dedicate a video to the topic. I did not want to bore everyone with a long, uninteresting economic answer, but I did point out how I am more inclined to focus on the long term effects of the monetary policy behind quantitative easing rather than the short-term, fly-by-night taper debates. I believe that long-term, the consequences have already been created by the creation of $2.5 trillion (yes, with a "T") in excessive reserves. For me, it isn't a matter of "if" those excess reserves will lead to price inflation and a resulting lift in the price of silver and gold, but "when."

However, as always, that is just my opinion and you would not be wise to take investment advice from a guy who collects copper pennies in his spare time. Visit the video above if you would like to hear a longer explanation of this topic from me, or start with the links below to see FTIdeas' original video or to begin or own investigation of the topic.

I finished two more nickel boxes today, so expect to see the results from those boxes in the very near future. How are all of your searches doing as we approach the end of the year?

Links:
FTIdeas' original video
Excess Reserves Totals from the Fed
Interesting Article on the Topic

Coin Roll Hunting Finds From Nickel Box #35

With the Canadian penny now eliminated, we have been focusing on coin roll hunting as many nickels boxes as we can. We are looking for any pre-1982 Canadian nickels, as well as older pre-1963 12-sided, King George VI and King George V nickels. Our 35th nickel box was a very interesting one that contained many varieties of the older coins we are looking for. Here are our results from this box:

$100 Nickel Box #35
-Pre-1982 99.9% nickel nickels: 157 (7.85%)
-Pre-1963 nickels: 11 (1927, 1929x2, 1937, 1945x3, 1961x2, 1962x2)

We found some great King George V nickels, including a 1927 and two 1929s. We have also added to our Canadian wartime nickels with three 1945 chrome-plated steel nickels. We do not get too many of these nickels, so anytime we find even one it is very exciting.

Since we are off for the holidays until January we are going to try to coin roll hunt as many nickel boxes as we can. As always, we will share the results with you all. Let us know how your coin roll hunting is going and we hope that you are having a great holiday! Best of luck in your future searches!

Adding to the Silver Stack: Silvertowne Purchase

One of the effects of the Canadian penny being terminated this past February is that it allowed us to move some of our money away from coin roll hunting pennies and towards adding to our silver stack. In a previous post I mentioned that in order to be successful, we needed to commit to a goal instead of making inconsistent silver purchases while waiting for unpredictable dips. As I discussed in that post, our goal is to purchase at least 1 ounce of silver every month.

In the commitment to this goal, our September silver purchase consisted of a 1 ounce bar from Silvertowne. This is the first time that I have made a purchase form Silvertowne, although I have been aware of them for a few years now. In fact, my brother and I almost made our first silver purchase from them back in May 2011. Silvertowne is a site that is very beneficial to our current goals. They offer free shipping on items that we are most interested in, such as generic silver bars and Canadian Maple Leafs. Free shipping is essential since our purchases are so small. If it wasn't for the free shipping, most of our money would be eaten up by the shipping costs, which would significantly decrease our potential silver stack. Although this particular purchase took a little over 3 weeks to get here, it is more than worth it in order to obtain our silver this efficiently.

Check out the video above in order to see this month's silver purchase. Also, let us know in the comment section if you have ever ordered from Silvertowne and how your silver stacking goals are proceeding.

Copper Penny Hoarding - Coin Roll Hunting Results #1

In a previous post, I mentioned that my brother and I were going to look back through our copper penny and 99.9% nickel coin roll hunting results and share them with you here on our blog. Not only did we think that it would be beneficial since it is always fun to see what people get from coin roll hunting through boxes of coins, but also from the standpoint of seeing how our results change over time. From a personal standpoint, I also like to see how our earlier videos turned out as it is the first time that I am seeing them in months.

The video above, you can see the results from two $25 penny boxes. If you are not familiar with coin roll hunting, it might be surprising to know that my brother and I went through 5,000 pennies trying to pick out specific coins. However, since the pre-1997 Canadian pennies have a metal value much higher than their 1 cent face value, we feel that this has the potential to make economic sense. A part from that, it is also a wonderful hobby that is exciting and allows for some excellent conversations to take place. Here are the results from these boxes:

$25 Penny Boxes #1 and #2:
- 2,148 copper pennies (42.96%)
- 14 American Wheat cents
- 8 Canadian King George VI pennies

These were the first results that we put on video and they, along with the amazing feedback that we received, really helped to motivate us to continue making videos for our YouTube channel. The coin roll hunting community is made up of great individuals who are passionate about the hobby. If you would like to learn more about coin roll hunting, just visit the pages off to the right or do not hesitate to ask in the comment section.

As always, let us know what you are hunting and how your searches are going in the comments below.

This Weekend's Nickel Coin Roll Hunting Results

As I mentioned last week, my brother and I have decided to get back into coin roll hunting Canadian nickels on a more consistent basis. Other than being a great hobby allowing for some excellent conversations and excitement, we do this because the melt value of pre-1982 Canadian nickels is significantly higher than their 5 cent face value since they are made from 99.9% nickel. From a value standpoint, these pre-1982 Canadian nickels standout from the modern day steel nickels. But to get back into nickel coin roll hunting consistently, we had to start with our first box in 9 months, and we were fortunate enough to do so this weekend.

If you watch our video from this search, you'll notice that before I started I had mentioned that I did not know exactly what to expect from a percentage standpoint. When we took a hiatus about 9 months ago, our results were fairly unpredictable. The valuable Canadian nickels mentioned above typically ranged between 5% and 10%, with the majority of our boxes falling closer to the low end of that range. Although there shouldn't have been a dramatic change in the past 9 months, I am well aware of the fact that the Canadian government and the Royal Canadian Mint is actively trying to cull these nickels out of circulation, making them a formidable competitor of ours.

However, our results left my brother and I extremely happy and confident to continue with our goal of jumping back into nickel coin roll hunting. Here are our results from this weekend:

$100 Canadian Nickel Box #31
- 178 99.9% nickels (8.9%)
- 16 pre-1963 12-sided Canadian nickels
- 1 1942 King George VI nickel

As you can see, we found an excellent percentage of 99.9% nickels, in addition to being very fortunate to find 17 pre-1963 Canadian nickels, including a 1942 King George VI nickel! I look forward to searching through our next box and, as always, sharing our results with you.

What are you guys searching through this week and how are your coin roll hunts going?

Getting Back Into Nickel Coin Roll Hunting

I have always loved coin roll hunting through $100 boxes of nickels to look for 99.9% nickel Canadian nickels. These are the Canadian nickels minted before 1982. My brother and I first found out about these pure bullion nickels as a result of our love for copper pennies, and we instantly decided that we should take advantage of this great opportunity to expand from copper pennies into nickel nickels.

However, with the Harper government's decision to discontinue the Canadian penny, our recent focus has been to try to acquire and coin roll hunt through as many boxes of Canadian pennies as we could. During the summer, we made our way through 14 boxes of Canadian pennies. As I mentioned in the previous post on this blog, our attention has also been on trying to establish our silver goals and prepare for how we can be successful with these goals. These two circumstances have led to the unfortunate fact that we have not searched through a single box of nickels during the past eight months.

Now that we are finished with our pennies boxes and have our silver goals crystallized, we are going to jump back into coin roll hunting nickels to once again take advantage of the little known fact that the melt value of pre-1982 Canadian nickels are worth substantially more than their face value. It will be interesting to see if the percentages of 99.9% nickels is still around the 10% mark in each box, but I suspect that it will have fallen in the period since our last hunt. Nonetheless, my brother and I are extremely excited to begin coin roll hunting through nickels once again. In fact, we already have our first box and plan to obtain a few more to search through during the Thankgiving weekend. Although we no longer have our boxes of pennies to go through, we are thankful that one of our favourite hobbies can still occur through boxes of nickels.

If you would like to see the results from our new boxes, or from any of our past boxes, visit our YouTube Channel. Also, let us know in the comment section below what you are coin roll hunting through these days. Best of luck in your searches this week!

My Silver Stacking Goals - Embracing the Micro Purchases

My strategy for purchasing silver up to this point has been to try to save up enough money so that in times of a drop in price, I could make a small purchase of about three or four ounces. Although I have been able to accumulate roughly twenty ounces through this method, it has resulted in sporadic purchases and long waiting periods between buys. Not only is this standing in the way of my goal to try to put 10% of my wealth in precious metals, it is also leaving me paralyzed on the sidelines as I wait for the next dip in price, of which I could never know of or anticipate before hand.

Because this strategy has not been working for me, my brother and I decided that it was time to employ a different goal. After much consideration, we decided that it would be best if we made scheduled, consistent buys every month. That is, we are committing to purchasing at least one ounce of silver every month. The purchases can be larger, of course, but we are dedicated to at least making a single purchase of some size. We are hoping that this consistency will elevate our determination as we are continually "in the game" so to speak, but more importantly, we hope that this will take away some of the emotion and unknown elements that come with trying to anticipate the market and purchasing on dips.

That isn't to say that there aren't some difficulties with our new strategy. As two students with little money, a consist monthly purchase is going to mean that we ensure that we have the necessary funds available. Our goal is to try to put 10% of our wealth into silver, and has never been to get into debt through building a large silver stack. Our new goal will also require us to do more due diligence on where to purchase from. Because our buys will usually be small, perhaps only an ounce or two, it doesn't make sense for us to purchase from online dealers where shipping costs will amount to a substantial portion of the overall purchase price. Therefore, we will have to rely upon the local coin store, exchanges through mutual acquaintances online (such as through Stackerville) or from websites with little to no shipping fees.

We are excited with our new silver goal and have embraced the idea of making small, consistent purchases in order to build up a substantial silver stack. At the end of the day, we hope that this will encourage and assist us with our overall goal to put 10% of our wealth into precious metals, even though we have scarce funds at the moment.

What are your silver stacking goals or methods right now and what do you think about our current goal?

Time to Revive the Blog

When my brother and I started this blog in May of last year, we had planned to keep it updated with our coin roll hunting finds, the expansion of our silver stack and also some discussion about Austrian economics. However, we found it much easier to document our finds through our YouTube channel. This led to us neglecting this blog and the great readers looking for information and the enjoyment of seeing our coin roll hunting finds (something that I personally love seeing from others as well!).

With this in mind, my brother and I are going to commit to reviving this blog. We will start by posting the copper penny and 99.9% nickel results that we have obtained through coin roll hunting in the past year and a half. I still have the majority of the information from each box, so it only makes sense that we share the results. We will also share our new silver stacking goals now that the Canadian penny has been terminated, leaving us without our beloved hobby of coin roll hunting pennies. Although this blog has centered around coin roll hunting rather than silver, primarily due to coin roll hunting being significantly unknown in relation to silver, we see it as a good opportunity to start discussing silver and precious metals in general on the blog.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to visit this blog over the past 18 months. We hope that you will enjoy the new content, and more importantly, we hope to engage in a great discussion with everyone about coin roll hunting, silver and economics. If you coin roll hunt, let us know how you have been doing with your results recently, or if you stack silver, what are your goals for the rest of the year?

Copper Penny Hoarding Results From Box #48

One of my favourite hobbies is coin roll hunting through rolls of pennies, nickels and dimes. For the past three years we have been going through $25 pennies boxes looking for Canadian pennies to add to our hoard. We were lucky to be able to go through another box yesterday in order to take advantage of the increased value of copper pennies.

Our 48th penny box was fairly up and down. There were eleven full rolls that had no pennies before 1997, meaning not a single copper penny. However, to make up for such a poor run of rolls, there were five rolls that were filled completely with copper pennies. In fact, two of the rolls were fortunately filled completely with pennies before 1980, which are Canada's best copper pennies to find. In the end, we ended up pretty close to our average and got a pretty decent result from this box. Here are the results from this box:

$25 Penny Box
-940 copper pennies (37.6%)

Total King George VI pennies: 6
Total American Wheat cents: 3

It is always a nice feeling to be able to store some of our wealth in copper pennies, while at the same time gather some older numismatic coins. All the best in your searches this week!

Silver and Gold Stacking Goal

As you can probably tell, we enjoy coin roll hunting through boxes of pennies, nickels and dimes to look for coins that are composed of metals that make their melt value higher than their face value, in addition to older coins that consist of numismatic value. We find that coin roll hunting makes sense for a number of reasons, particularly as a way to protect ourselves against inflation.

However, we are also purchasers of silver, and hoperfully one day, of gold as well. We purchase silver bullion in order to once again, similarly to coin roll hunting, protect our wealth in economic environments consisting of inflationary fiscal and monetary policies. In the video above, I explain why I choose to have 10% of my wealth in precious metals as my stacking goal and I why believe this makes sense from an asset vs. investment standpoint. However, I also state that purchasing silver from a supply vs demand standpoint is popular too and just as valid to those who go that route. In the end, we are all accumulating silver and gold.

I also provide a brief update on our YouTube channel going forward. If you would like to see all of our coin roll hunting results for the last 15 months, check out some of the videos on that channel.

What are your silver and gold stacking goals?

Copper Penny Hoarding Results From Box #37

Excellent condition Canadian centennial dove pennies!

If you have been following this blog in the past, then you know that we sort through $25 boxes of pennies looking for older numismatic coin, in addition to 98% copper pennies minted in Canada before 1997. The monetary policy of Canada, as well as the majority of Western countries, has resulted in copper pennies being worth more than their face value. Therefore, we have been going through boxes of pennies for the last few years in order to benefit from this increase in value.

In our 37th penny box, we were fortunate to get a decent copper percentage, in addition to a number of American Wheat pennies and Canadian King George VI pennies. Finding every Wheat and King George penny now is more important than ever since we have not been able to get anymore pennies from the banks. Also, since the Canadian Mint is melting down every Canadian penny, including these older numismatic coins, the value of King George pennies should go up significantly in the future. Here are the results for this box:

The  King George and Wheat pennies from our 37th box

$25 Penny Box
-852 copper pennies (34.1%)

Total King George VI pennies: 3
Total American Wheat cents: 2

Hopefully our last remaining penny boxes can yield a significant copper percentage, as well as some more King George pennies and Wheat cents. All the best in your hunts this week!

US Debt Ceiling Debate Back in the News!

It seems as though it is the gift that keeps on giving; the US debt ceiling debate is back in the news. If you remember, the US national debt reached the debt ceiling of $16.4 trillion (that's right, trillion with a "T") after the US election in December of 2012. Instead of raising the debt ceiling in January 2013, the debt ceiling was "suspended" until May 19th. This weekend, the deadline came and went and we once again we are at the point where the debt ceiling must either be raised or suspended again.

It should also be mentioned that in the five months since January, an additional $300 billion has been added to the national debt. In the video above, we mention our thoughts on how amazing it is that this news story has been flying under the radar and how this entire debt ceiling story effects the way we invest in silver. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section on the debt ceiling story line.

Awesome Coin Roll Hunting Results!

This was box a great box, with 15 King George VI pennies!

In our most recent box of Canadian penny box, we were extremely lucky to get quite a lot of King George VI pennies, from 1940 to 1952. We were also fortunate to find a 1933 King George V penny, which is an excellent numismatic coin! We have only found six King George V pennies in almost three years of coin roll hunting, so it is always exciting to pick one of these up.

It is also nice to get these older King George pennies because the pennies have been discontinued here in Canada, which should make their value increase in the future as their numbers thin due to many of them being destroyed (i.e. melted down) during the government's transition. Here are the result for this box:

$25 Penny Box
-860 copper pennies (35.20%)

Total King George VI pennies (15): 1940x2, 41, 43, 45, 46x2, 47x2, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52
Total American Wheat cents (1): 1941

With these results, we have completely caught up on the boxes we hoarded before the Canadian penny was discontinued in February. Therefore, all of the penny results in the future will be from our last 14 boxes. Hopefully, they will be as fruitful as this box was.

Canadian Copper Penny Results - Penny Box #35

Great to find a 1939 King George VI penny!

Coin roll hunting for Canadian copper pennies is one of my favourite hobbies. Unfortunately, pennies were discontinued in Canada this February. But my brother and I were able to hoard a few boxes before they were gone. These penny results are not from those final hoarded boxes, but are from a box I coin roll hunted back in January and wasn't able to produce the results for because I returned back to school. Here are the results:

$25 Penny Box
- 880 copper pennies (35.20%)

Total King George VI pennies (4): 39, 44, 50, 51

Keeping the nice condition pennies before 1980.

We did not have any Wheat cents in this particular box, which is a bit unfortunate. There were seven 1982 American pennies that we will weigh to confirm which ones are copper and which ones are zinc. Finally, in this box there were really extremely nice coins, from 1960, 1962 and 1970 that were in great condition. With the demise of the Canadian pennies this year, we have decided to keep pennies that are in very nice condition when they are older than 1980.

Hope that you enjoy the results for this box. Check out the YouTube video above to see the full results from box #35.

Time to Start Coin Roll Hunting Again!

Our last remaining pennies to coin roll hunt!

It has been awhile since our last update, almost a year in fact, but we plan on providing many more updates in the coming months that track the results of our finds through coin roll hunting. We were fortunate enough to stockpile a number of penny boxes, consisting of over 32,500 pennies in total, so you can expect a number of penny box results. These should be particularly interesting since it is almost impossible to get additional pennies here in Canada since they were removed from circulation in February.

We will also continue coin roll hunting 99.9% nickels weekly, with the possibility of increasing the number of boxes we were doing from last summer since there will be no more pennies available to coin roll hunt. Thank you to everyone taking a look at this blog and we hope that you enjoy the future updates!

To watch a longer and more detailed update, feel free to take a look at our YouTube update: