Scrapping foreign coins (not silver or gold!)

Howdy all-

One of my (too) many hobbies is collecting coins- mostly inexpensive, foreign stuff that you pick up in pocket change while on vacation. After however many years of this I've accumulated five or ten pounds of "culls"- coins too damaged or dirty to sell of or give away. My question is, has anyone here turned in bags of foreign coins to their local scrap yard? If so, what happened? How'd they want them sorted and what did you get paid per pound?



I can easily separate out the aluminum coins (not sure how my scrap yard would grade these, but I'm sure they'd take them). The stainless steel and nickel coins are harder to eyeball, but I can probably do it. However, there is a whole mishmash of copper-based alloys that are hard to eyeball- "pure" copper, bronze (copper and tin), brass (copper and zinc), "aluminum bronze" (copper and aluminum), "copper nickel" and the like (and there are always those pesky copper-plated zinc clunkers out there).

I know each yard has their own rules, but has anyone turned in something like this? I'm just curious if there's any reason (monetary premium) for sorting these out of if they will all go as some sort of "brass". My local yard does sub-sort its brass, but I've never brought enough in to pay much attention to the varieties and prices.

If anyone has any experience doing this I'd love to hear about it before heading over to the yard. They'll probably look at me like an alien no matter what...

cheers,
tbg

I've been selling off my less-cruddy duplicate coins a half-pound at a time on eBay, but the shipping is a killer. I haven't sold enough lots to have a good set of statistics (nor have I kept very good notes), but after the fees and postage I doubt I've gotten much more than a dollar or two a pound. Given the time invested and the current price of various types of brass, I'd probably make out just as well selling them at the scrap yard, and with a lot less hassle. Still, I'd almost rather go through the effort to get the coins into the hands of someone who would appreciate them (as opposed to melting them).

In this case, the coins I'm talking about are the real dogs- ones that I wouldn't want to sell to anybody. Maybe a good equivalent would be keys- I've seen buckets of keys dropped off at my yard- I wonder what they're classified as....

cheers,
tbg

Originally Posted by jord0690

Would you not possibly get more by exchanging them to USD? I guess it depends on the currency lol

Old Roman stone coins maybe? haha, I guess they're in about the same boat, worth about as much at the grocery ; )

Exchange rate here... Currency Exchange Rate Conversion Calculator

All you can do is ask. Worst they can do is say no and you can throw it in with the shred.

I collect foreign coins as well. One of the on line sites I'm a member of is Numista. I know you said they were "junk coins". Maybe? you can trade them, I once tradeded 20 "dogs" for one decent coin. I also made a wind chime out of my dog coins once, it came out pretty neat looking, had a nice chime sound too! Had it on my front porch, someone took it!

Put them in a plastic bag and sell them at a yard sale. Its hard for some people to pass up a hoard of coins, regardless of their condition.

All-

Interesting ideas. I like the wind chime idea- those types of metals do have a really nice "ring" to them (I saved the brass bells out of a couple old phones I took apart recently, just because)... Years and years ago I made earrings out of inexpensive but visually interesting foreign coins- easy and fun.

I like going to yard sales (if they're convenient)- I don't much like having them, though. While I *do* have a lot of "junk" in the house, virtually all of it is stuff I actually want (and is of limited interest to most other folks). I mean, who has room for a garage full of stuff they *don't* really want or need? As soon as we fill up a cardboard box of that kind of stuff it gets taken to Goodwill as a tax deduction- heaven forbid we accumulate enough useless stuff to have a garage sale! In fact, Saturday was "clean out the carport day"- I sold a few scavenged items on Craigslist ($20 for a collapsible dog pen I found next to a dumpster- whoop!), dropped off some cheap household items at Goodwill and took the rest to the scrapyard.

So I did take a couple of baggies of coins to the scrap yard- one "bronze" and one "copper-nickel"- and wound up getting $1.50/lb for both of them (the yard's going rate for "red brass", though that's not exactly how they describe it). The guy there is friendly enough and so far as I can tell offers square deals, but he isn't exactly the most talkative/informative guy (I don't think he's used to dealing with scrap-geeks). At first he didn't really know what to think and offered $1/lb, though changed his mind and gave me the better deal (maybe because he was just curious to poke through the baggies). I didn't bring any "aluminum bronze" or "real" brass coins, but I imagine he'd offer me the same deal for that stuff, too- I dunno. He might think about it a little more and ask a few more questions if I were to drive up with a 55 gal drum of the stuff.

While I was there, another scrapper looked at my coins and suggested I should sell them elsewhere to get more money. It's kind of interesting how people perceive value differently. I, a 20+ year coin collector and reasonably knowledgeable about metal commodity prices, was happy to get $1.50 a pound. No questions, no shipping, no extra trip to the post office, no emails to write or phone calls to make, and not a whole lot less than I would get from selling better bulk samples on eBay. He just saw coins (!) and was *convinced* I was getting ripped off (not that he offered to buy them!).

I guess value is in the eye of the beholder, though nothing is worth anything if no-one wants it. The trick is to combine knowledge (of an item/market/commodity) and opportunity (finding or producing an item and then finding the right time/place to sell it)....

cheers,
tbg