I came across a lot of scrap Sterling silver recently. It didn't seem like anything special until I noticed something unique. There were two 1964 Kennedy half dollars in the lot. For those who don't know, any dimes, quarters and half dollars made in 1964 or earlier are 90% silver. They're easily recognized.
After removing the coins, the lot was 86 grams of Sterling silver, or about $158 melt value of pure silver.
The refiner takes about a 15% cut, and also subtract shipping, and I'm left with about $126 of pure silver, or about two troy ounces which I'll sell to cover the costs. The whole lot cost $151, so these two half dollars cost me about $25.30.
Your average silver half dollar has about 0.36 troy ounces of pure silver in it. So two half dollars are worth about $44.64, which means I basically got these two half dollars for close to half of spot!
The Ugliest Kennedies Ever
These have to be the ugliest half dollars I've ever seen. When I saw them, I thought for sure they were fake. They look like they came out of a nuclear winter.
You know it's bad when the first thing I do is pull out the Sigma to test if they're real.
Hey, it's real! All right, that's a good sign!
Score! They're crusty and dusty, but they're real!
There really isn't any numismatic value to these, so I put them in a glass dish of water to soak. I have some collector-grade cleaning solution I can use to remove some of the grime and then they'll be off to the silver stash!
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