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Alright so someone was nice enough to teach me about Captial One's Hassle free checks. They send you a check. You cash it. you pay the regular purchase interest rate. If however you pay it back during the grace period you don't owe anything. You need a credit card from them which allows you to do this. I"m going to test the system out and tell you how it went. I'm going to order a $1,000 hassle free check. Then I'm going to go to td bank and take out $1,000 in dimes. I'll have fun during the summer when things get a little slow around here (school is out and people go on vacation.) I'll post what happens here. I need to wait 5 days after my next billing cycle in order to maximize my time. I'm no expert but I know if you do this right you can pay back with zero interest. I'll document what I do and let you guys know about it.

usually there is a 3% fee associated with those type transactions.. read the fine print..twice

Searching for silver on credit is scary. Very scary!

They used to send me those checks which had no fees and worked great for a one month free loan. However, in the last couple years they all send are the 3% ones. Yes, read the fine print!!

Discover card sends me at least one every month with my statement.

Yup those checks dont tend to be free, any CC company that pushes them has an agenda

Its either to get you with a fee or allow you to create a balance you may slip up on causing you to pay fees/interest

Also becareful because $1000 face in dimes only nets 1 silver dime per box of $250 if I recall, unless you hit a lucky streak
Thats 4 silver dimes for a value of $8- so you make .8% on your money per a cycle. Dumping $1000 in dimes repeatedly can get tricky and eventually will costs will occur and pile up

Make sure you do all your math and plan accordingly

my bank sent me one that said 0% interest for 12 months.

so i didn't pay anything. then they charged me a $35 fee for not paying the minimum fee.

watch out.

You should go for half dollars more bang for your buck if you get lucky!

The other problem is that many dime bags don't have $1,000 in dimes in them. Many of them come up short so it may cost you to bring a bag back up to $1,000.
Another problem is that the coin counters are off. I have double counted dime bags on my coin counter at home to make sure there is exactly $1,000 in the bag,
took it to the bank, and their coin counter has come up short by as much as $1.70 one time.
I think over time that even though I have found the occasional silver dime, I have lost money on short dime bags.

Cent1225 wrote:I have double counted dime bags on my coin counter at home to make sure there is exactly $1,000 in the bag,
took it to the bank, and their coin counter has come up short by as much as $1.70 one time.

I had a bag come up $175 short one time.

Just last night, I got a dime bag with 95 pennies in it, which meant an instant $8.55 loss.

I used to play with the 0% checks and free balance transfers. There was a time when I owed 30K on my home equity. I was able to transfer it around for almost a year with no interest. Then 2008 hit and the free transfers dried up. Most now are intrest free, but charge a 3% transfer fee.

Be very careful.

As far as dimes, I won't dump them into a machine. I very seldom do bags. Then I count them and turn in the whole bag in exchange for two boxes of halves.

My Capital One hassle free checks have a 0% fee. The catch is you have to pay back during the grace period or pay interest. I have taken them out and returned them before the grace period ended without a problem. Everyone keeps mentioning halves but I never found a bank that has halves.

If you got the totally free 0% fee checks you can also use them as a free two month loan on purchases if you have another credit card. If you buy something with the other credit card then pay them with the 0% check you can get close to 60 days without paying anything. Be smart and make sure the timing is right and you pay it all off right when you need to or your free loan will now be an expensive loan.

Halves have better yields then Dimes. I think Nickels even have better yields as well.

Banks do not stock halves, so you will go to some branches hit or miss. Some will have 0, some will have $7.50 Face, some will have $80 Face- you never know. But when you get a good strike you do quite well.

For the example your stating banks will order $1000 boxes for you if you have built relationships with certain branches. Just ask a coin teller or manager for a Box of halves, and they will get them for you.
The harder part is getting rid of $1000 in halves afterwards- which is no different than getting rid $1000 in dimes, a task to do in both cases.

So once again if you want to do this figure out everything proper

Robarons wrote:Halves have better yields then Dimes. I think Nickels even have better yields as well.

Banks do not stock halves, so you will go to some branches hit or miss. Some will have 0, some will have $7.50 Face, some will have $80 Face- you never know. But when you get a good strike you do quite well.

For the example your stating banks will order $1000 boxes for you if you have built relationships with certain branches. Just ask a coin teller or manager for a Box of halves, and they will get them for you.
The harder part is getting rid of $1000 in halves afterwards- which is no different than getting rid $1000 in dimes, a task to do in both cases.

Dimes yield more silver than nickels. They're both about 1 per box, but silver dimes have more silver. Halves probably yeild more overall, but you're more likely to find something in any given dime box, which makes them less of a pain to search.

Also, boxes of halves are $500, not $1,000, unless there are $1,000 boxes I haven't heard of.

I believe that some bags of halves are $1000

dakota1955 wrote:I believe that some bags of halves are $1000

I think so too, but he said boxes.

I don't silver search at the pace many of you do, but I've found nickel boxes to be more productive than dime boxes. And, you get 5 boxes of 5¢ compared to 2 boxes of 10¢. Plus the random buffalo or two.

Of course, you can edge search a box of clear tube dimes in around 4 minutes, so that's a bit of an advantage

I don't mean to be harsh or judgemental, but I want to caution against this approach. If you don't have the spare $1k then I question if sorting through that much coin for low silver return is really the best use of your time. Problems and delays can happen; do you really want to be on the hook for this much money?

In college I had a coworker who would take out $10k-$20k loans and advances that had no fees or interest for a year. He would then would buy a six or nine month CD, keep the interest, and pay the loan off before any fees. It got scary for him when one bank claimed he didn't request payment so they rolled the CD into another six months.

Ultimately it's your money so do as you wish. Just make sure you are not exposing yourself to needles risk.

I'll echo everyone else here who advises caution. To paraphrase debt-free money guru Dave Ramsey, credit card companies are like junk yard dogs--you don't mess with junk yard dogs because they are unpredictable and can turn on you in a second. Likewise, credit card companies, when they find they're not making any money on your business, can change the terms of your agreement without warning or recourse. They also have underhanded tricks for dealing with "freeloaders"--such as claiming not to have received your payment until a day or two after the due date or any grace period you may have. Bottom line, they always come out on top. you're far better off just saving up a thousand bucks of seed money.

jmaii wrote:In college I had a coworker who would take out $10k-$20k loans and advances that had no fees or interest for a year. He would then would buy a six or nine month CD, keep the interest, and pay the loan off before any fees. It got scary for him when one bank claimed he didn't request payment so they rolled the CD into another six months.

I've done this successfully, but like your friend, you need to watch it closely.

Also, halves come in boxes of $500, but the banks need to order them in lots of $1000. At least that is the way Loomis does it out here.

I think you should try to do it if there is no fees!

lol well. This has been interesting. I'm going to do it anyway just for fun. Probably when I'm visiting my parents in Puerto Rico. My uncle is a senior guy at the local credit union I'll call ahead of time. The problem is going to be lugging the halves on a plane back to NYC to dump them in my local TD Bank.

Just eanted to quickly share this before I forget:

http://blog.tsa.gov/2009/04/incident-at ... ional.html

May not be greeted too kindly by TSA if you have $1k in coin going through security.