THE HIDDEN TREASURE

that’s in your purse now!

Check the serials Collectors on sites like Coolserialnumbers. com are often on the lookout for paper currency with special serial numbers on them. A common one is double quads where two numbers each repeat four times, such as 44440000. Also in demand: serial numbers that spell special dates. For example, one collector was looking for a $ 2 bill with the serial 07041776—the date of the signing of the Declaration of the Independence— and was willing to pay up to $1,000 for it!

● 2 Seek out silver

“The real money to be made is finding coins that contain either 90% or 40% silver,” says Ryan Denby of Austin Rare Coins & Bullion in Texas. Typically, quarters, dimes, half dollars and silver dollars dated 1964 or earlier contain 90% silver, and at today’s silver prices of about $16, they’re worth about 10 times their face value. “So a dime can be sold for $1, a quarter can be sold for $ 2.50 and a half dollar is worth around $5!” Denby says. Watch for these quarters Sometimes the U.S. Mint makes mistakes when creating coins— and those small errors can be worth big bucks! Among the most valuable: the 2004 Michigan state quarters, says Joshua Mcmorrow-hernandez of Coin

Dealer Newsletter. “On some Michigan quarters, there’s an extra leaf on the lower left side of the corn stalk on the reverse. This little leaf wasn’t supposed to be part of the design, but somehow it wound up there in the die-engraving process—these can be worth $ 70 or more!”

● 4 Sharpen your eye

“There is a guidebook of United States Coins called the Red Book,” Denby says. “It shows every coin from every mint of every denomination as well as approximate retail values, pictures and everything else you could ask for. So if you have a lot of coins you’d like to research, a Red Book can be invaluable— it’ll let you figure out whether you have a coin that’s worth a dollar or one that’s worth $100.”