The Sarcasm Report v.30

Today's USA Today has a full page advertisement that offers a free safe if you buy 267 never-circulated U.S. Government coins and currency.

Here's what you get.

1. A free safe! Woohoo!
2. 12 presidential golden dollar coins
3. 250 never-circulated U.S. Buffalo nickels (minted in 2005)
4. 4 $2 bills (in a "banker's stack" no less!)
5. 1 American Silver Eagle

You'll need to cover $149 for the first shipment of coins. You'll also need to pay the same amount for the last remaining shipment of coins. It's a bit fuzzy on just how many total shipments there will be though. I wonder why that is? It seems to me that they could just put all the coins in the safe along with all that currency (all four bills, lol) and ship it to us in just one shipment. Wouldn't that cut down on shipping costs and save everyone money? What am I missing? ;)

Is it a good deal? Let's start with the safe. Free safe! Awesome deal! Enough said!

Now let's move to the presidential dollar coins. Probably best to just stick with the melt value of all that gold. Right?

2007-2009 Presidential Dollar Value (United States)

$0.0395132 is the melt value for the 2007-2009 Presidential golden dollar on June 04, 2009.

Oops! The one dollar face value was clearly the better way to look at it. Maybe we can make it up on ALL those nickels though. First, let's find out how many were minted.

Nickel (United States coin)

2005 P bison - 448,320,000
2005 D bison - 487,680,000

There were 936 million coins minted. Ouch. What about metal content?

As of December 14, 2006, the value of the metal in a United States nickel coin reached $0.055759, an 11.5% premium over its face value.

Fantastic! We're going to be rich once we melt them.

In an attempt to avoid losing large quantities of circulating nickels to melting, the United States Mint introduced new interim rules on December 14, 2006 criminalizing the melting and export of cents and nickels. Violators of these rules can be punished with a fine of up to $10,000, five years imprisonment, or both.

Bummer! How about those $2 bills?

United States two-dollar bill

The most significant evidence of the $2 bill's reawakening would be that, in 2005 alone, 61 million $2 bills were printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. This is more than twice the number of $2 bills that were printed annually between 1990 and 2001.

People love hoarding $2 bills. I'd say they are worth about $2 though. Just a hunch. As a side note, people are strange.

That leaves us with the one American Eagle Silver dollar.

It's tough to put a price on just one unless you are buying through a full page advertisement in a national newspaper. Here's an attempt though.

Northwest Territorial Mint

Our Buy Price*
1 ounce rounds $16.90

In summary, we get 12 dollars worth about a dollar each, 250 nickels worth about a nickel each, 4 two-dollar bills worth about two dollars each, one silver dollar worth about $16.90, and a "free" safe.