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How the Change You Left in Your Old Car Make Millions

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Prepare to hear the oddest news that you have heard in a long time. Have you ever wondered what happens to all the pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters that end up rolling around the nooks and crannies in your car by the time you get rid of it? Eventually, we kind of know what happens to the car—cars that reach the end of their lives are usually sold to scrapyards, where they are crushed, ripped up, and have all non-metal components removed.

Then, the resulting scrap metal is usually sold to China. In that massive pile of scrap, though, is still a bunch of forgotten, discarded coins, and the Chinese buyers know it.

When the pile arrives, a team of hired hands sort through it and pick out the coins, eventually gathering enough from various salvage yards that their employer can gather them all up in bulk.

And then they sell our money back to us. The Chinese coin reclaimer ships all the coins to an American customer, who turns them in to the US Mint for near face value.

However, before you go running for the scrap yard, you should know that this odd business may be done with. Apparently, around 2009, the amount of coins coming back from our shipped scrap started to explode (the mint paid out over $100 million since 2009), so much so that law-enforcement officials believe that a bunch of them have to be fake, so they are detaining the coins while they determine how much of the repatriated money is counterfeit.

In the mean time, it might be a good idea to clean out your car and start a piggy bank.

News Source: Comsumerist