2016-05-07 Sat

The U.S. exports thousands of tons of aluminium remains of industrially shredded vehicles to China. The scrap contains so many coins that a new industry has come into the picture to only redeem these coins. 46-year-old Mr. Shahar, buys U.S. bent, burned, fused, chipped and unusable coins in bulk from Chinese salvage yards and exports them to Oregon to get it exchanged at the U.S Mint for a fixed amount as per a Government program established over 100 years ago.

Since 2009, officials have noted a sharp rise in coin shipments from China and have also observed that most of these coins could be fake. After looking at this issue closely, the U.S officials rolled back the coin reimbursement program last year due to which Mr. Shahar had to bear a loss of $664,000.

Though Mr. Shahar has not been accused of doing any illegal activity, some of his competitors were dealing with counterfeits. He says that counterfeiting low-value coins is very illogical and nobody would think of doing it.

19-year-old Mr. Shahar saw tourists throwing coins into a wishing well in Thailand. A temple caretaker took him into a room filled with coins sorted by country. He and the caretaker made a deal. If Mr. Shahar agreed to take 6,000 one-pound coins with him to the U.K., exchange them for cash and bring the money back to the temple, he could keep 900 pounds for himself. He began buying coins from other temples across Asia, and then from charities, secondhand stores and metal recyclers.

Today, he has developed coin sources in 25 countries, but much of his business drifted to China when it became a global metal recycler—a $50 billion industry, according to research firm IBISWorld.