How to make RISK FREE PROFIT at any age by Flipping Money (Step By Step)

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here! So it's highly requested in one of my last videos; here's a step-by-step tutorial of exactly how you can make some pretty fun, decent side money at any age with any level of experience.

And the best part about all of this is that there is zero risk! It's literally impossible to lose money, and your worst-case scenario is that you just break even. The best-case scenario is that you end up making anywhere from twenty percent all the way up to two hundred percent or more return on the money that you do spend.

And all you got to do if you want to learn how to do this is just smash that like button. That's it, super easy! You just hit that, okay? You hit the like button, let's get into it!

So this is a concept that I like to call "flipping money," and I'll walk you through exactly what to do. Now, keep in mind this is not something that's gonna make you like filthy rich or anything like that. It's not meant to be like a part-time job; this is meant to be something that should be a fun little side hustle, where if you want to make an extra like fifty to a few hundred dollars every single week with really minimal work and zero risk, this is the video for you.

So, don't think you're gonna be doing this, getting rich, driving around Lambos next month, because let me tell you something, realistically, we're talking about Prius money here.

Here's how I came about this concept: As a kid, I used to be really into collecting old American paper currency and old American coins, especially when those state quarters came out in 1999. I got really obsessed with coin collecting, so at the time, my grandpa ended up giving me some of his collection, and that included an old five-dollar bill from the early 1920s.

After he ended up giving me that, I became absolutely obsessed with starting to collect old currency and old coins and basically anything that I can find. The United States Treasuries switched over to the new larger-faced bills, and I thought the older ones were cooler, so I just ended up keeping and collecting them.

Now, as those older American bills began getting more rare, I started paying more attention to them. Anytime I'd get them in change, I would simply pick them out, put them in an envelope, put that envelope in my closet, and forget about it. And I just realized that now I'm telling you guys where I hide my money, so don't try to rob me! I got cameras, and now I'm gonna move it somewhere more safe.

So yeah, but anyway, it was at that point that I realized, wait a second, maybe these are starting to become worth some actual money more than what their face value is. And it was at this point that the money flip was born.

Now, I was pretty fortunate that from 2008 to 2014 I worked across the street from a city bank. So, anytime I go in and deposit checks, I would go and talk to the teller and explain to her that I was really into collecting old American currency, and if she had any, I would love to buy it from her.

So what she would do during times when she wasn't busy, she would look through the drawer and then pull out all the old bills that she would have, give them to me, and then I would simply buy them at whatever face value is.

Now, what I mean by face value of a currency is really whatever denomination is listed on the bill. So a $20 bill has a $20 face value, a $50 bill has a $50 face value—so you get the concept.

Now, what happened the first time I ended up going to this bank was that she ended up giving me $500 worth of old American currency. Between a few hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives, I literally just bought all the old currency she had. Now, I knew the face value of all this was about five hundred dollars, but on the collector market, it was really worth more like eight hundred dollars.

Now, in the beginning, I wasn't planning to sell any of it; I would simply collect thousands of dollars worth of old American currency just because I was weird and I thought that was cool. Now, over the next few weeks, I ended up building up a pretty good relationship with the bank teller—not that sort of relationship—but she ended up saving all of the old currency for me and would give it to me anytime I would come in.

And every now and then, by the way, I would give her some See's chocolates as just a thank-you because she was really going out of her way to do all of this for me. Now, as my collection started to grow, I started noticing that I would get a lot of the same bills over and over again.

So I figured at this point, I may as well sell the ones I already had so many of and then use those extra profits to just go and reinvest into other bills that maybe I didn't have. Now, at first, I put them up on eBay, and I wasn't sure exactly how quickly they would sell or what the demand was like, but I was really surprised that the first bill I put up sold within just a few hours later.

And what I started noticing when I started putting more bills up is that it was pretty much the same dude just buying all the bills. And after about the third or fourth time he started ordering from me, he messaged me directly and was saying, "If you want to cut out the eBay crap, just email me directly with what you have, and then we'll deal just one-on-one. I'll save you some of the eBay and PayPal fees, and you end up getting more money at the end of the day, and maybe we can just work this out."

And of course, I agreed. So I ended up just selling this one guy most of the currency that I ended up getting. He just wanted it all.

So with that said, here's the step-by-step tutorial part, where I'm going to share with you guys exactly what I look for, why I look for it, and how you can determine the value of old American currency.

Okay, so the first thing that I look for is that you have to make sure it's older than 1990. If it's newer than 1990, there's really not much of a premium, and that's really not worth your time.

Like if you're getting a 1995 $100 bill, that's maybe worth a hundred and ten dollars. You're gonna end up losing money on that when you calculate eBay fees, PayPal fees, and especially if you pay for shipping. Plus, your time, it's just not worth it.

So anytime you go older than 1990, it just gives you more of a premium and really makes it worth it in terms of profit and spending your time doing this. Now, my favorite years when doing this are anything between 1929 and 1950. If you can find something that's older than 1929, you basically just hit the jackpot.

I don't think I've ever seen something earlier than 1929, but if you could find something like that, by all means, you hit the jackpot!

Now, number two, the second thing you want to look for is what's called a star note. You can tell it's a star note because anytime you look at the serial number, at the very end, there will be a little star.

So a star note basically just means that there was an error printing that particular batch of bills. So what the government does, instead of letting those bills just go out into circulation, is they burn all of them and instead reprint that particular batch with a star at the very end so that they can keep track of how many particular runs of a certain serial number went out.

If you find a star note, that makes it worth a lot more because you don't see them very often. Again, this is like hitting the jackpot. If you find an old star note, it's worth significantly more money.

Just to give you guys some examples, I had a 1950 $100 star note that I ended up selling for two hundred and ten dollars. I also ended up getting a 1950 $50 star note that I ended up selling for about a hundred and seventy dollars.

So if you get one of these, always get them because they're always going to be worth a significant premium above whatever the face value is.

Now, the third thing you need to know is the bill's condition. This is extremely important, and you need to know exactly what to look for and what to try to avoid. Generally, if it has any sort of writing or ink on it, the premium it would have had drops by like 50%. If the bill is torn or has any tears in it, the value can drop another 10 to 50% of whatever the premium value would be.

And also if it's super crumpled up, it could drop by another 10 to 30% depending on how bad the condition is.

Oh, don't get me wrong here because bills that are torn, crumpled up, and have writing on them can still be worth some pretty good money; it's just that they're not going to be worth as much as a bill that is in much better condition.

Generally speaking, the newer the bill is, the better condition it needs to be in to be able to make a profit. For instance, it's not worth getting a 1989 $100 bill that's all torn up and crumpled with writing on it because chances are that's only worth about a hundred and five dollars.

But if you found a 1929 $100 bill that was in the exact same condition, that is worth getting!

Now, if you're at the bank and you're not sure exactly what you're looking at or you're not sure how to value something, my recommendation is to always buy it at face value, take it home, and then look at the values on eBay to determine whether or not it's worth keeping.

When looking online, you really want to make sure you compare the same year, same condition, and find out where the currency came from and compare as many similarities as you can. You can also use the website papermoneyguide.com to get rough estimates of values.

If it's a star note, you can use mycurrencycollection.com to look at the serial number and see how many star notes were produced. Rare production runs of star notes often mean it could be worth sometimes triple or quadruple the face value that you bought it for.

So this means that if you end up getting money that's worth significantly more than what you thought it was, great! Keep it! If you end up getting something that's not worth much more than face value, that's totally fine. All you got to do is go back to the bank, deposit it, and then try to get something else.

And again, for anyone else unsure about this, the best free resource to use is simply just eBay. Look on eBay, see what other bills are selling for, and then price yours accordingly.

So now, from there, let's assume that you found some bills that are worth money. Let's talk about how to list it for sale. Now, I like to use eBay because I'm not about to list it on Craigslist and meet up with a total stranger to sell them money! But anyway, eBay is such a great resource to use.

Now, it is very important anytime it comes to selling on eBay that you understand the fees associated with selling on eBay, because they can start eating into your profit and even end up costing you money if you're not careful, and I will be discussing this very shortly.

But anyway, anytime you're listing a bill for sale, it's very important that you take very close-up, high-quality pictures of both the front and the back of the bill. Honestly, I recommend taking multiple pictures, multiple angles, different lighting. Do as much as you can to really demonstrate the quality of the bill and give the viewer a good description of exactly what they're going to get.

Also, if there's any damage to the bill—any tears, writing, anything else like that—make sure again you get close-ups of this so that way the buyer knows exactly what they're gonna be getting.

Also, in the title, you need to make sure you're as descriptive as possible. You want to make sure that you mention the year, the denomination, and a series of serial numbers. If it's a star note, you make sure to mention that.

Like, if you have a 1969 $100 star note, make sure to mention all of that in the title, and then preferably put the production run of that specific serial number that you got from mycurrencycollection.com.

So now let's talk about the fees because this is something you absolutely need to understand; otherwise, this is not going to work. Now, because you have eBay fees and PayPal fees that take their percentage based off the gross amount of the sale, not your profit, you need to make sure you understand exactly what these are.

Because your $100 bill, if you were to sell it for $100, is immediately worth less. Consider this: unless you have an eBay store, eBay is going to end up taking 10% of the gross proceeds anytime you sell something. Now, if you have an eBay store, it's more like 6.15% or 5.35%, but I'm just going to assume that all of you guys watching just don't have an eBay store.

So this means if you don't have a store and you sell a $100 bill for a hundred bucks, that means that immediately you're only getting back ninety dollars because eBay takes ten percent. Then you also have PayPal fees, which run 2.9%.

This means that with a hundred dollars sold at a hundred dollars, you're down to about $87 left. Now, then you also have shipping. Now, this is up to you if you pay for the shipping or if you just pass it on to the buyer. I prefer to pass it on to the buyer, and I highly recommend you always do tracking with signature delivery.

This runs anywhere from like four to five dollars and fifty cents, but at least with this, you get proof of arrival and proof of receipt.

Now again, if you pass this on to the buyer, great! I highly recommend you try doing that. If not, just factor in basically an additional five dollars on top of that.

So this means that if you get a $100 bill and you sell that for face value on eBay for a hundred bucks, you're only gonna be left with eighty-three dollars. Assuming that you also pay for shipping, if the buyer pays for shipping, you're only going to lose $13; you'll be left with eighty-seven dollars.

So in order to make a profit on selling a $100 bill, you need to make sure you can sell that for more than $130 otherwise it's just not worth it, including all the time it takes to go and list something on eBay.

This is why you absolutely have to focus on finding older bills in good condition because this is where you can really start making a good profit. For instance, if you find a $50 star note and you sell that for $180 on eBay, you're going to be left with a $110 profit after all expenses and all fees.

If you end up finding a $10 bill and selling it for $70, you're gonna be left with about $55 in net profit. Now imagine going to the bank and finding three or five of those, and you could see that all of a sudden, the profit really starts to add up.

Now, my best find so far was that I got twenty 1929 ten-dollar bills in perfect condition. Apparently, an old lady found them in a drawer, brought them into the bank; she didn't want them, she wanted newer ten-dollar bills for some reason.

And the bank teller kept them for me, and then when I went in, I saw them, and I was like, "Oh my God, just hit the jackpot!" These were in perfect condition.

No, each one of these ten-dollar bills was really worth anywhere from eighty dollars all the way up to one hundred and twenty dollars. This means that I spent $200 and ended up getting back sixteen hundred to twenty-four hundred dollars back in value.

If I ended up listing and selling them on eBay, I would be left with anywhere from twelve hundred to nineteen hundred dollars in net profit. I'm usually not that lucky and I'm never gonna sell those ones, but every now and then, you come across some really cool finds.

Now finally, when it comes to shipping, it's really important that when you ship out the old money, the currency doesn't bend. Now, what I typically do is take a bit of a cardboard box, cut out two equally sized squares that will fit in an envelope, I put the money in between the two cardboard pieces, and then I tape the cardboard on the outside.

This way, the bill doesn't get bent or damaged when it goes through shipping, and the cardboard is still pretty light, so you can usually get away with just a regular envelope because it weighs next to nothing and it’s pretty cheap to ship.

Honestly, doing this is really as simple as that! And my biggest piece of advice with all of this is just to build a good relationship with a person at the bank.

Also, it's very important to do two things: One, when you talk to the teller, make sure there's not like a huge line behind you or during a really busy time. Ideally, go during like lunch hours or off hours when they're not that busy.

You also have to explain that you're just a weird collector who collects these old bills because they don't typically find people go to the bank to ask for them; it's very unusual. So just explain that you're a collector, you want to start collecting these, and that's why you're there, and that's it!

And like I said, this isn't something that you're gonna be making like Lambo money, but if you can earn an extra like $100 to $300 a week depending on how much time you put in, this could be some pretty decent side money.

And again, like I said, the worst-case scenario is that if you get something that doesn't make sense to sell or maybe it just sits on eBay, all you have to do is just return it to the bank and get your money back.

That is the worst-case scenario when doing this because your bill is always worth exactly what you paid for it. If you buy an old $50 bill, it's always worth 50 bucks.

If you buy an old 20, it's always worth 20. If you buy a $100 bill, it's always going to be worth exactly what it says on the bill.

And I'd estimate that overall, you should be able to make anywhere from like $20 to $40 an hour for all the time you put in, considering the drive time to the bank, looking through old bills, listing them on eBay, going to the post office to send them off. That's about what I've averaged, $20 to $45 an hour.

And as you get better at this and as you build relationships with the bank, you might be able to increase this a little bit, maybe more like fifty bucks an hour.

But again, it really depends on the bank and how many bills you end up coming across that are worth money. This is really just meant to be like a fun side hobby for those that find this interesting. Again, not really meant as a way for you to be like making serious money.

You might be able to, but this is really meant more of just like a fun side hobby for those that find this interesting, like me.

So anyway, thank you guys so much for watching! I really appreciate it. If you guys enjoy videos like this, just make sure if you haven't already, smash that like button!

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Thank you again for watching, and until next time!