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The US Mint is now offering free shipping on the new 2010 $1.00 Presidential Coins to promote the circulation of these new coins.

These Presidential Dollar coins are sold in rolls of 250 for their exact face value of $250.00 along with free standard shipping.

There are 7 different types of 2010 Direct Ship $1.00 Coins, namely 2010 Native American, 2010 Sacagawea, 2010 John Adams, 2010 Thomas Jefferson, 2010 James Madison, 2010 George Washington, and 2010 Andrew Jackson.  They allow you to purchase up to two $250.00 rolls of each type of coin.  This would allow you to purchase a maximum of up to $3,500 per order. 

Initially during “Step 1″ of the check out process it will show an Estimated Standard Shipping & Handling charge of $4.95, however on ”Step 4″ this shipping charge will be reduced to $0.00 as seen below.

Since these coins are being sold by the US Mint at face value without any additional shipping costs you can purchase these coins using a 0% APR Credit Card and convert them to cash for free.  You could also deposit these coins into your checking account and then use the money to pay off higher interest credit cards.

Some Credit Cards offer travel, cash, or other reward for purchases made using the credit card.  You can use your reward card to purchase these coins. When you receive the coins you can simply store them in a high yield savings account until your monthly credit card bill arrives and then pay off your bill to get the full rewards from this credit card purchase.

If you want to really rack up the rewards you can even pay off the bill immediately online or using a photocopy of your bill to pay off the balance before your monthly bill arrives.  This way you can repeat this purchase several times over the course of a single month.

How to Get Started

1) Go to the US Mint’s 2010 Coin Promotion Direct Shipment program page.  There are 7 different types of coins for purchase and you are allowed to purchase up to 2 boxes of each type of coins for $250.00 each box.  You can purchase up to $3,500 in coins if you buy the 2 box maximum for all 7 types of coins.  You can also make multiple orders if you want to purchase even more.   Be sure to select “Standard Shipping”, it will say that this shipping and handling will cost $4.95 on the first page, but you will notice that on step 4 of the checkout process that this shipping charge is reduced to $0.00 and you are only charged the actual face value of the coins.

2) You should receive your coins in the mail within 1-2 weeks.

3) Take these coins to the bank and cash them in for paper money or deposit them into your checking account.  Since these coins are in regular circulation, they are as good as cash.

4) You can use this money as a free cash advance, pay off higher interest credit cards, or collect the rewards off your rewards credit card.  These credit card rewards will not cost your anything if you pay your credit card off by the end of the month.  

Many rewards cards give you 1-3% cash back which is better than most high yield savings accounts these days.  Also, you are not taxed on money made from cash back rewards cards because this cash back is considered a rebate on purchases that you have already made!

You could also use this trick to rack up your airlines rewards on certain rewards credit cards. 

For example, with Citibank’s AA Advantage credit card it offers you 25,000 miles once you make $1000 in purchases. This is a total of 26,000 miles and is enough for a round trip US domestic flight to anywhere in the United States. 

You are effectively getting a round trip airline ticket for free, saving you hundreds of dollars and getting a free cash advance from your credit card at the same time!

The video rental market has changed.  Traditional video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are now going out of business.  The video rental market has evolved from storefronts to video by mail outlets, like Netflix to an even more efficient phenomenon: Video Rental Kiosks. 

These video rental kiosks are essentially vending machines which allow you to use your credit card to rent movies for only $1.00 a night.  This business model is by far the most efficient, it can run 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week and can run by itself without any staff onsite.  However, there is also a trick to beat this system and actually keep your DVD for only $1.00 without ever having to return it or be charged any additional money.

Getting the Movie for only $1.00

The way these video rental kiosks work is that you select which movie(s) you want to rent.  You swipe your credit or debit card in the machine and your movie is given to you and you are billed $1.00 plus tax for one night’s rental.  If you don’t return the movie within 24 hours you will be billed an additional $1.00 plus tax for each night you keep the movie.  After 25 nights and $25.00 plus tax, the movie is yours to keep and you will no longer be billed.

The Credit Card Transaction Process

When you rent the movie, the video rental kiosk checks your credit or debit card and makes sure that $25 is available on the card.  You are initially charged $1.00 plus tax, which turns out to be $1.08 (with tax) in my area, you are not charged anything over this initial $1.00 for 24 hours.

The Trick

If you buy one of those $25 Visa or Amex Gift Cards, you will be able to use this gift card to rent the movie.  It will check to see that $25 is available, which it is and then it will charge you an initial $1.08 as a rental fee.   Leaving a balance of $23.92 on your gift card.  You can take your video and then go spend the rest of the money on the gift card, thus they will not be able to charge you anything additional beyond the initial $1.00 regardless of whether or not you return the movie! 

This trick would only allow you to rent one movie using a $25.00 gift card, because after the initial rental, the card no longer has $25 available on it.  That’s why I prefer using the $50 gift card, because it allows you to rent multiple movies and still keep $25 available on the card.  Using a $50 gift card you can rent 10-12 movies easily and still have over $25 left over. 

After you rent the movies using your gift card be sure to spend the remaining balance on your giftcard within 24 hours or you will be billed an additional $1 per movie.  I like using gas stations to spend my additional balance because you can buy beer, cigarettes, food, soda and then gasoline.  With pumping gas you can spend the remaining balance on your gift card to the penny.

You can easily use the process above to get any movie from the video rental kiosks for only $1.00 plus tax and keep it forever without being charged anything additional!