I recently had the opportunity to test out hollow spy coins from Spy-Coins.com. These are really cool, hollow coins that allow you to seriously conceal small items. With a background in security, privacy, and tradecraft, these things really appeal to me. Even more appealing is that one coin can conceal a full backup of my entire hard drive on a MicroSD card. Let’s take a look at hollow coins from Spy-Coins.com.
Full Disclosure: Two coins were sent to me, at my request, for review. I was asked for nothing other than to give an honest review. Spy-Coins.com did not see this article prior to publication, I received nothing in return, and I have no financial relationship with Spy-Coins.com. This article does contain affiliate links to Amazon.com, from which I receive a small commission.
Construction
Every coin made by Spy-Coins begins life as two coins. Brian Dereu, his wife Cindy, and his sons manufacture these coins in their machine shop, one coin being used for the front and one for the back. The edge of one coin (the “male” side) is machined down, while the other one is hollowed, leaving the edge intact. The two sides fit together almost seamlessly…or at least with a seam that is very difficult to detect with the naked eye.
Assembling the two coins is a simple friction fit between front and back. Care must be taken to ensure the alignment between front and back is correct (i.e. making sure the back is not crooked relative to the front. When assembled, these coins look and feel like real coins, but retain a hollow in the center for the storage of small items.
All coins from Spy-Coins.com come with a two sides of a coin and a disassembly ring.
Using Spy Coins
Brian sent me two coins for review: an Australian coin and an American half-dollar. Each comes with a disassembly ring. The ring has a ledge that holds the coin, but allows the smaller male half to fall free. Set the coin in the ring, slap against a table, and boom! Your coin is open. You can now fill them with whatever you wish to hide.
The voids on some (but not all) coins are large enough for a MicroSD cards. MicroSDs have grown drastically in storage space in recent years. While a 64 GB MicroSD would have been ridiculously large just a few years ago, today’s MicroSD cards can be had up to 2 TB. To put that in perspective, that’s double the size of my Macbook’s hard drive. And they are inexpensive: 128 GB MicroSDs can be had for under $12.
Not all coins are large enough for a MicroSD card. Quarters, for instance, suffer a combination of thinness, and being made from to soft a metal. Nickels, on the other hand, work great. So do some foreign coins like nickels, Euros, the Australian Platypus, and British pence. The thinner coins are probably more useful as novelties, though they actually seem like a great place to store some secret information on paper, like passwords.
The Utility of Spy Coins
I think these coins do have some real utility. I don’t think this utility is ideal for actual spies, however. These coins can be unmasked in a couple of ways. First, they don’t weigh what normal, intact coins weigh. Second, the cavity in this is visible on x-ray. Third, with a MicroSD inside, they rattle just a tiny bit (though you could fix this with a bit of paper). If you were a spy and caught with one of these, you’d have some serious explaining to do.
For average individuals, this is a wonderful place to store a backup MicroSD card. Load it up with a backup of your pics, documents, whatever, and toss it in your junk drawer. It is highly doubtful that anyone breaking into your home would think twice about it. It also might be a good place to hide a MicroSD from your kids or roommates…as long as they don’t add the coin to their change jar. I do like having one in a foreign denomination, even though it makes it stand out. Then again, in a box full of foreign currency I’ve collected over the years, it fits right in.
One other potential use is passing information in an adversarial environment. Everyone in the tactical space loves talking about guns, ammo, gear for the boog/apocalypse/etc., but not one talks about the need for an intelligence network. Spy coins may be a useful tool for troubled times.
Considerations on Using Spy Coins
I don’t have many complaints with these spy coins. They are extremely well-made. It is difficult to tell one from a real coin, and at a glance it would almost certainly go unnoticed.
My only real issue with these coins is not losing them. They are very small, and the look like regular coins. If you were actually a spy, carrying one of these coins in your pocket might make good sense. Unfortunately, having my life truly depend on it is probably the only way I wouldn’t accidentally spend or lose this coin. I did, however, manage to keep up with these for about six months during this review.
The other thing is that this is classic “security through obscurity.” If you are using one of these for sensitive information, it would be a really good idea to encrypt the data. If you use a Mac this is very easy to do through the Disk Utility function. Windows with full versions of Bitlocker will encrypt this drive, as will the third-party Veracrypt.
The final thing is choosing a coin. For ultimate security, you should choose a coin that is local to you, and mix it in with other coins. For me, with a minimal risk factor, a foreign coin is probably better. It guarantees I won’t accidentally spend it, and a Coinstar machine will spit it out. It also helps me find it (though it helps everyone else, too).
Final Thoughts
These coins are really, really cool! I sincerely appreciate the Dereu family sending a couple out to me. If you need to hide a MicroSD card, this would be the way to do it! These are also a really good idea as a gift for that one nephew that you just don’t know what to get for Christmas… Coins from Spy-Coins.com are exceptionally well-made, interesting, and fun. Check them out!
