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Problem Cashing In Cleaned Coins

J

jimmyk

New member
H, all:

Anyone having problems with banks accepting cleaned dug coins? I recently moved to a new small town and tried to cash in my dug coins. I run all dirty coins through a rock tumbler to clean them of dirt. Many are stained dark from being in the ground for extended periods of time. My new bank refused to accept the dark coins as being "unrecognizable". My previous bank had no problem with that. I called the banks home office to question the policy and they weren't very helpful. Are there any other ways, outside of trying to spend them, to cash in the coins? I've tried looking for one of those coin counting machines that I've seen at Walmart, but haven't been able to find one.

jimmyk in Missouri
 
My Bank refuses old ground dug coins too.. Grocery store has a coin cash in machine. It accepts most of them. I put what it does not accept in the charity bank at counter... They look fine but some do not go through the machine for some reason. Charity has no problem accepting them...
 
You think you got it bad just because your coins are dis-colored ?? Wait till you get a few thousand coins from the wet salt inter-tidal zone beach storm results. Those can actually be worn thinner, in addition to being discolored.

So when you put a bunch of beach sand-blasted thin coins into roles (even after tumbling them to shine them up), the result is rolls of coins that aren't as thick as regular rolls of coins !

I took a dozen or so rolls of coins to the bank, to exchange for cash. The teller gal puts a few in plastic fitter tray (where the width is measured to make sure someone didn't short-count rolls). She announces that "there's not $10 worth of quarters in here". I insist that I counted and double counted, so there can't possibly be a shortage. She takes them out and counts one by one, and ..... to her surprise, the count was correct ! However, at the time she's checking them, she becomes aware that the problem is that the coins are thinner! So she calls over a manager. Before long, there's 3 bank employees holding up coins to the light, holding them sideways and squinting, etc.... It was quite a comical scene !

They ended up accepting them, but had to un-roll all my rolls and physically count them out. They were NOT happy with me . Doh!
 
I throw some low sudsing ammonia in my cleaning recipe now.
Gets rid of the dark staining and makes them look like new.
 
I keep a 3M tape round plastic container with dirty coins in the car (the dirtier the better !!) I use them in vending machines often, some machines will give another clean coin back with coin return... way too much work.
 
Sure. But that doesn't solve the problem of when/if your coins are only 1/2 as thick. D/t being in the surf zone for 20 to 40 yrs.
 
The post offices here used to have stamp vending machines in their lobby. And in order to buy , say, a roll of 100 stamps, you'd have to put in $30+ in coins or bills. The electronic counter would be tabulating the cumulative dollar amount of the money you'd put in.

But instead of choose a selection of stamps, if you hit "coin return" instead, the machine would give you back all the coins IN CLEAN COINS ! So I used to use that all the time (at night after 5pm when the counters were closed, but the lobby was still open).

However, one night, when doing my little trick, the machine jammed at $20 or $30. I was un-willing to walk away from my money, so I pressed the buzzer in the lobby, to get a night-clerk to come out. I explained that I had the $$ shown on the display, but was un-able to add more, or make a selection, because it was jammed. So I was asking for my money back. The man took out his keys and opened up the machine to inspect. And ...... you guessed it, .... he saw all my brown and green coins !

Anyone wanna hear the rest of how this story went down ? haha
 
Yes, I do Tom.-----Lay it on us!:)
Tom_in_CA said:
The post offices here used to have stamp vending machines in their lobby. And in order to buy , say, a roll of 100 stamps, you'd have to put in $30+ in coins or bills. The electronic counter would be tabulating the cumulative dollar amount of the money you'd put in.

But instead of choose a selection of stamps, if you hit "coin return" instead, the machine would give you back all the coins IN CLEAN COINS ! So I used to use that all the time (at night after 5pm when the counters were closed, but the lobby was still open).

However, one night, when doing my little trick, the machine jammed at $20 or $30. I was un-willing to walk away from my money, so I pressed the buzzer in the lobby, to get a night-clerk to come out. I explained that I had the $$ shown on the display, but was un-able to add more, or make a selection, because it was jammed. So I was asking for my money back. The man took out his keys and opened up the machine to inspect. And ...... you guessed it, .... he saw all my brown and green coins !

Anyone wanna hear the rest of how this story went down ? haha
Click to expand...
 
Ok, here's the rest of the funny story:

I own a small company. And we send out about 70 or 80 customer bills per month. So I can easily go through a roll of 100 stamps per month. At a certain point, in the early 1990s, I discovered this was the perfect way to quickly get rid of coins. Afterall, you can pump them fast into the machine than you can to roll them in paper wrappers! And the post office charges no fee like coin-star. Thus presto, the perfect solution to putting coins back into circulation, eh ? And at a certain point, realized that by hitting the "return" button, at any point, gave me back clean coins (versus the coins I'd just put in). So it became a combination of buying stamps, plus randomly hitting the return button for any overages.

This went on for about a year. 1x p/month, I'd go down late at night (the lobby doors didn't close till 8 or 9pm), and put $50 or more into the machine .

However, one time, as I say, the machine jammed. The counter read somewhere approaching $30. And I didn't want to walk away from my money. I noticed an after-hours buzzer button in the lobby, so I pressed it. Explained the machine wouldn't let me make a choice of stamps, nor get a return, because it was jammed. The postal worker reached for his keys, to open up the machine. All of the sudden, I'm thinking "oops. I hope he doesn't look at my coins I just put in !" :huh:

He looked through various track mechanisms. And then reached for the coin-tray of recently entered coins. There was a moment of silence ....... :ninja: All of the sudden the guy spun around, stared me deep and hard, and yelled "YOU !!" :look: At first I played dumb , like "what ? What's up?". Then he got specific and said "you've been bringing in all these dirty brown and green coins every month, right ?" I sheepishly admitted it was me (no denying it) :blink:

So he explained the following funny story: He is/was actually the employee tasked with servicing that machine, emptying the contents, and rolling the coins to go to the bank for deposit. And every month ...... like clock-work, he would bump into $50-ish of these odd-ball brown and green coins! He would stop, inspect some, and realize they're actual coins (and not slugs or fakes or whatever). So .... not knowing what else to do, he simply rolled them in with all the other post-office deposits that go to the bank. Hey, afterall, they're legal tender, right ?

That went on for about 6 months, no problem. However, one day, the bank called to complain. The call got routed through several channels and layers of the post-office, till finally the complaint landed on this guy's desk (they traced the dirty coins back to this particular employee's work station or whatever). Eventually the post office's stance to the bank was "that's your problem. They're legit coins. What do you expect us to do with them?"

The reason the bank themselves had complained, was that they , in turn, had been passing coin-rolls on to other consumers/bank patrons. And it was THOSE PATRONS who had come back to the bank to complain. The bank, in turn, traced the deposit # (written on the sides of each role ) back to the post office.

The bank did not have an answer to the post-office. Admitted they apparently could not decline them, because, yet, they were actual coins. So they left the post-office alone, and nothing ever became of it. Yet month after month, this worker kept encountering hundreds of these dis-colored coins, and a mystery "was afoot" at the post office. Everyone wondered where are they coming from?

I was shivering in my boots thinking "I'm in big trouble" :argue: But the other side of me is thinking "I've done nothing wrong, have I ?? :confused:

The guy asks me "where do you get these ??" I explained my hobby of detecting. And he ended up saying he personally doesn't care. And that the bank, apparently, was forced to accept them. He was just more amazed than anything, to finally un-ravel the mystery. We went on to talk about detecting, and how it works, the different brand/type detectors, etc..... But I'll never forget the moment he spun around, looked at me, and yelled YOU !! :blush:
 
n/t
 
OMG great story tom,very funny ..man you know all the shifty angles..very creative.. i use mine in those coin only bins at the toll booths .....
 
The reason I've found for the bank counting machines or Coinstar type machines rejecting is damaged coins...primarily zincolns.

Typically the machines will reject the damaged coin but occasionally it will jam the machine.

Since I quit throwing in zincolns or obviously damaged coins I haven't had any problem with jamming.

With any length of time in the ground, zincolns will get eaten up. Sometimes they may look ok after tumbling but if you run your finger around the rim you'll almost always feel damage.

At least 99% of the time you know a zincoln when you dig one. Any damage and they go straight in my trash pouch and never make it to the tumbler. I have to admit I don't dig that many zincolns because shallow obvious zinc IDs don't get dug. Yeah, I know I may have passed up a gold ring or two but that's the trade off for not digging thousands of shallow zincolns.

Coinstar takes 10.9% of vig on your deposit, but if you get a gift certificate you get full value. They have certs for a lot of big places including Amazon, Home Depot, Lowes, Applebees, Chilis, etc. And occasionally they have bonus offers that give extra value on gift certificates. You can get on their e-mail list and get notification when they have special offers.
 
You can remove most of the stain with tumbling and there are numerous recipes that all work to varying degrees. I use crushed rock instead of aquarium gravel because I have a driveway full of it and it's not as expensive . Lemon juice helps as does washing soda but it still takes some time. Most of my stuff takes 6 to 8 hours and I change the water once or twice. The 3 lb. HF tumbler holds about $50 of non copper coins with enough space for media and expansion.

I took a 3 lb coffee can of zincs to the Coinstar at Wallyworld and it took a10% cut and gave back about 25% of the coins I put through it.....I think I ended up with about $24:thumbup:
 
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