What do you do with your degraded zincolns

[DirtAngler]

Getting ready to take my clad for the year to the coin machine, but what do you do with your badly deteriorated zincolns?

 

[BarberBill]

I throw the really bad ones in the trash. It's amazing how quickly zincs corrode and go to pot.
BB

 

[Flintstone]

You guys throw away alot of your hard to dig money. I have always rolled mine and marked " BAD" on the roll and took them to the bank and had them sent back to the mint. They are U.S. money and the mint wants to make them that way then they can give me good money for them. I always get about $100.00 or $125.00 in zincolns. I could get alot more but just don,t dig them all. Ask your bank if you have bad money if they send it back to mint, if not they can tell you what bank dose. TRY IT, get something for your hard work. Flintstone

 

[Critterhunter]

One thing not to do is dump them in those Coin Star machines at the grocery store where you then get paper money for your coins. I saw a show a while back on that company and one of the reasons they charge 9 cents on the dollar is because they wash, polish, clean, and sort all the coins with machines at the warehouse. They then send any coins not deemed in good enough shape back to the US Mint and get them exchanged. For that reason I feel they provide a service. To me it's too much trouble to tumble my clad to shine them up, and I hate rolling coins, so to me it's worth the 9 cents on the dollar not to have to do that and just dump them in the machine. I wash my coins in a bucket of warm soapy water to get the dirt/crud off, but because they polish the coins I don't need to shine them up so it's worth it to me.

But, one lesson I learned- any coins in real bad shape, which usually means zincs unless you dug another coin that has been hit by a lawnmower or something, will jam the machine up. Those machines do a great job of spitting out bad coins, as the public will dump everything from washers to anything else you can imagine in those machines, so they had to build them to handle most junk and spit it back out. Yet, despite all that, a few times I've had the machine jam due to zincs that were ate up bad. The clerk will come over and unjam it in seconds but it's still something I have no wish to risk doing, so these days soon as I dig a ate up zinc it goes right into my trash pouch and not my keepers pouch. Since I started doing that I've never had a problem with dumping my clad finds into the Coin Star machines after I give them a good soak in warm soapy water. Also, make sure they are dry good before sticking them in the machine.

 

[BarberBill]

Flintstone - I didn't know one could do that with the bad zincs. Who says an old dog can't learn a new trick?
BB

 

[BarberBill]

Another thought concerning zincs. For some time I would skip digging any coin that discriminated out or displayed "zinc". Then I read a forum entry that pointed out small gold etc. often comes in at the same level. The next outing I began diggin zincs again and the third one turned out to be a small, black hills gold ring. Picked up several more goodies the same way over the years. I'm a little bummed having to accept and dig zincs just like tabs, but to be sure you aren't missing a goodie, dig 'em.
BB

 

[Roscue2]

I roll them and send them to the bank. Money is money to me.

 

[mudpuppy]

I've been saving those rotten ones for some reason, got several of those plastic coffee cans half full of them. ( I stab those rotten zinc signals hoping for a gold ring) I'll check at the bank and see if they have a "bad money" program...sheesh, if they give penny for a penny, and so on and so forth up the denomination scale, we wont have to dump anything in the coinstar, Critter! 'course, rolling all that clad IS a pantload for sure.
Mud

 

[Flintstone]

The banks that do send back money are larger banks, small banks sometimes don,t get enough to do that. They do give penny for penny. I have been doing this for years, as long as you can still tell that it is a penny, they will take it. I wait till i get $50.00 or $6o.00 worth so the banks have enough to send, one roll or two they will need to keep for a long time to get enough to send. Try it get something for me with all that bad money. Good Luck Flintstone

 

[Flintstone]

Roscue, you should tell them that it is bad money so they don,t send it back out as change to stores. If they start getting complaints then they will stop taking it. That will hurt us all.

 

[Tom Slick]

I leave mine where they lay by notching them out on my V3i. I can hear it now " if you discriminate out the Zinc pennies you'll miss rings!" Oh, you're welcome to any rings I miss by not digging Zincs.