People make mistakes all the time when they sell things. Having knowledge about what you're buying gives you an advantage over a seller who really doesn't know what they have.
The more knowledge you have, the larger your advantage.
Take collectible coins, for example. Knowing the key years and mint marks — that is, the hard-to-find ones — can mean an instant profit if the seller doesn't realize he or she has one. They might sell a 1921 Peace dollar for a fraction of what it's worth.
The less you know …
As silly as a pawnbroker not knowing the key mint marks to common coins might be, some people know far less than that.
They don't even know that they should sell the coins they have. They just spend them or deposit them in their bank accounts.
A cashier at a liquor store told me about a man who had paid for his alcohol with Morgan dollars. (No … really!) Technically, Morgan dollars are still legal tender and have a face value of one dollar, but man, it was shortsighted to spend them like that. The guy ended up paying well over $100 — possibly over $200! — for an $11 or $12 bottle of whiskey.
“Gee, these coins sure are funny-looking …”
A friend of mine goes around to banks local to him and gets several hundred dollars worth of loose coins to “treasure hunt.” I tried this a couple of times and completely struck out, but my friend has been more persistent. He's told me of a few instances when he's found a few older coins in the piles.
Recently, though, he got a bag of halves and hit the mother lode.
The first handful of halves he pulled out of the bag had not one, not two, but three silver coins in it.
As did pretty much every other handful he pulled out.
He pulled out around eighty silver half dollars from that bag. Not just 40% and 90% Kennedy half dollars, but some Walking Liberty halves as well.
Hundreds of dollars worth of silver coins — melt value, not collector's value! — that some poor guy deposited in a bank, for which he was credited about $40. Ouch!
“… I wonder if they're worth something? Naaaaahhhh!”
What's disheartening is that the person who deposited them either didn't look at them at all, or worse, saw the different designs and didn't bother to investigate further.
Not that I'm immune to mistakes, of course, but I find it hard to believe that the coins came into the person's possession by accident. The concentration of the coins suggests that they were part of an estate. Mightn't they have merited a hair of due diligence?
But … that's water under the bridge for that guy, and into the well for my friend, who hit the jackpot.
How to find your own bank withdrawal jackpot
Here are a few tips for partaking in this treasure hunt:
- Cover the area. Banks are more than happy to give you a checking account. (They want your business, after all!) The more places you have access to large quantities of coins, the better.
- Be aware of fees. Some banks charge a “box fee” to customers because people have been abusive in the amount of coins they've transacted. Paying to withdraw coins is not a good wager in terms of payoff.
- Make nice with the staff. As with many things, being pleasant and enthusiastic about unusual coins and currency goes a long way.
- Know what you're looking for. Are you looking for silver? Are you looking for wheat cents or Indian head cents? Are you looking for errors? People who go through halves, quarters, and dimes for silver coins can usually just hear the difference shuffling them from one hand to another. (Silver coins have a duller ring than non-silver coins.) But looking for wheat cents means looking at each coin individually, or separating the 95% copper ones with a fairly expensive machine, and then looking at only those in detail. Errors are even more labor-intensive and require close inspection.
- Don't be a jerk. Pulling out $1,500 in halves, going through them, and returning $1,498.50 of them back to the same bank, repeatedly, will be frowned upon very quickly. (Handling deposits and withdrawals is an expense for the bank. They make their money on loans, not dead-lifting coins for you.) They'll either stop helping you out, or (worse) give you the same set of coins over and over again. Better to spend the majority of it back into the local economy a bit at a time.
It doesn't happen all the time, or even regularly, that people deposit valuable coins by mistake. (Hint: Don't be the guy who makes the mistake.)
It happens even less often that people withdraw that money, either by chance or on purpose.
But when it does happen, it can happen big — jackpot-level big!
Great.. Bank always try to steal our money
Hi John!
At an estate auction I came across over 100 rolls of 1981 D Lincoln Memorial Pennies, bank rolled (crimped on both ends) I’m guessing originally purchased from the bank because that was the last year they were 95% copper. They were in a canvas bank bag and sealed in a container- untouched for 41 years. After some research I opened a roll to see if I could detect the “pinwheel” effect -very easy to see on each coin even though some coins have dark spots on them. I believe the rolls are uncirculated. I sell collectables online, do these rolls really have value to collectors above face value? They are selling for $4-$8 per roll!! Glad I found your site, I bought your Fancy Serial Numbers book. Any info you have about my pennies would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
Thanks for getting my ebook! I hope you enjoy it!
That sounds like a great deal you got. I’m not quite as well-versed in coins but you do already seem to have one answer to how much they’re worth ($4-$8 per roll). People are willing to pay that for the roll without seeing the condition, whether there are errors, etc. So check the one that you opened to see if you have any really good ones in there!
Have fun!