Unethical or misleading, which is it?

The Description heading (Ebay of course) says,
"Bank Wrapped Shotgun Roll of 40 Mixed Date Unsearched Buffalo Nickels Lot Coins"

Reading down further in the finer print I see,
"You are looking at an unsearched bank wrapped shotgun roll of 40 Mixed Date Buffalo Nickels.
Each buy it now is for one roll.
We purchased several bags of buffalo nickels from various collectors accross the country and had them rolled into tightly crimped shotgun rolls."

Question? How does that constitute an unsearched roll if they were loose and the guy who is selling them is who had them rolled?

 

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It doesn't.

Both.

 

"Unsearched" is a word sellers add into their titles/descriptions, hoping it would bring more bidders and higher winning bid. It does not mean the coins were not searched for key dates and/or errors, especially when the coins come from "various collectors". It doesn't mean you won't find any, but the chances are the same as finding a 3-legged MS buffalo in circulation.

 

"Unsearched" as it pertains to coins means as much as "Natural" does to processed foods.

I usually take the word "unsearched" to mean the current owner is claiming they have not searched the coins for key dates or varieties. But since that's largely impossible to verify, I don't put much faith in it. Even a lot of the auctions selling older mint sets in a "sealed envelope" are meaningless since most of those envelopes weren't actually "sealed" by the mint.

With all this in mind, I can see things from their perspective. While the coins came from a bag from who knows where, the coins themselves might not be searched by the seller. They might just blindly take the bags from wherever they purchased them to the bank and have them rolled. Voilà - Instant "Bank Wrapped Shotgun Roll of 40 Mixed Date Unsearched Buffalo Nickels Lot Coins". Heck, I have a lot of coins that I have not searched for varities or key dates. I bought most of them for melt value, so I can only assume the person before me did. I wouldn't advertise them as "unsearched", but if someone asked me, I'd tell them I've treated them as bullion coins.

 

It's funny how you will see listings that say "unsearched wheat cent roll, IHC one one side and V.D.B. cent one the other side!" Well, if there is an Indian Head Cent on one side, how do you know it's an unsearched roll of wheats, and not an unsearched roll of Indians?

 

Stating that it is bank wrapped is both misleading and unethical, but just because he got a bag of them doesn't mean that they are searched. I've looked through multiple loose lots of coins from the original owner that are truly unsearched. Just thought I'd add that but in this case there is 99% chance it is searched.

 

Why is that? You can take a bag of coins to a full service bank and ask them to roll them for you.

Are there people out there who assume "bank wrapped" coins came from deep inside a neglected corner of a bank vault? Or that they've been in the same rolls since buffalo nickels were in circulation?

 

I saw an unsearched wheat roll with a Roman coin on one end... the things some people do...

 

Ok, I think that one definitely wins "most absurd".

 

There seems to be one seller who lists most of these odd wheat rolls...

 

Whether it is or not, most important thing is to always read everything EVERYTHING. At least was forth right on where they came from, its up to the buyer to buy or pass.

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I agree.

Unless you have a time machine, you got to think of all the possibilities Taxidermist.

 

You can purchase large lots of common dates in bulk, no point in searching them. Shop owner once told me if you want to find something special go to some god-forsaken town in the middle of nowhere that has not had an armored truck on it's streets ever. Sometimes those places have been passing around the same money for 50+years within their borders. Anything you buy from a coin dealer was searched by someone somewhere along the line, sometimes they miss things but you will get a better return buying the change out of the registers in that little town.

 

I bought a large lot of wheat era cents at auction last summer (102 rolls). They were part of an estate sale here, and those were the only rolls of pennies I've ever purchased that I truly believed to be unsearched. I'd say 99% of what's on eBay has either been searched by the seller or is part of a pre-searched lot that the seller has purchased and split up.

On a side note, I searched about 85 of my rolls and sold the rest on eBay. I found some common but older teens and two 1909 VDBs. I sold a guy two rolls, he finds two 1909 VDBs and some other semi-key dates. At least he left good feedback, right?

 

I have bought some lots of wheats on ebay a few years back, advertised as pre 1940 it was unrolled(by weight i think.. maybe $1 worth). I was actually very happy with them. I filled alot of holes in my collection at the time and ended up with about half in the teens, some in decent shape. You just have to go into it knowing that you are buying hole fillers and if you find something good it is a bonus.

 

It's misleading and unethical because the seller states they are bank wrapped in the title, but in the description, he states that he rolled them by hand.

 

No, he says "had them rolled", strongly implying that they were machine-wrapped. As another poster stated, he could have had a bank do it.

It's misleading and unethical if he did search them first. If he didn't, it's just kind of dumb, because anyone can see that there's no way to verify what he did or didn't do.

 

YES!!! Very much so. That is the true meaning and my expectation when someone writes 'unsearched bank roll of nickels.' To me anything else, outside the exceptions below, is fraudulent and I would expect a judge to agree. I have indeed both purchased and acquired through inheritance old bank wrapped rolls which I believe fit the description of old unsearched bank rolls.

<No, you are too late, I have already opened them and searched them. >

I base that expectation on knowing the history of most of the ones I inherited (actually watched Dad in 63 buy the rolls at the Dollar Savings Bank, then put those rolls in a box when he got home, got the box with the rolls still in them in 93, finally yielded to temptation and searched them in 09) and a sense of certain dealers having sold me exactly what it was supposed to be. Also noting really old rolls (materials consistent with what I had inherited) and some rarer coins which I am reasonably confident a numismatic oriented collector would not have let pass so cheaply if the rolls had been searched.

Now, amongst other things from other folks on several occasions I acquired loose bins of coins. They may have searched them, but I haven't. 100s of pounds of them so the searching has been slow. I have also got about 400 - 500 rolls someone else searched, then put in paper rolls. When I sell those on Ebay, which I sometimes have, I am very careful to state someone else wrapped the rolls, but they should consider them as having been picked through and the coins inside are probably average.

I agree that the seller whose ad I quoted is technically honest in that he mentions he is who had the bank roll the coins, but only in the details, which many bidders never bother to check. However, from my perspective his ad, because of UNSEARCHED in large bold letters in the ad heading, is both misleading and unethical.

 

You mean this one?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ancient-Rom...77?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item5af209fc1d

 

If it is truly unsearched but of newer style wrapper material (I have seen many older rolls that have the name of the bank printed right on them, mostly pre-1970 rolls) how does the seller know there are no Memorial pennies in there? I have often wondered about that.