What banks throw away...

I have made friends with the tellers at my bank and they have begun saving any foreign coins they find for me. They said that normally they would simply toss these coins in the trash. These are the coins that their coin-counter spits out into a reject slot when customers cash in their coin jars (very similar to a coinstar machine).

The thought of money being thrown away is disturbing, not only because of collector value but because someone somewhere out there could really use this money.

Obviously, the majority of this is Canadian coins (I have, to date, $98.54 canadian from this process). But some of the other coins are somewhat mysterious as to how they got into circulation in the US to begin with. These include British Pennies and Half Pennies from the early 1800s, oddly shaped Asian and Israli coins, extremely small Soviet Russian coins, British Pound coins, and large Austrlian twenty-cent pieces.

In the process I have also gotten a few Mercury dimes, standing liberty quarters, and V nickels which were mistaken as foreign because of their design and wear.

Have any of you gathered a collection like this? Do you ever wonder if foreign banks toss out American coins? How do you think some of these stranger pieces got into circulation here in the US?

 

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my bank saves me all this stuff too. so far i have $43 ish CAD and 27 ish EUR, as well as several Ike dollars that would have been thrown away!

 

these banks just give you these coins for free?

 

yes because they are required to throw them away otherwise. if any employee keeps them they could get fired and if the bank keeps them it messes up their cash count

 

Throwing away Ike dollars? These are legal tender!

I know that my bank has to send them away with Susan B's and other obsolete coins/bills for melting/shredding by the Feds so that they can be replaced. That is, unless someone like me comes along and takes them before this can happen.

As far as the foreign coins go, yes they are given to me for free. You should ask your own bank about saving them for you, you may be pleasantly shocked at what you'll get. I forgot to mention that I have also gotten tax tokens this way.

 

Tourism?

 

I did a similar thread on this a while back and you know I never asked if they could save them for me. I will on Mon and I hope they will

 

the Ike dollars get stuck in the counting machine, they arent counted but they dont come out of the reject slot. because it doesnt belong to the bank, and it doesnt belong to any employee, they have to either give them to the customer or throw them away.

 

After Canadian coins, of course, the next most common country to find coins from in roll searches, coin machines, from banks is Great Britain. Right now I have about 10 quid in coin, mostly 1p, 5p and 20p because of their similarity in size to US coins.

 

Are you using local community banks or branches of larger banks? I think I'd be too embarrassed to ask for this. It seems like it's asking a lot of them to do that for you and they wouldn't want to be bothered.

 

i use United Missouri Bank

 

Well I didn't ask right off. It's the bank I am in every day for work deposits and also where I do my personal banking. They were very friendly when I asked if I could have some $1 coins and $2 bills as part of my withdrawals and they began saving them for me. Later I asked if they ever got foreign coins and what they did with them. When I learned they throw them out I asked if they could save then for me instead and thus started the tradition.

 

I was talking more along the lines of how some of these coins got into common circulation which is how banks end up with them (canadian coins being so similar in size they can be circulated for some time before someone pays attention and notices that they are not American). I can't imagine a cashier getting a large Australian 20 cent piece or some hexagonal Asian coin and passing it on to someone else in change without one or both of them taking notice. I would see this as being just as likely as seeing that you somehow got a bright blue Canadian polymer $5 bill in your change without noticing.

 

You do know most people here have no idea what the heck a "quid" is, right?

 

people dump them in the machines, then leave them in the reject slot or, at my bank, they go to the reject bag on the inside of the machine. as for paper money, tourists trade it for american money at banks. there are a lot of Italian and German people in my area, so usually the banks will have a few hundred Euros traded in by visiting family members or tourists, and sometimes several hundred Canadian dollars. sometimes they get $1CAD bills, and i buy those at exchange rate + 3% (so far i have 3, one from 1954 and two from the '80s). they never have $2CAD bills though.

 

I think that's a smart way to ask. Instead of saying "hey can you save coins for me?", I like the idea of asking "when you find foreign coins, what do you do with them?" and as a follow-up "I have heard other banks may throw them away, and I would hate to see that given that I am a coin collector". Opens up the conversation a bit, and they may even offer to save them for you without you having to directly ask. Think I will give this a try tomorrow at my bank and see how it goes...

 

i actually asked the vault manager why she was throwing money away when i saw her dump a bag of coins out of the machine into the trash can. thats how i started

 

Inspired by this thread I asked the vault teller at one of my credit unions if she had any "monetary trash":

Trash to them, I hoard Ikes, the SF mint medal was from when the mint was open to the public before the 1991 Earthquake - kind of surprised someone would dump that in the coin hopper but they did.

 

have fun finding ikes! in 2 years ive been doing this, ive gotten over 80, i'd say thats pretty good.

 

Oh I have many many more than you do