My CRH'ing days are over :-(

It's not the "buying" of coins that is abusive; it is the taking back. If you honestly can't see that, I pity your lack of perspective and empathy.

 

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+1

 

Empathy? For whom, the executive of my bank who makes $1.5 million dollars a year? I'm supposed to feel guilty that he has to pay a teller for a task that takes no more than 2 minutes a week while he makes probably hundreds of dollars in profit every year loaning out the money I have sitting in his bank?

 

Well there you go. Your money is NOT being loaned out. If it were, every dollar of it wouldn't be constantly available to you; yet it is. When your bank makes a loan, it creates NEW money, not just once in a while, but EVERY time it makes a loan.

 

The bottom line is that the bank NEEDS the deposits of it's customers to stay in business. They also need more of their customers to keep their money in their bank than to withdraw it. So regardless of whether I have money available to me in theory, my keeping it in the bank accrues more to the bank's advantage than my advantage (and for the past 30 years my deposits have far outweighed my withdrawals). You talk about this all as if it's a one way street where the banks provide all kinds services for us and get nothing in return.

You still also haven't explained to me for whom I am so lacking in empathy. If it's not the CEO of the bank, is it the teller who thanks me for buying her CWR rolls? Or the bank manager who knows that I co-collect with my 11 year old son and just last month personally went through all the teller trays looking for the latest ATB quarter because he knew my son was looking for the latest one? He gets very excited every time I bring my son in to buy rolls and jokes about him getting a job at the bank when he is older (my son says he wants to be a banker).

What bothers me here is not the fact you think some or even most coin roll hunters push the envelope when it comes to the services they are expecting surrounding coins from banks. What bothers me is the implication that there is something almost unethical about coin roll hunting. Not sure what else to think when you categorize all of it as "abusive". I'm still trying to figure out whom the victim of my abuse is.

You seem to want to limit abuse to "taking coins back". I assume you don't think it's abusive to cash out my child's piggy bank and "take those coins back", correct? Is it only "abusive" if I got them from another bank first and hunted through them? If so, then the next thing I would say is that's it's really no business of a bank what I do with the money I exchange, whether I am taking them in or back, whether I got them from another bank, from my child's piggy bank, or just from a coin drawer where they have been collecting for months or years.

Certainly if a customer is abusing ANY service (coin exchanging or otherwise) where a bank realizes a particular customer is costing them more money to service them than they are gaining from their deposits, then they certainly have a right to set rules and limits on what they will do for that customer. But to categorize all coin roll hunting as "abusive" is simply over the top.

 

It's fantastically simple, yet you continue to try to argue merely for the sake of arguing. "Buying" coins in order to search through them and redeposit them in a cyclical manner is flat out abusive to the banking system, and just being ornery arguing about it merely proves you don't mind being abusive. Maybe you need it to make yourself feel special or appreciated. I'm not going to do a DSM-IV diagnosis for you. The fact is banks have a purpose, and facilitating numismatic rummaging is simply NOT one of them.

Any fee they want to impose, on the way in or the way out, is completely okay with me, and I mean ANY fee. There is an equilibrium price for facilitating CRH; let's see what it is.

 

I am not arguing "for the sake of arguing". You started the debate by injecting yourself into a conversation I was having with someone else and claiming that ALL CRHunting is abusive. All I kept try to ask is who is the victim of this abuse and I couldn't seem to get a straight answer. Since everyone involved in my own experience of limited coin roll hunting seems happy (me, my son, my teller and my bank manager) I guess you've now been able to narrow down the victim of my abuse to this nebulous non-personal entity called the "banking system". Ok, whatever. As long as no PEOPLE feel I am abusing or lacking empathy for them due to my little hobby I guess I can live with that accusation.

 

You want to know who you're abusing? Every retailer customer who has ever suffered a change shortage at a branch.

By the way, check the stuff under our posts. I see 'likes" on mine and a +1 from @Seattlite86. I don't see any approval being registered under yours.

Seems your opinion might be the one under the low roof on the bell curve.

 

Really?? You call me the one just seeking to win an argument and now you're counting likes and bragging you're getting more of them than me?

I think the very fact that there is a whole forum here for Coin Roll Hunting would undermine your argument that most people agree with you that it's an abusive hobby. But even if I'm wrong about that, I don't really care. I'm not here to accrue likes or win a popularity contest.

I don't think there is any point in continuing this discussion about whether all CRHunting is abuse. I think we both have made our opinions clear and I'm certainly not going to shift into a new argument about whether more people here agree with you or me. I don't really care.

 

Don't get too wrapped up in what sections do or don't exist. There's a bullion section here, and we both know that really has nothing to do with numismatics either.

 

Wait, did you really just imply that CRH has nothing to do with numismatics?

I feel about the same way you do about industrial-volume box-shredding, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who got a good part of his start in the hobby from searching rolls of "pennies" for wheats and S-mints...

 

Not at all. CRH is just the part of the hobby I outgrew about 50 years ago. The only CRH I do today is to hunt through BU rolls that I own for varieties, such as 1970-S small date cents and such.

I almost went blind hunting for 1969-S doubled dies. I had a PILE of 1969-S rolls. Found a W-I-D-E machine double that darn near required the portable defibrillator.

My dad was a small retailer. I got to "search and replace" a lot. I'm old enough to remember people SPENDING PL Morgans as just a dollar.

My dad ALSO taught me that it is NOT okay to abuse a business or a system for "free stuff" just because they might be rich or powerful. It used to be called "common courtesy", but I understand it's not so "common" any more.

 

Upthread comment, and a correct one.

 

Maybe this spring I will plant a tree to compensate for all the boxes and roll papers I have gone through!

 

Keep Hunting my friends....

 

Right. That comment of Steve's was a little out of line. He was sounding pretty good until he lost his head and bailed out on it. Just my opinion I guess I share with you...

 

Ten years ago I was treasurer of a PTA at an elementary school in Southern California and we banked at Wells Fargo. We were charged so much per roll of coins we deposited. The bank would not accept unwrapped coins. I did change banks while I was treasurer.

 

What did I say that was out of line? V. Kurt says I am abusing banks for "free stuff". What exactly is the "free stuff"? The valuable coins or silver I might find? It's not like the banks couldn't cull that stuff if they wanted to but it's not worth their time. How is my getting a silver coin from a bank their loss? If I don't pull it out of circulation it will just get passed along to some other customer. How is the bank the loser here?

 

I like everything you said. Don't ruin it by flying off and suggesting they make a pile of money so they deserve to be taken advantage of. They make that pile of money for a reason, they're worth it. Even if they weren't worth it, it's not their business, supplying coin to customers to play around with, then give back to them. They do that for us, it's a gift, not a right.

 

I'm not saying I'm entitled to a bank's services simply BECAUSE they make a lot of money. If I believed that then I'd be saying I should have the right to walk into ANY bank (customer or not) and expect them to make change for me. I'm talking about MY bank where I am a customer and have had between 40 and 50 thousand dollars sitting in a savings account now for over 25 years (money I certainly could have invested elsewhere with a better return). But a financial advisor told me years ago to always have six months living expenses available in a savings account to deal with unexpected job loss. Well I never did lose my job (not yet at least), so my bank has made out pretty well by me keeping a balance like that for the past 25 years. Sure, that was my choice to keep that money earning almost no interest in a savings account. Nevertheless when it comes to bottom line dollars, my bank has made FAR more of a profit from me than any tiny cost they have accrued after 2 years of me coin roll hunting at about 10-12 rolls every week or two. So to categorize my bank as the poor victim of my abuse here seems beyond preposterous to me. This is not about how much money my bank has per se, it's about the fact that part of their profits are based on MY money sitting in their bank. Sure in the whole scheme of things my money alone represents a miniscule fraction of their profitable bottom line, but it's also true that the cost they are accruing for providing coins to me is an even tinier fraction when it comes to their total operating costs. I can't believe there are people on this forum who can't understand basic math. My bank has made far more money from me than it has cost them to service me, yet there are people who will look at that and call me the abuser and the bank the victim.

Coin roll hunting is NEITHER a gift nor a right. Asking for coins for any reason is related to the financial services that a bank provides. How far they are willing to go providing services depends on how much they want you as a customer. It's like any other business.

In order to edge out it's main competitor for business, one of the grocery stores in my town started providing services like delivering groceries to your car for it's customers. Is that delivery service a right or a privilege? It's neither. A privilege implies the store is giving the customer something but getting nothing in return. But that's not the case. It's getting new customers who will keep giving them their business. On the other hand, a right implies the store owes me that service, but it does not. It's about a MUTUALLY satisfying business relationship where each side's needs are being supplied and both are benefiting from the arrangement. As soon as one side feels they are getting a bum deal they are free to sever that relationship. It's got nothing to do with rights, privileges, abuse or empathy. My point has NEVER been that expecting a bank to provide coins to it's customers is a RIGHT. But I also reject that it's a PRIVILEGE. I'm saying it's a REASONABLE expectation for a long standing customer who has regularly maintained a high balance in their account and does not ask for coins in exorbitant quantities.