I've never done this, but the other day i went in to the bank and got $4 worth of cents to go through my album. It was fun to see what each roll contained. The rolls had clear plastic covering them so you could see the coin edges, decreasing the surprise value, but it was still fun. After I was done examining and sorting them, I looked at my fingers and they were black! It took some good scrubbing to get them clean again. None of the coins looked "dirty", but I guess they were. No telling where they've been, I guess. Acer0001
you ought to see my fingers after going through 100 buffalo nickels at the dealer booth! did you find any wheats in the rolls?
same with me well,can anybody say what causes this? its not just dirt from peoples fingers its almost metalic any ideas?
It's a mixture - primarily dirt from people's fingers. But there is also a lot of very fine metal from all of the coins rubbing against one another.
I did the same thing with cotton gloves, and noticed a very distinctive green color, ?probably from copper's corrosion/patina consisting of copper sulfates?....Mike
I recently went through $300 in brand spanking new 2007D nickels and my fingers still turned black. Besides the dirt, it's also the metal wearing off the coins. Yes, searching rolls is a very dirty job, I'm thinking of submitting it as an idea to the Dirty Jobs show on Discovery, but then realize I don't want to get too many more people involved, otherwise all my good finds will suddenly dry up.
There is a lot of oxidation from coming in contact and reacting with different metals. If you ever look at a machine that has an aluminum part next to a stainless steel one, you'll see what I mean. A black powdery substace starts to build up. Considering all the places our coins travel through, I'm sure they sit in bins made of various metals for lengthy periods. As has already been mentioned, oils from handling, changing the pH balance on the surface, doesn't help.
