Sneaky tellers

I'm a retired CPA and some of our clients are banks. During one of our audits, I was required to review/observe tellers, mainly, to see if the follow the banks processes. In one of my audits, I was assigned that task of watching the tellers. They were told by management that we were perspective employees. During my observation, I noticed one teller taking something from their drawer and putting it in their purse and then taking something from her purse and putting it in her drawer. I didn't say anything to her, but at the end of our review of the bank, we reported to the manager our findings for clarification prior to our publishing our report. I had reviewed the personnel handbook and saw that there were two violations of the personnel policy. One was that their purses were to be locked in the employees break room in their assigned file cabinet. The other was that that there was to be no exchanging coins or currency from their drawer. This employee broke two of their personnel policies and was terminated. Based on my experience with banks and credit unions, I am surprised that a teller would make a personal exchange of coins. There may not be any wrong, but the appearance may be misinterpreted by a customer. Before you ask a teller to make any coin exchanges, you may want to make sure it is all right with the Head Teller or manager.

 

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Most people, I think.

 

You can tell the teller what to look for, it doesn't tell them what it's worth and in many cases, even if they did hang onto a coin or two to check it out, they more than likely will set it aside never to do anything with it and ignore any more they see. It's not their "thing" until they really get into it. For the most part, coin collecting isn't going to make anyone rich. It's a few and far reach between those really expensive coins and most all the others. Even the most expensive ones don't typically see the million dollar mark. I was just reading about a recent (relatively speaking) auction of a copper 1943 and it only sold for 222K! Well within the boundaries a medium income collector.

 

...dang, you make me feel poor

 

Ummm .........

 

Just my two-cents:

In general, tellers fall into two categories. 1) They are savvy or 2) They don't care.

I have had tellers give up silver dollars, an ASE coin, all sorts of red seals, blue seals, I've even had tellers give me brown and gold seals. These are all no-joke. I have gotten all these things from bank tellers. These were from tellers that just don't care. They know the stuff has a bit of value to it, and regardless they just don't want to bother.

But there are also the tellers that already know. They can be polite about it, but they know what's up. Tellers have told me stories about the rolls of silver they have at home, and all the other goodies they've come across over the years.

Happy hunting

 

Just bought 19 1964 Kennedy halves the other week from a teller who knew they were "old silver". She just didn't care!

 

When I got a jackpot half dollar score a few years ago, I was thinking the tellers were just unaware of the silver content because the denomination doesn't circulate much. But as I was getting ready to leave, one of them recommend I check out Cherry Picker's Guide to see if any of the coins I'd just bought were valuable.

I've had tellers offer up silver coins, knowing what they were. The couple that I've asked "why don't you just keep them?" have answered something like "we like to treat our customers well" to "by the time I bought the coins, took them to a coin dealer and got paid for them, the $5-$10 profit wouldn't be worth my time".

 

I think that's a very good point. For the general public, they don't want to invest the time in making a $5 profit on every 90% half they find. They may not know where they can do it. And they may not have the hoarding personality to keep a stash.

We, on the other hand, know exactly where to sell our silver and we most certainly having the hoarding/stashing/collecting mentality.