Yebbut you're only 13 and as such can be forgiven for thinking only of yourself. :whistle: "Oh clear and irreproachable conscience, how bitter is the sting of one small lapse!" - Dante
on a much smaller scale, about a year a go i was visiting a branch for a bank i work for. the manager pulled me aside asked if I'd like to see some coins she was trying to get rid of. Out of drawer filled with 'junk' she pulled some gold eagles totaling an ounce ( 1/2,1/4,3 x 1/10) and several silver eagles. she had to get rid of them because the auditor came in and made them take them out of their money supply. they removed them from their vault and had been storing them in the drawer. no one knew where they came from as they had been sitting in the vault for a couple years. i suspect it was a similar case and some one brought them in not know what they had. anyway, i picked them up for face value.
The teller could have done several things: 1 - tell the woman that the coins were worth a lot more than face value 2 - Call the bank manager over and have him/her discuss the issue and a resolution with the woman. 3 - Ordinary honesty. It's not in short supply. People are generally honest, and must be especially so in public institutions such as banks.
you assume most people in banking are up to speed on collected coins and they are not. Take a ASE to bank and ask them what is and how much it's worth. my guess is most will not know and most will say it's worth $1. most tellers, or bank managers don't do a lot of gold trading. just saying, it's probably not an honesty issue. More a lack of knowledge from the person giving up the coins and the same on the bank side.
I disagree with this. I worked at a bank and as a teller your job is to exchange cash at it's face value determined by the US government. You are not an appraiser of coins. By doing so, you are not doing your job while on the clock and are affectingly stealing from the company you work for. What would I have done...I honestly don't know. Plus, how many bank teller are knowledgeable about coins.
I'm not sure if double eagles are demonitized currency, but if they're not, the bank is obligated to trade them at face by law. Guy~
Double Eagles have not been demonitized. (It's only the 1933 Double Eagles that you can't own.) Even Trade Dollars are once again legal tender after the Coinage Act of 1965.
They are not demonitized, and they are no obligated to take them at all, but if they do them they take them at face value. I've seen that done with silver coins and silver dollars only to have the customer tell them they don't want to go to the bother. Just give them the face value.
Exactly. They can refuse them if they want because a bank is a private business but they can't offer more than face for them. The teller's job is to exchange face value.
Latest Story from the local news. I was reading the local news and I saw that they have caught the gal that cashed in the coins. If you guessed they were stolen you were right. http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=6040031 PS. Congrats to me my 1000th post maybe I'll have to do a contest, got ideas?
Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. Spending silver is one thing...but gold is far too valuable even for the stereotypical "old lady" type to spend.
I'm not surprised. It seemed odd that a young woman would have these coins without knowing their potential value.