...and it's so crazy, it just might work. We all dream of going into a bank and scoring a box or bag of coins that has been sitting in their vault since 1964. But, of course that's not going to happen at any bank in the US. What about Cuba? There might be banks in Cuba that have US coins that have been sitting in storage since before the Cold War. Maybe $10 face value, or maybe $500. Who knows. I also don't know what might have been mandated by the Cuban government for any such coins or currency during the Cold War. Perhaps they were melted down to make Cuban coins, or melted and sold, or maybe they've been sitting in a bag or a box for 50+ years. I don't think there's enough chance of a big score to justify flying to Cuba, but if anyone is already planning to go there on vacation or business, it certainly might be worth checking out.
Got my tickets already . . . Not. My guess is that all US money disappeared into powerful Cuban hands very shortly after relations were severed.
Don't know if this fits, but there is a bass lake in Cuba that hasn't been fished since the pre-Castro days...uh...one of those bass might have swallowed a coin.
All the big money, yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt. How many "powerful" people are going to bother with rolls, boxes, or bags of coins? Zero. They likely raided the banks and took all the $100 bills in $10k stacks and left the bags of coins. The government or the banks might have done something with them for the silver, but top level people? Nah... And no, like I said in the OP, I don't think it would be worth a trip just for the possibility of a score, but Americans are traveling to Cuba again. If one of us finds our way there, might as well check out a few banks.
Not necessarily full, but years ago I read an article about a lake in Cuba that had had some near record bass taken out of...now these lakes have been there awhile, so...
Don't forget that, when Americans could last freely travel to Cuba, the average American salary was only 1/20 what it is today. $5 bills would have been commonly spent, $20 bills quite scarce, and $100 bills downright rare at the time. I suspect that far more purchases were paid for with pocket change than you imagine. Coupled with the fact that all Cubans would since have converted their pesos to USD at every opportunity to buy more of the rationed goods they needed on the black market, there is little chance that US coinage has somehow sat underappreciated all of those years. The above is written, not to discourage anyone, but to get the delusional to think twice before hopping a plane to get rich quick. As you implied, Opportunistically checking the banks if already there for some other reason would be harmless enough.
Could there be valuable US coins in Cuba? I suppose so. I don't see how there would be a greater chance of finding them then in the US though. There are many rural parts of the US I would guess are more likely to have valuable US coins. Now if you want to search for a valuable Cuban coin then yes go to Cuba.
Mid last year I bought up some $40 in cents at my local bank that a depositor had just brought in from an estate. All of them were rolled up in 1964, the 64's were all BU. There were a lot of wheats, about 35% of the coins were wheat, but only went back to 1918. There were numerous late 40s and early 50s red BU cents also. As for Cuba, they had coins beginning in 1916, before that they used the Spanish colonial coins or American coins. But they only used US paper money from the end of Spanish rule until ca. 1935 - so there are good possibilities with paper money. Being illegal to own for long stretches you can bet your bottom dollar that it was socked away securely.
There were American casinos in Cuba before Castro kicked their a** out of there. They had to bank somewhere.
Wouldn't *someone* in the U.S. Government have records of where all the bags of coins were sent over the years?
It wasn't the government that sent coin and paper money there - more like commercial banks. At that time there was a gambling mecca there in Havana - a literal playground for the Yanquis.
