Welcome back, Coin Roll Hunters!
This is Matthew, The Great Coin Roll Hunter and today I'm answering a question from a reader.
From: Thomas
"I went to the bank and asked the teller for two rolls of pennies. A machine wrapped roll and a hand wrapped roll but when I got home I saw the hand wrapped roll had a mark on it. What does that mean?"
Great question, Thomas!
I also received a hand-wrapped roll with a mark on it.
Here is what I found:
As you can see, I picked up quarters instead of pennies but, I think the same logic will apply.
Without an image, I was unable to determine exactly what type of mark you had on your coin wrapper. So, follow along with me as I examine the similar instance I encountered on my roll of quarters and apply it to your own roll of pennies.
First, let's take a look at the condition of the wrapper.
Does the wrapper look well-worn and previously used?
Let's identify what kind of paper wrapper we're dealing with and why it is used.
What we have here, with my roll of quarters, is a
partially crimped, open-ended wrapper which is typically used with a small
Rapid Coin Sorting Machine.
This gives me some hope because there are a few reasons why someone would choose to use a machine like this to wrap their coins.
1) Closing out a cash register till by simply dumping the loose chang into the machine and letting it sort and count it out for you, quickly. In this case, no one is paying close attention to what's going into the hopper and are more concerned with the value of the change as currency. Good news for coin roll hunters like ourselves.
2) Someone could have received this as a gift or bought it for themselves. They place it on their kitchen counter or their dresser as a way of easily sorting out the day's loose change. Again, no one is paying close attention to what's going in and this is great news for coin roll hunters.
Typically, coin roll hunters would be dealing with a single type of coin at a time, and it would not be necessary to use such a machine to process these large amounts of coins, though it could always be possible. First of all, the type of wrappers this machine uses cost more than a
flat coin wrapper, which is open on both ends and costs less money. This would make more sense because a coin roll hunter would need a lot of wrappers.
If your wrapper is a partially crimped, open-ended wrapper like the one on my roll of quarters, you might still have luck finding something in it. Unless the folded over flaps of the open end look worn, with either type of wrapper.
Let's take a closer look at the open end flaps in the upper left-hand image, above.
Concerning my own quarter roll, the flaps look very well-worn indeed.
What's that mean?
Well, it simply means that the flaps have been opened and closed many times. Again, there could be a couple of reasons for this.
1) They have been recycled. At the beginning of the day, someone opening the till of their cash register simply dumped the coins into the tray and then reloaded the wrapper after they closed out. These types of wrapper are more expensive, remember, so it doesn't make sense to just break them open and throw them away. So, there might be some goodies in there.
On the other hand...
2) Another coin roll hunter requested them so he could search them and re-wrap them. Once again, they are dealing with a large quantity of coins and don't want to lose money on buying new wrappers. So, in this case, there might not be anything at all worth keeping in the roll.
So, wrapper type and condition, still might not be enough to tell what exactly you've got. Let's keep asking questions.
Does the mark look like it was placed intentionally?
Look closely at the upper right-hand image.
This mark was made with a pen and two separate lines that seem to form a letter D. Two marks in that kind of formation seem intentional to me, as if someone may have put their initial on it. Possibly, marking it off for some reason.
With concerns to the mark on your wrapper, I have seen many different types of intentional marks.
- A black marker stripe along the length of the roll
- Two letters, indicating a first and last name initial
- a check mark
- and a squiggly line in pen down the length of the wrapper.
In my experience, there seem to be three types of marks on wrappers: letters, lines and inccidentals. Let's get into each.
Letters
Letters could possibly be used by a cashier to verify the amount of coin inside the roll.
In this way, they might use their initials to sign-off on the contents of the roll in a way that shows they are accountable for verifying the contents of the roll.
This could happen when someone in a business is closing out of a cash register after their shift or making a counter deposit at the bank from the company's vault.
Another way a coin might be marked with a letter, could be a collector labeling the roll for a specific mint mark. In this case you would expect to see a: P, D, or S. In the case of my roll of quarters, there is a D. A collector could have been labeling a collection of quarters from the Denver Mint. Unfortunatly, when we went though these quarters, they were mixed marks. Which indicates to me that, maybe a collector did in fact turn in his collection to a bank, but someone has beaten me to them and re-used the wrapper. But, this would typically be a good sign on a hand-wrapped roll.
Hopefully, your roll shows this type of coin wrapper mark. This would indicate that it would contain coins from circulation that have not been searched.
Lines
Concerning the other type. Lines running along the length of the wrapper.
These lines tend to be noticeable from a distance. Thick, black marker lines, or scribbles.
The case for this type of wrapper mark could indicate that your bank might be a coin dump for another coin roll hunter in the area. The intention is to mark the wrapper in such a way, making it easily identifiable, so they know they have already searched that roll before and taken all the "goodies" out of it.
Other indicators for this type of behavior will be quantity. Productive coin roll hunters will order boxes of rolled coins and return them to the bank after they have searched through them. If they do come back for a smaller amount, they don't want to exchange their cash for rolls they have already searched for.
So, Thomas, if your mark runs the length of the roll, chances are you have a "skunk". Meaning, it stinks because you won't find anything worth keeping.
This is
code for many coin roll hunters. But, it simply will not work 100% of the time, because wrappers can still be re-used if they are not broken.
So, you still have a chance!
Incidentals
These types of marks happen by accident. Usually, when someone is holding a pen to write a total.
1) They might point at each roll with the tip of the pen as they are counting, leaving little
tic marks on the wrapper that don't necessarily mean anything.
2) The wrapper was stained by something and it looks like a mark or marker. Someone poured themselves coffee at the bank and a little bit of coffee dribbled down the edge of the mug. Then, for one reason or another, they could have set the mug on an open box of coins leaving a coffee ring along the edges of the wrappers that appears to be a brown marker mark.
3) Dirty fingers, maybe someone's pen leaked and they marked the rolls simply by handling them.
Any way it happens, they are usually unintentional and don't mean anything with regards to the contents inside. If you see marks like these, you're still in luck!
Now, let's get right down the meat of it, and dissect this roll!:
CLICK HERE TO SEARCH THIS MARKED ROLL OF QUARTERS!
So, I hope that answered your question, Thomas.
And,
Welcome to the Coin Roll Hunt!
Be sure to keep growing your numismatic knowledge with these great books!
1)
A Guide Book of United States Coins
2)
The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents
Happy Hunting!
~Matthew, The Great Coin Roll Hunter
CoinRollin411@gmail.com
Matthew The Great Coin Roll Hunter on YouTube
