These Coins are Marked

Onastone

Searching through Half Dollars, I've been finding lots of marks. Why would anyone need to mark them? Usually just a black marker slash. Now I'm finding reds, blues, blacks, and even a yellow! Grrrrrrr...... Does anyone here practice this while searching??

NickelMike

I’ve looked through a lot of halves. I’ve seen it on occasion but not to the extent you’re showing here.

ChrisH821

Looks like your source is someone's, or several people's drop-off.
Been a while, the only coins I've marked are non-ddo 74-D halves across the motto. Figured if not just for me maybe I could save other searchers some time looking at them.

gumby1234

Looks like my nephews had their color markers out again.

MarkKelley

I run several black stripes on the edge and do 40 coins at a time. It's fast and doesn't affect either face of the coins. That's how I know if I'm getting the same ones back.

lilolme

@MarkKelley said:
I run several black stripes on the edge and do 40 coins at a time. It's fast and doesn't affect either face of the coins. That's how I know if I'm getting the same ones back.

That seems to be the answer from this coin talk thread.

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/magic-marker-mayhem.336788/

lordmarcovan

With painted quarters, there is the story (possibly apocryphal) about how certain ladies of ill repute in certain establishments (or let's just say waitresses, because that could be just as true) would mark the coins with their personal nail polish color, so that they could get them back out of the jukebox or vending machine tills later, when the money was collected.

But with halves, like that, and it being markers that colored the coins, I don't know. Cant think of many vending machines that take halves.

I suspect some childish whimsy there, is all. Note the smiley faces.

Perhaps someone was using them in a game of some sort.

Edit- or is this really the marking system of some coin roll searcher? Interesting. I wouldn't think so, but... ?

Catbert

Funny what comes to mind…..

https://youtu.be/HL_OIynnJKA

Onastone

@Catbert LOL....exactly what I based my title on!!!

Catbert

@Onastone said:
@Catbert LOL....exactly what I based my title on!!!

We’re just showing our age with these obscure references!

ricko

I have not run across that issue... I do not search many rolls of halves anymore. I used to, but in the last year, only a couple. Have not seen any marked ones... likely from someone who has searched them already..... acetone will clean it quickly. Cheers, RickO

jmlanzaf

I think it's interesting that no one has questioned the practice. Pele flip out if sometime is having a coin with their bare fingers yet no one questions intentionally defacing a coin? Does anyone know if the ink is "archival"? While it should be removable with stunting like acetone, do we know it is inert while present?

Catbert

@jmlanzaf said:
I think it's interesting that no one has questioned the practice. Pele flip out if sometime is having a coin with their bare fingers yet no one questions intentionally defacing a coin? Does anyone know if the ink is "archival"? While it should be removable with stunting like acetone, do we know it is inert while present?

Not interesting to me. Modern coins don't capture my attention whether marked or unmarked.

dunkleosteus430

When I was younger, I found some war nickels (I didn't know what they were) and noticed the large mintmark on the reverse. I decided to take a red sharpie and highlight it for some reason. I still have at least one of them.

jmlanzaf

@Catbert said:

@jmlanzaf said:
I think it's interesting that no one has questioned the practice. Pele flip out if sometime is having a coin with their bare fingers yet no one questions intentionally defacing a coin? Does anyone know if the ink is "archival"? While it should be removable with stunting like acetone, do we know it is inert while present?

Not interesting to me. Modern coins don't capture my attention whether marked or unmarked.

But others have commented on crap moderns in newbie threads, trying the poster that they shouldn't put fingerprints on the coins. And, I assume, the halves were marked by a CRH searching for varieties or the like. How do we know they haven't ruined a previously undetected variety.

[For the record, I don't care who does what to their pocket change. I don't even care what people do to most pre-1964 widgets. But there are a lot who do.]

Catbert

It’s good you feel compelled to speak for them 😉

Onastone

It still irks me when a cashier marks a nice looking $100 bill with a counterfeit detecting marker...I even saw one cashier marking the $20 dollar bills.And this lady checking out a $10.00

Perhaps that's why these coins are marked, cashiers seeing if they are real.

MasonG

@Catbert said:

@jmlanzaf said:
I think it's interesting that no one has questioned the practice. Pele flip out if sometime is having a coin with their bare fingers yet no one questions intentionally defacing a coin? Does anyone know if the ink is "archival"? While it should be removable with stunting like acetone, do we know it is inert while present?

Not interesting to me. Modern coins don't capture my attention whether marked or unmarked.

You mean- aside from reading this thread about them and commenting on them?

Catbert

@MasonG said:

@Catbert said:

@jmlanzaf said:
I think it's interesting that no one has questioned the practice. Pele flip out if sometime is having a coin with their bare fingers yet no one questions intentionally defacing a coin? Does anyone know if the ink is "archival"? While it should be removable with stunting like acetone, do we know it is inert while present?

Not interesting to me. Modern coins don't capture my attention whether marked or unmarked.

You mean- aside from reading this thread about them and commenting on them?

Yes. There is only so much to absorb here when one visits the board several times a day.

OAKSTAR

Don't be to sure of what you think you might be seeing or why. A lot of CRH'ers don't always know what to look for. Double check them all!

air4mdc

Several years ago I partook in searching halves. It didn’t take me long to deduce there were markers out there. In fact, after searching several tens of thousands of dollars of halves, certain markers stood out. I actually have a marked collection of halves, some very interesting marks.
I did an experiment myself, marking 2000 halves with a green Sharpie in a certain spot on the obverse, with a certain pronounced mark. Mostly to see if I would get my own dump coins back. After searching about 600,000 halves, I only found one that I had actually marked myself.
Most of the pro markers marked a coin that did not display a DDO. This way they didn’t have to recheck an already searched coin, just throw it the dump bucket. My eyes have never been the same after all that searching.

MasonG

What if the coin you marked because you didn't want it is something that somebody else would have wanted, except for the mark?

What do you call a new variety you found that was indelibly marked by a previous searcher who didn't recognize it? Karma.

jmlanzaf

@Catbert said:
It’s good you feel compelled to speak for them 😉

Lol. I wasn't speaking for them. I was asking why none of them cared about the Kennedy halves.

daltex

I thought people did it to weed out silver.

TorinoCobra71

Looks like you got some coins from someones DUMP BANK. A ROLL SEARCHER more than likely did this.....

TC71

jmlanzaf

@daltex said:
I thought people did it to weed out silver.

Also silver

Onastone

@TorinoCobra71 said:
Looks like you got some coins from someones DUMP BANK. A ROLL SEARCHER more than likely did this.....

I had seen simple black lines marking various halves, but this box had different colors and marks, some dots, one even had two different colors- red slash and black dot. Interesting how the bicentennials have the happy face or the numbers on the reverse.

@air4mdc said:

I did an experiment myself, marking 2000 halves with a green Sharpie in a certain spot on the obverse, with a certain pronounced mark.

That's what I'm thinking, CRS making their own pronounced marks.

lilolme

@Onastone said:

@TorinoCobra71 said:
Looks like you got some coins from someones DUMP BANK. A ROLL SEARCHER more than likely did this.....

I had seen simple black lines marking various halves, but this box had different colors and marks, some dots, one even had two different colors- red slash and black dot. Interesting how the bicentennials have the happy face or the numbers on the reverse.

@air4mdc said:

I did an experiment myself, marking 2000 halves with a green Sharpie in a certain spot on the obverse, with a certain pronounced mark.

That's what I'm thinking, CRS making their own pronounced marks.

Kind of like chop marks. Each CRH making their own mark.