Are there any flips that stay flat when folded?
airplanenut
Posts: 22,670 ✭✭✭✭✭
I reuse flips when I can, so I don’t buy them that often. That said, of the various ones I’ve tried, it seems that when they’re first folded, the back half always pops up. This isn’t a big problem with heavy coins because the next one in the stack holds the back down, but when I have a bunch of light coins, the coins aren’t heavy enough to be in a pile. Are there any brands/types of flips tha actually stay flat when first folded? Preferably not flips that come in sheets that have to be torn apart, because that’s also annoying.
Ignore the fact that this is a French coin. It would be the same problem with a Morgan dollar.
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@airplanenut, call me so that I can make a suggestion that might not translate well if I were to try to suggest the process in a post.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
Is what you're going to recommend proscribed by the PNG?!?!!
😂😉
chopmarkedtradedollars.com
Saflips seem to work okay. You can't just fold them over and call it a day, though- you need to lean into it and crease them pretty good.
Probably not and wrong forum.😉
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
The ones made of PVC stay flat when folded, but that's probably not the answer you were hoping for.
The best flips are made from some kind of rigid plastic - and this rigid plastic has way to much "memory" to fold-and-stay-folded easily. Folding a piece of plastic creates stress, and stress can lead to a more brittle plastic simply snapping rather than bending and stretching. Flips thus have a delicate balancing act: they need to be rigid enough to protect the coin properly, but not so rigid that the thing snaps clean in half on the first fold attempt.
You can probably aid the plastic in "forgetting" it's previously un-folded state by gentle heating. How to apply that heat without damaging the flip is the tricky part; whatever you use, you'd probably want to do it before actually putting any coins in the flip. I would suggest possibly trying one of those heat-sealers, on the lowest heat setting; if that doesn't work, bump up the heat until it works (but not so high that it actually melts the plastic).
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
Most of the ones I have found that will stay folded crack when forced that much, so no good there. The old dangerous ones stay flat when you fold them, but then the danger.
Perhaps a heat source may make them more pliable, but never did so.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
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@MFeld I believe i know what you are going to suggest…
And i was beginning type the the answer but decided not to because i am certain some folks here will overreact!
For anyone who has ever seen Mark struggle to type, here’s why he didn’t want to type out his comments on flips:
This all makes perfect sense, though even when I've used PVC or other soft ones in the past, they haven't been perfect, albeit they push back much less than the really rigid flips. While the heat is an interesting idea, it's worth adding that my use case is trying to get through a pile of coins quickly, so my guess is slowing down to carefully heat things would just be a new way to annoy me. (And it may be that the result here is that there is no perfect solution, and it's just a question of what's most tolerable... or least intolerable).
If speed of enflipment is a criterion, then can I suggest putting the freshly-enflipped coins into an album page with 2x2-sized slots, and leaving them in there for a while. Perhaps add to the compression by then putting the album page underneath a couple of very large, heavy books for a few weeks.
Of course, for me this isn't really inconvenient or a problem as those very same album pages are where the coins are going to be living long-term, so for me it's really a case of flip-and-forget. If you have other plans for storing your enflipped coins, then putting them in an album page and taking them all out again later is likely to be just as annoying for you.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
Here is a stack (15 or so) of empty saflips, there are no coins in them.
I think I may be trying these next! Are those new or folded some time ago and recently emptied? Also, 2x2 or 2.5x2.5?
Unfortunately it’s all inventory that I’m going through (write up, photograph, shop out) so it’s very short term… coins will be out for a few hours at most, boxed for a week or two, then shipped. I just don’t want flips flying all over the place/small piles falling over and the coins getting out of order. For longer term, certain using pages and/or weight works well.
These were folded some time ago- it's been maybe 8 to 10 years. They were emptied about a year ago. These are 2x2s but they do also come as 2.5x2.5. My experience with them is that new ones are fairly easy to fold/crease but they become more brittle as they age.
I would add that even thought they do stack as shown, due to their smoothness and irregular thickness with a coin inside, they don't stack near as high as cardboard 2x2s. If you put a large coin (crown/dollar sized) on top of a stack, it's likely to slide off.