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Bank rolls. Good deal?

PlacidPlacid Posts: 11,299 ✭✭✭
I was thinking about buying a few rolls of franklin half's from the 50's.

If I do buy some will a seller usually let me return them if I do not like the coins once I open them or is it buy at your own risk?

Comments

  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,530 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Maybe it depends on the seller?

    But with roll quantities, sellers might be stricter on their return policies. Otherwise everyone would cherrypick them to death.

    Explore collections of lordmarcovan on CollecOnline, management, safe-keeping, sharing and valuation solution for art piece and collectibles.
  • PlacidPlacid Posts: 11,299 ✭✭✭
    Say the auction does offer a return if the rolls are unopened but I open them and find the coins are really bad with water spots and enviromental damage. Should I expect the seller to give me a refund?
  • 1. Bank rolls, it's been my experience - has always been you buy'em - you keep'em. Doesn't make sense to buy something like that, open them, and then find that you're not pleased with your purchase - we'd gripe up one side and down another if we thought a dealer was cherrypicking coins out of an otherwise original roll.

    2. As for rolls of Franklins, unless you are absolutely 100% certain that they're original rolls, I wouldn't take a chance on them.

    3. Even if they were original rolls, some dates are absolute dogs, so you want to stay away from them - you'll wind up with a bunch of 60-63 stuff if you're lucky. These would include early "D" mint halves (48D - 52D). Other dates I would stay away from would be 53P, 54P and anything in the 60's, except maybe 60P.

    Most of gem Franklins at this stage come from mint sets. The likelyhood of finding a worthwhile MS65 or 66FBL half in a single roll I would say is less than 5%. Now - if you find a bag quantity of 50's Uncirculated halves, you may get lucky.

    Frank
  • Placid:

    Would you return the rolls if you found a roll full of 1953S MS65FBL halves? I don't think so - Rolls cannot be cherrypicked, and at the same time cannot be sent back because you don't like them usually. IMHO.

    Frank
  • BigEBigE Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭
    Placid, are they paper wrapped or are they in a tube?-----BigE
    I'm glad I am a Tree
  • PlacidPlacid Posts: 11,299 ✭✭✭
    I will say paper as I have no specific auction in mind at the moment.
    Just a general what should I expect for return rights of "bad rolls" if I choose to buy.
  • BigEBigE Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭
    A lot of trust is involved I guess, because neither party really knows whats in there(supposedly). It could be that you open it and there is a bunch of Kennedy's in thereimage------------BigE
    I'm glad I am a Tree
  • LOL - ok so lets take this scenario - you're a young impressionable lad in 1965 and you go to your local bank and ask for a roll of halves. You get a nice tight roll - bank crimped - with what looks to be an uncirculated Franklin at either end. OK - so jack the clock around 25 years or so, and now you're a crotchity middle aged guy with a coin fetish, and you say to yourself - self - that looks like an uncirculated roll of Franklin halves. You don't know what's IN the roll, because you didn't open it. It could have a beautiful 1963D MS66FBL worth 2K, or a really nice 1963P in MS65FBL worth about a grand. But, since you're now a DARKSIDER (hence the crotchityness image ) you decide to go on Ebay and hawk your "Original Roll of Uncirculated Franklin Halves" and you start your bidding at $9.99. Joe blow (me) thinking - bonanza city - bids on it, and I finally land the coin for say $200. What have I done? I've bought the rights to open the roll and see what's in it. Could be great stuff, could be a bunch of Kennedy's stuffed in the middle - but I wouldn't have bid on the roll if it had been in a plastic tube and I KNEW that someone had already looked through them. So, hence - them's the breaks - sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug!

    Frank
  • Go to your local 7-11 and buy some scratch-off Lottery tickets, and try to return those post-scratch. Same thing, except at least with the lottery tickets you know the (bad) odds more precisely. image

    Buying "original" rolls is very tricky business, especially sight-unseen. I would try to buy one and check it out, then buy more if it looks legitimate.

    But I've been burned even doing that... I was repeatedly buying Ike rolls from a guy once to search and the quality kept getting worse and worse. Finally found out halfway through the guy decided to cherrypick them before sending them to me.
  • BigEBigE Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭
    There's a lot of guys in the back pages of Coin World wanting to buy "original" rolls, maybe I will E-Mail them tomorrow and ask them to respond to this threadimage-----------BigE
    I'm glad I am a Tree
  • HigashiyamaHigashiyama Posts: 2,192 ✭✭✭✭✭
    If it is an "original" bank roll and you open it, it is presumably a no-return type item, unless you find out that the contents were misrepresented (e.g. - circulated, or mixed Kennedys and Franklins).

    With that said, as long as you start out with reasonable expectations, it can still be fun. The few "original" rolls I have purchased on ebay have appeared legitimate -- e.g. -- a 1964 Kennedy roll averaged between MS63-64, with the best coin (which I submitted) grading MS65. The Kennedy experts will need to tell me if the absence of a 66 suggests the roll was picked through.
    Higashiyama
  • Higashiyama:

    MS66 Kennedy's of that time have to be pretty darn clean. I would doubt that they came from run of the mill rolls - more likely mint sets.

    Frank
  • cascadecascade Posts: 151 ✭✭
    I agree that once you open them they're yours. With that in mind, I'll only buy a roll off ebay that is clearly fed wrapped.
  • I've sold lots of original rolls. If someone wanted to return the opened coins, I'd have to say, "sorry, no returns." It is a drag, I'm sure, to get less-than-perfect coins, but like FC57Coins said, part of the price is the privledge to open them.
  • I think you'd be perfectly justified in your actions CD.

    Frank
  • "fed wrapped" doesn't really mean anything either. First many "fed wrapped" rolls are actually rolled by private companies, and second circulated returned coinage can be mixed with new coinage in the rolling so it is still possible to get rolls with UNC coins on each end and circulated coins in the middle. Buying original rolls is buying a pig in a poke. Frankly I am amazed that the mint allowed returns of the rolls they sold. After all they made no representations as to quality when the coins were sold other than that they were uncirculated. To have collectors wanting to return them for replacement AFTER they had broken them open and handled them because they didn't grade better than what they wanted is ludicrus.

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