Speaking of Handling Coins . . . (horror story)
SarasotaFrank
Posts: 1,625 ✭✭
so I am in the coin store today, and there are two fellas huddled around the counter with the dealer and they have a large tray with a mint bag of Kennedy Halves.
They are examining every coin. Although at first I thought they had brought in some stash of coins for sale, it was the dealers bag of 2004 Kennedy's and they were cherrypicking the bag.
All well and good.
The guy nearest to me has no more coins to sift through, so reaches a hand in the bag and grabs a fistful after sifting his hand around in the bag to get a big handful. The clinking and clanking gave me the chills.
ok, so they were new 04s and perhaps they didn't get banged up that bad, but this doesn't strike me as the way to handle new coins in a bag where you are trying to find excellent examples.
Of course, there were thumbs and forefingers all over the faces. It seemed every coin got a spankin' new thumbprint.
The dealer was pretty oblivious to it. If it was my shop and someone wanted to cherrypick an entire bag of coins , he would have gotten every one f them with his fingerprint on it and the "hammer" treatment on his good hand just for giggles.
They are examining every coin. Although at first I thought they had brought in some stash of coins for sale, it was the dealers bag of 2004 Kennedy's and they were cherrypicking the bag.
All well and good.
The guy nearest to me has no more coins to sift through, so reaches a hand in the bag and grabs a fistful after sifting his hand around in the bag to get a big handful. The clinking and clanking gave me the chills.
ok, so they were new 04s and perhaps they didn't get banged up that bad, but this doesn't strike me as the way to handle new coins in a bag where you are trying to find excellent examples.
Of course, there were thumbs and forefingers all over the faces. It seemed every coin got a spankin' new thumbprint.
The dealer was pretty oblivious to it. If it was my shop and someone wanted to cherrypick an entire bag of coins , he would have gotten every one f them with his fingerprint on it and the "hammer" treatment on his good hand just for giggles.
"I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather did, as opposed to screaming in terror like his passengers."
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Then you have to mention some greasy fingered ignoramous plastering scum signatures over the surfaces? Thanks for the memories!
If that sounded sourcastic towards you, trust me, I didn't mean that way. Just that stupidity of some people irritates the hell outa me.
Craig
The battle scars of all the good times
I thought that greasy fingerprints gave a coin character, not to mention the fact that future generations of coin collectors will be able to pick up one of these coins and think to themselves "Hmmm....I wonder who the ignoramus was that fingered this coin up ?"
Not to mention the fact that perhaps someday with the minute traces of DNA evidence they might be able to conjure me back from the dead so they can kick my Fanny
( A paraphrase among Northmen )
<< <i>People suck >>
or with your T- shirt and they'll come right off and be all nice and shiny-but you better watch the dog doesn't put
his nose of em and maybe bite em all up smelling that Fried chicken.
<< <i>It is money after all and what percentage of those gems are truly gems... >>
I agree with eminem. Especially considering the average quality of US mint product. Even if they're dealing in bag quantities of coins very few of them are going to be worth anything more than face. It's just not worth the extra time to gently lift each one out of the bag and gingerly handle it only by the edges. This isn't an old bag of BU Walking Liberty halves we're talking about here, it's just commodity, modern circulaing coinage.
And on the off chance they do find a few good ones, they could rinse them off in acetone before any damage was truly done to the coin. Believe me I'm all for handling coins carefully but I just don't think this is a really big deal here.
snapmohr