So the US mint buys back damaged coins?

fivecents

I was set up at a show last year and noticed that the dealer next to me had huge bags of post 1965 mangled coins. Each bag was seperated by denomination. Some of these coins were only little pieces. He told me that he had was going to drive over to the US mint and turn them in for face value and that he had done this on several different occasions. I asked him how the Mint could figure the face value of all these different little pieces of coins. He said the mint would weigh them to figure the value of each bag. If memory serves correctly, he also told me that the dimes and quarters were weighed together because 2 1/2 dimes equal the same weight as one quarter. Just an interesting coin story I wanted to share.

nankraut

Very interesting...I didn't know that.

DanArgent

It the bank that I work at, if some one turns in a mangled coin that is still recognizable we put it in a pile in our drawers called "mutalated" while the Fed armord car arives we give them the mutalated money and they give us fresh stuff. I'm not sure if a private person can do this and I'm not sure about "little bits" of coins

DanArgent

It the bank that I work at, if some one turns in a mangled coin that is still recognizable we put it in a pile in our drawers called "mutalated" while the Fed armord car arives we give them the mutalated money and they give us fresh stuff. I'm not sure if a private person can do this and I'm not sure about "little bits" of coins

DanArgent

sorry for the double post

fivecents

This dealer had done this several times. He would wait until he had enough "coin parts" to make his car trunk almost drag the ground. I know all the dealers would bring him mutalated coins and he had another supplier....I can't remember, I think it was someone who owed a junk car shredder business or something like that.

Weiss

"...Coins that are very heavily damaged, holed, chipped, fused, and not machine-countable are classified as “mutilated” and can be redeemed by mailing them to: U.S. Mint, Attn: Mutilated Coins, 151 N. Independence Mall East, Philadelphia, PA 19106. You will be responsible for shipping costs. You can expect to receive a check for your mutilated coins 12 to 14 weeks after their arrival at the Mint.

There is also a minimum weight that the Mint will accept: one pound for bent or partial coins, two pounds for fused coins. It is important that you separate the coins by alloy. In other words, you may combine quarters, dimes, and halves, but nickels, pennies, and dollar coins should be separated. Warning: If you don’t sort your coins, you must have at least two pounds, and the Mint will only pay you 20% of their value..."


From the May 2002 issue of "Lost Treasure" magazine. I wrote it

cladking

It's been possible to redeem these for many years but it's only been recently that
any substantial quantities have been getting turned in. Most of the coin now and in
the past has come from municipal incinerators which can separate the coin from the
ash. This still accounts for a very small part of the total attrition on circulating coin-
age. Much of it is unrecoverable from the shredding of automobiles or is inadvertantly
dumped in landfills. About half of the early clad quarters are gone and the smaller
denominations have higher attrition with the cent being the highest. These circulate
very slowly because they have a tendency to sit idle for long periods. It requires few
transactions before they are lost or destroyed (frequently by the recipient throwing
them away).

fivecents

Weiss...Great info! I guess he was saving shipping by driving the scrap to the mint. He always gathered up a very large hoard of coin scrap before making the drive. He was leaving for the Philly mint right after the coin show. He bought the coin scrap cheap and made a real nice profit when he turned it in at the US mint . He said that no one else was willing to deal with handling coin scrap, so had had no competition.

cladking....Again great info!
I guess this dealer knew several people who had access to one of those municipal incinerators because he had alot of coin scrap. Come to think of it most of these coins were broken and shredded not melted and burnt. May be this coin scrap was salvaged from some other venue?

cladking

There are also people who make money by driving coins to Canada or shipping it
abroad. Postal rates are too high to mail coin to canada so most of hose doing
this live on the border and just drive it across. Most counties have high denomi-
nation coins and these can be profitably shipped overseas if one can acquire suf-
ficient quantities.

Small denomination coins are frequently melted for their metal content. This can
be significant sometimes. Nickel got up to about $17 / lb back in 1988 (this is high-
er than silver was through much of the 1950's) and many Canadian nickels were
used as scrap to make stainless steel or were melted and sold.

All coins have some value.