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Are many current US coins being thrown away by indifferent members of the general public?
291fifth
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This position has been taken by a well known forum member. I have my doubts that the loss rate to "throw away" is as high as he estimates. My own suspicion is that these coins are being hoarded in huge numbers in various household containers rather than being "thrown away".
Have you seen any actual evidence to support either position?
All glory is fleeting.
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I have only tossed a few gummy Lincolns. Can't imagine that coins are being disposed of on a wholesale level.
I believe there is hoarding by indifferent or lazy people, but I have also seen pennies (cents) discarded on the ground, and once I saw a waitress rifle through her change and throw the pennies in a trash can. When I see pennies discarded on the ground it annoys me but benefits me as I pick them up, but when I see willful disposal in the trash I am quite disturbed, even angry (no, I do not dig through the trash for them).
P.S. - the problem with zinc cents is that they will rot away in no time so they won't even be recoverable in future decades/centuries.
Depending on what you mean, yes I have....everyday.
I find US coins in_ parking lots_, every day.....at the car wash people just discard them onto the pavement when they vacuum.....in ash trays that sit on top of trash cans.......on the side of the highway [don't ask]...at ATM machines.......
I will think of more situations, but all of these are intentional discarding of coinage
I posted this last February under parking lot finds on this site
I posted this in december
**********At the 'world cubing' rubiks cube competition Saturday in Amherst Ma, kid drops three dimes on the floor. I picked them up and asked him if he wanted them. "They're just change" he said. 30 cents for me I guess, helped pay for the $14 parking fee.**********
Change is everywhere, not considered money by many
JMHO
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I doubt there are a large number of people who just actually toss their coins in the trash. It's more an attitude than it is a behavior. When one vacuumed the house he would pick up any stray coins that were seen but now there are more stray coins because people won't chase them down and vacuumers are far less likely to bend over and pick them up. This extends to all facets of our lives. One doesn't take out the car set to retrieve an errant quarter so cycled cars have far more coins in them than in the past.
Municipalities get huge numbers of coins in their garbage collections and some screen them out either before or after incineration. These are sent by the truckload to be redeemed by he mint. There's simply no question that some of these are being intentionally placed in the trash by the bucket or a few at a time.
There are anecdotal reports of buckets of US and foreign coins being tossed.
When coins disappear from circulation there are numerous routes they have taken. Many end up in industrial processes and this especially applies to various types of recycling. Coins have always suffered misadventure but the rate at which heavily used coins end up being destroyed is soaring because their value continues to plummet. If you don't believe it just look and see how few 1965 quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies are left in circulation despite their tremendous mintages. More than half the quarters are now AWOL ad it's far worse with lower denominations because their value and utility are much lesser.
Smart move as they are worthless. Cents should have been discontinued 2 decades ago as they have no value in commerce.
I do not find a lot of coins in parking lots or streets, and when I do, it is usually cents. The coinstars do a fair business, so home jars of coins seem to be saved until full. Rejects there are usually foreign coins or buttons, tiddlywinks (yes, I have found a few of those) or slugs. I have never heard of buckets or jars of coins being trashed - although I do not doubt that it has happened. Such a shame. There was an old dump in this town... used for almost 70 years. Now long covered and overgrown. I have often wondered about what is buried there... As kids, when we went there to shoot rats, we used to find marbles and other incidentals (i.e. jewelry, cents etc)... though we never really searched for stuff. Old dumps will be the treasure chests of future archaeologists... Cheers, RickO
Obviously the coins that go into Coinstars mostly come from containers filled over time. But the question is what percentage of the coins that should be accumulating are redeemed by any means. Pennies have an attrition over 5% annually and this is caused by a variety of forces including the nature of zinc to quickly corrode. But it apparently is caused in part by coins being lost accidently on purpose or fully intentionally.
They'll be great for seeing all the things we've wasted and how our entire economy is based on building refrigerators that pause briefly in the home on their way to landfill. Entire multinational companies like Fridgidaire are filling up dumps faster than we can build them. Imagine the production of coins with less value than their handling costs!!!
But just as there won't be any working laundry machines or refrigerators coming out of dumps in 50 years there won't be any collectible coins either. I'm coincidentally working on an old kitchen midden right now. The most interesting coin so far is a Philly war nickels that was in AU or Unc when it was lost. The date is either '42 or '45 but it's too corroded to be sure.
The more than 50% of lost 1965 quarters are gone forever except for a few well worn specimens that will literally come out of the woodwork and the many millions that might be found in landfills with readable dates.
My sister threw some people out of a house, for non payment of rent, a few years ago. She found $20 in coins and sold the stuff that they left for $200. Go figure.
If there is a trash can by a coin machine you can bet there are coins in it, foreign - usually Canadian. Some cents and tokens and the very occasional silver coin.
I've seen more coins tossed in neighborhoods where people receive government subsidies such as free housing and food than I ever saw in wishing wells at the malls.
One day , I was measuring roofs in a bad part of town and recall seeing nickels, dimes, quarters and cents strewn about the roof. Crazy as it was, i avoided cherry picking there (it wasn't mine) not to mention all the drive by shootings in the 'hood.
So yes is the answer. Money (change) is trashed in lieu of freebies.
The local Safeway grocery stores have containers for coin next to the checkout stands.
I leave the zinc pennies in them.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
I would l like to see more of this, to benefit one charity or another.
It's common in the area I live to find coin change containers at registers at gas stations. People throw Cents and Nickels in them, then others use them to round a purchase up or down.
Pete
I owned an Industrial Commercial HVAC company and I have witnessed the same as Two sides to a Coin has in the seedier areas or the cheaper the menu places I see many coins on the roofs. Nice toning too. Now, once I had to inspect a huge recycling plant in a rural area for proper ventilation and the birds (usually sea hawks) will drop coins and non ferrous metals on the roofs, they pick them out of the recycled materials. So, who's throwing all this stuff out?
The wealthier the area you're had pressed to see anything flung up onto the roofs.
Re: my trash can post up above.
Today after work I stopped by my credit union to get some dosh for this week. Check the machine, nothing. Pick up the trash can next to it and kaching, lots and lots of coin in it. Pull it out, put it in my pocket and go in to transact business. Then a teller calls me aside and says they noticed I was picking coins out of the trash. Oh freaking great. She went and got the branch manager and they had a 5 minute discussion. I'm thinking, oh they "own" the coins. So quickly I pick out the one coin that is definitely NOT going back and put it in my back pocket(come back to that one later...)
So the manager comes out and says they were concerned that a teller had taken the coins out of the machine inner reject slot and thrown them away (I'm guessing from the tone of the conversation that is indeed what happened.) She tells me to go ahead and keep the coins but that coins will no longer be thrown away in the trash!
Okay.
So the coin I set aside in my back pocket in the thoughts they were going to ask for them back is a slightly larger than a half dollar sized coin - appears to be silver, and Spanish and dated 1966. I look it up later and sure enough it is .800 fine and has just under half an ounce of silver in it. Making it my largest foreign silver find.
The rest of the garbage was about 70c in American change, mostly cents, $1.25 in Canadian change, a Chuck E Cheese token and a golf ball marker coin.
Next time I definitely need to be a bit more subtle about dumpster diving, but large silver was worth it.
A 100 Pesetas sure is a nice trash can find.
No, or the road would be paved with coin.
bob
Some people throw change into wishing wells, some into the ocean, some lose change along the beach, change gets lost in washing machines, money falls out of pockets at amusement parks, some just gets thrown out....
Not everyone appreciates coins like those here on this site. I was emptying a trash can and heard change at the bottom....(a sound I know you know) and I was able to find some of it before it slid down a dumpster chute... 2 quarters, a dime, 2 nickels, and a couple pennies. Whether lost or deliberately thrown away, change ebbs away.
This might be occurring at my CU as well, as once in a while we find coins in the trash, but another time the teller awkwardly palmed a handful of Canadian that was stuck to the magnet when she had to unjam the machine. In any case, they should not have included you In their in-house strategizing.
I wouldn't mention it but this is kindda the subject of the thread but the silver 100P was melted by the Casa De La Moneda if memory serves. In any case the vast majority of the issue was destroyed for its silver.
This is even more common with base metal coins because silver is rarely redeemed by the public for base metal substitutes. Many of the South American, European, Russian, and Indian coins from the last half century have been melted to make refrigerators and appliances. Our nickel will join them soon enough in landfill as short lived washing machines and dish washers. But in the meantime the nickel has a 4% attrition rate and the clads aren't far behind.
On a lighter note, We calculated one time, if Bill Gates income was based on working 50 hours per week, and he was walking down the hall, and saw a $100 bill on the ground, and it took him 1 second to pick it up, but his paycheck was docked for the 1 second, he would lose money.
For some people, stopping, doing the bend and stoop, is just not worth it for 1 cent, others it is. Legal Disclaimer: I do pick up coins if I see them, but only because I can't stand to see them laying there, not because it will affect my financial well being."
For example, yesterday I sold some stock. The price on the screen was $82.56. I put a sell order in to sell at market price, so I technically have no control over what it sells for. The actual sell price was $ 82.6039, The "uncontrolled" bonus of 4.39 cents per share will far exceed any coinstar sidewalk trolling for years, but, I guess it is just the thrill of the hunt and the unknown finds, and "rescuing" a coin to live another day.
I also have no qualms about destroying junk coins. Part of my business, I do wind up with small amounts of scrap metal, mostly steel and iron, but several hundred pounds of brass and copper per year, mostly radiators and heater cores. Mangled or worn beyond belief wheat cents (yes, the world can survive losing a few 1952-D's), mangled "copper" cents, worn slick unidentified coins, Canadian Cents, anything in the brass copper family, gets dropped into a radiator, and the top tank hammered down, and off to a Viking funeral for it. Legal of course, because I "paid" 5 cents apiece for the wheat cents, and I only get 3 cents in scrap, so I am "losing money" on them.
One of the changes I am making when I take over the country, is that ALL coin dealers must have melted $100 in coins every year, the dreck, culls, junk garbage, that has no real market, and just gets sold by QVC, etc. to unknowing newbies, who find out they have been taken, sell them back to someone for a pittance, lather rinse repeat. Not every frog will ever be a prince.