Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
WS
Proud recipient of the coveted PCGS Forum "You Suck" Award Thursday July 19, 2007 11:33 PM and December 30th, 2011 at 8:50 PM.
@WaterSport said:
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
WS
What did you clean them with, and how did you do it?
I was thinking CLR for this batch, then a good rinse and dry, then CoinStar.
Professional Numismatist, Retired. 55 year member ANA. Former ANA Senior Authenticator. Winner of four ANA Heath Literary Awards; three Wayte and Olga Raymond Literary Awards; Numismatist of the Year Award 2009, and ANA Lifetime Achievement Award 2020. Winner of the PNG's 2026 Robert Friedberg Award for "The Enigmatic Lincoln Cents of 1922," Available now from Whitman or Amazon.
@WaterSport said:
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
I'm going with this. The paper rolls themselves do not look water damaged, so I'd rule out flooding after they were rolled and stored.
Professional Numismatist, Retired. 55 year member ANA. Former ANA Senior Authenticator. Winner of four ANA Heath Literary Awards; three Wayte and Olga Raymond Literary Awards; Numismatist of the Year Award 2009, and ANA Lifetime Achievement Award 2020. Winner of the PNG's 2026 Robert Friedberg Award for "The Enigmatic Lincoln Cents of 1922," Available now from Whitman or Amazon.
@WaterSport said:
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
WS
I'm surprised that in this instance they ran the hopper empty before rolling them. I had always assumed they mixed them back into circulation as they do with a lot of brand new coin. Perhaps people are more likely to take back a roll of quarters if only a lot of them are "defective".
@MarkKelley said:
How come no one has mentioned maybe these were in a house fire? Recovered and re-wrapped.
That some people have vast numbers of quarters they keep around is an old wives tale that simply doesn't apply any longer. If there were substantial numbers of quarters sitting in change jars or basements these quarters would not be wearing down at the same rate or having the same attrition as circulating quarters. Some quarters would move from one basement to another and would still be nearly pristine after even 60 years. We simply don't see this. All the 1966 quarters lay out on a bell curve centered at VG- and extending only up to nearly VF. It is attenuated at the low end because the FED has had to remove hundreds of millions of heavily worn clad quarters because they were getting too thin.
It's hardly impossible they were flooded but the odds are very much stacked against it.
This is just what is out there: the ruins of many mintages. Even the 2026 has survived better than a few other '26's. For many of the older coins this is hardly the final indignity as cull and worn coins accumulate in circulation before they individually succumb at the bottleneck or do so collectively when they are withdrawn by the FED.
Time don't fly it bounds and leaps because we tend to not pay attention. A watched pot will certainly boil but it's easier to just let time jump forward. Collectors never leave well enough alone.
Perhaps I shouldda mentioned here that the biggest tipoff as to their nature other than their condition is their distribution. They appear to be currently circulating coin based on the condition, distribution, and wear. Clad quarters each tell one story about themselves but they tell another story about coins in the same place or roll. Old coins have been sorted, classified, and resorted many times and there position means nothing. Their stories are harder to read as well because of numerous changes and time out of circulation.
The line at 1999 and the states coins is a very easy one to read. ~69.5% of quarters are post-'98 issues. Frequently all you need to see is the last date in a sample to know when it stopped. Figuring out when it started can be a little more difficult because you must interpret the condition and distribution of the coins. This batch obviously formed rapidly as did the staining.
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
@gpnyc said:
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
Many banks now days are loathe to take them. Most will at least make you clean them up thoroughly. An entire box of these things is prima facie evidence the entire sample didn't fit into a single Coinstar machine.
@gpnyc said:
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
You don't have a credit union or bank near you that has a coin counting machine? Hate seeing you pay those coinstar fees.
@gpnyc said:
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
Many banks now days are loathe to take them. Most will at least make you clean them up thoroughly. An entire box of these things is prima facie evidence the entire sample didn't fit into a single Coinstar machine.
Wait, what?? Did you say clean them up?? How are you taking the coins to the bank, lose in a bag?
@gpnyc said:
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
Many banks now days are loathe to take them. Most will at least make you clean them up thoroughly. An entire box of these things is prima facie evidence the entire sample didn't fit into a single Coinstar machine.
Wait, what?? Did you say clean them up?? How are you taking the coins to the bank, lose in a bag?
A lot of banks won't take rolled coin now days and if you put a bunch of this into rolls they are not going to created any $500 boxes of rolled coins. These come almost strictly from the counting houses that service the banks who are under contract with the FED. They get coins from various sources but principally banks and the mint. I know no reason it isn't possible an entity that generates a lot of coin might clean and roll them themselves but there's still the box. and the means by which the bank acquired them.
It's just curious to me. Apparently these coins were bought by a bank in significant numbers and then conveyed to a counting house. I have little doubt the coins are legal tender and might have even gone to a good cause. A few bags of stained quarters like this can take weeks to dilute through a local economy. Eventually all the coins end up gone or damaged anyway and these aren't "damaged" in their ability to transact business, merely in their appearance. Perhaps the issuer could add something to the water to minimize this effect.
This is not a big deal. Ok- the coins are stained, but what's eventually going to happen to them? The bank will distribute them to their business customers who need change for their stores. The businesses will dump a roll of them in the till and pass them out to customers one or two at a time. The people who get them in change will spend them somewhere else. Nobody will care one way or the other that the coins are not nice enough to consider 'collectible'. The End.
@MasonG said:
This is not a big deal. Ok- the coins are stained, but what's eventually going to happen to them? The bank will distribute them to their business customers who need change for their stores. The businesses will dump a roll of them in the till and pass them out to customers one or two at a time. The people who get them in change will spend them somewhere else. Nobody will care one way or the other that the coins are not nice enough to consider 'collectible'. The End.
By George I think you got it. Nobody cares if the coins in circulation are in a collectible condition or not. Obviously the government would stop people from intentionally degrading large numbers of coins but it's doubtful they pay a lot of attention as well.
It really doesn't matter much as stains like this soften in time and it doesn't affect their usage very much. The coins pass into normal circulation and are lost among all the other culls and worn coins before themselves being lost forever.
But this sort of thing is still very instructive since it shows how coins circulate and degradation accumulates. Meanwhile finding nice collectible coins from the '60's and '70's get harder and all moderns are suffering increasing attrition.
These specific coins are likely to go back to the counting house from the bank but mixed in with more coins. The $500 box with be spread out across ten or twelve boxes Each time one comes back it will be further from another of the batch until they eventually are randomly dispersed by the constraints of the forces affecting them. They'll each acquire more wear and marking until they become lost.
This all seems to be happening outside the notice of coin collectors and has been for 61 years. Collectors don't pay circulating coinage any minds. Even when the coins were silver they paid them little mind but then they collected the coins and everyone knew you couldn't find a nice chXF '15-S nickel in circulation. But in those days the reason was much different. Today you can't fins a nice old modern because coin stocks are rotated and nobody has a lot of the coins and nobody collects them. You couldn't find a '15-S nickel in 1957 because everyone collected them and would snag the date in any condition. You could buy a single digit coin in AG-3 for $2.50 that was called G or even VG. You can obtain a '69 quarter in better than VF that isn't a cull. They weren't saved and they've been gone for years. A nice '15-S is 300 or $400. Or you might be able to find a F with a stain for $50.
@gpnyc said:
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
You don't have a credit union or bank near you that has a coin counting machine? Hate seeing you pay those coinstar fees.
There's no fees if you take a gift card in payment. I usually go for the Home Depot option.
@gpnyc said:
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
You don't have a credit union or bank near you that has a coin counting machine? Hate seeing you pay those coinstar fees.
There's no fees if you take a gift card in payment. I usually go for the Home Depot option.
" Meanwhile finding nice collectible coins from the '60's and '70's get harder and all moderns are suffering increasing attrition."
Give it a rest, already. You need to check a calendar- it's not 1965 anymore. There never has been a time that it was easy to find nice collectible 50-60 year old coins in circulation.
"This all seems to be happening outside the notice of coin collectors and has been for 61 years."
Coin collectors are unaware that coins are being worn down over time while in circulation? Are you really making that claim?
@MasonG said:
Give it a rest, already. You need to check a calendar- it's not 1965 anymore. There never has been a time that it was easy to find nice collectible 50-60 year old coins in circulation.
Yes!! Exactly!! The difference this time... ...drum roll, please... ...nobody saved the old moderns in nice condition. Nobody needed to save old silver coins because they were horded as specie.
"Yes — exactly. And that’s the point.
There never was a time when nice 50–60‑year‑old coins were easy to find in circulation. The difference now is simple:
Nobody saved the old moderns in nice condition.
Silver survived because it was hoarded as specie. It had an automatic preservation mechanism. Clad never had that. The attrition curve is different, the survival curve is different, and the supply profile is different. People assume moderns exist in endless pristine quantities because they imagine 1965‑era circulation still exists.
It doesn’t.
The hobby is still living in a world where “modern = common,” but the actual physical supply doesn’t match the belief. That’s the disconnect."_
@WaterSport said:
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
I'm going with this. The paper rolls themselves do not look water damaged, so I'd rule out flooding after they were rolled and stored.
No one said flooding AFTER the most recent rolling.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@MasonG said:
" Meanwhile finding nice collectible coins from the '60's and '70's get harder and all moderns are suffering increasing attrition."
Give it a rest, already. You need to check a calendar- it's not 1965 anymore. There never has been a time that it was easy to find nice collectible 50-60 year old coins in circulation.
"This all seems to be happening outside the notice of coin collectors and has been for 61 years."
Coin collectors are unaware that coins are being worn down over time while in circulation? Are you really making that claim?
You might as well talk directly to Copilot.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@WaterSport said:
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
I'm going with this. The paper rolls themselves do not look water damaged, so I'd rule out flooding after they were rolled and stored.
No one said flooding AFTER the most recent rolling.
It was implied by your very own statement: "Stored in a basement that may have flooded or was just damp for a while"
@WaterSport said:
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
I'm going with this. The paper rolls themselves do not look water damaged, so I'd rule out flooding after they were rolled and stored.
No one said flooding AFTER the most recent rolling.
It was implied by your very own statement: "Stored in a basement that may have flooded or was just damp for a while"
No, it was inferred by you. I was talking about the coins not the rolls.
Flooding ruins the rolls also. No one suggested that the fire, damp basement, wishing well, or metal detector finds were of those coins in THOSE rolls. Those rolls also don't look like they were in a wishing well. 🤣
The 50 pounds of estate coins i took to the bank were dumped in the coin machine not left in the moldy rolls
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Beyond any keepers / I would try the bank. Then spend drive thru, food store, etc. perhaps a new money clip for one of them. Some stores have boxes of stuff marked down - about to be thrown out. Very low priced. Recently finished some cookies from that. What you save can go for coins!
Beyond that leave to you. Suggest used /washed plastic sandwich meat holders to use for - make good junkbox for stuff in 2x2.
At shows put those junk boxes out, put some slabbed coins on top. Nice display . However, They will ask to see the junk boxes a lot of the time.
What you see is what you get. The coins in this picture will be in pretty good condition compared to others of their date in less than 25 years. These coins are ratty and won't be saved but neither will nice examples of most of these.
Every day the coins deteriorate, degrade, and disappear because everyone knows that so many were made they'll be common forever.
First off they were very hard to find in Gem and within a few years they were impossible to find in chBU except in mint sets. By the '90's they were no longer available in XF and by 2010 in VF. Now 95% of them are heavily worn and cull and are hard to find in F if you can find one at all. You don't see many of a few of the dates. The mint sets are gone.
This thread is just a reminder that time is fleeting. Everything comes and goes and several thousand dollars worth of quarters have left the building. I usually see these coins here and there, not all at once.
Comments
Looks like fountain coins to me. Had a historical fountain we had to clean out about every 3-4 months and make a deposit after we cleaned, dried and rolled them.
WS
What did you clean them with, and how did you do it?
I was thinking CLR for this batch, then a good rinse and dry, then CoinStar.
Bathe them in cheap cleaning vinegar for a few hours, rinse, dry, and re-roll.
I'm a pretty nice guy but I'm not that nice! 🤣 😂 We'll let some young kid do that. 😉
What did you clean them with, and how did you do it?
Just a kitchen sponge and some detergent to hit the high spots. Spread on a towel in the sun to dry.
WS
its not a golden pond moment, thats for sure
They're gone!
May coinstar be with us 🙏 🙄
Did that machine make a gagging sound when you dropped those coins in?
Clearly mint errors. Congrats on winning the lottery -
ebay.com
I'm going with this. The paper rolls themselves do not look water damaged, so I'd rule out flooding after they were rolled and stored.
Gone but not forgiven!
I'm surprised that in this instance they ran the hopper empty before rolling them. I had always assumed they mixed them back into circulation as they do with a lot of brand new coin. Perhaps people are more likely to take back a roll of quarters if only a lot of them are "defective".
Too modern to have been in a leper colony.
https://acoinshop.com/ —-> https://ebay.us/m/KxolR5
I am late to the thread so apologies if someone else already answered, but I do know what these are. They were removed from water fountains.
I have been shown similar stuff on occasion and always just tell the person offering that they should spend them.
Official PCGS account of:
www.TallahasseeCoinClub.com
That some people have vast numbers of quarters they keep around is an old wives tale that simply doesn't apply any longer. If there were substantial numbers of quarters sitting in change jars or basements these quarters would not be wearing down at the same rate or having the same attrition as circulating quarters. Some quarters would move from one basement to another and would still be nearly pristine after even 60 years. We simply don't see this. All the 1966 quarters lay out on a bell curve centered at VG- and extending only up to nearly VF. It is attenuated at the low end because the FED has had to remove hundreds of millions of heavily worn clad quarters because they were getting too thin.
It's hardly impossible they were flooded but the odds are very much stacked against it.
This is just what is out there: the ruins of many mintages. Even the 2026 has survived better than a few other '26's. For many of the older coins this is hardly the final indignity as cull and worn coins accumulate in circulation before they individually succumb at the bottleneck or do so collectively when they are withdrawn by the FED.
Time don't fly it bounds and leaps because we tend to not pay attention. A watched pot will certainly boil but it's easier to just let time jump forward. Collectors never leave well enough alone.
Perhaps I shouldda mentioned here that the biggest tipoff as to their nature other than their condition is their distribution. They appear to be currently circulating coin based on the condition, distribution, and wear. Clad quarters each tell one story about themselves but they tell another story about coins in the same place or roll. Old coins have been sorted, classified, and resorted many times and there position means nothing. Their stories are harder to read as well because of numerous changes and time out of circulation.
The line at 1999 and the states coins is a very easy one to read. ~69.5% of quarters are post-'98 issues. Frequently all you need to see is the last date in a sample to know when it stopped. Figuring out when it started can be a little more difficult because you must interpret the condition and distribution of the coins. This batch obviously formed rapidly as did the staining.
All my clad metal detecting finds look like this and worse. They all go in the coinstar and I always feel a bit bad doing it. I'm certainly not going to bring them to my bank where I'm on a first name basis with everyone.
Many banks now days are loathe to take them. Most will at least make you clean them up thoroughly. An entire box of these things is prima facie evidence the entire sample didn't fit into a single Coinstar machine.
You don't have a credit union or bank near you that has a coin counting machine? Hate seeing you pay those coinstar fees.
Wait, what?? Did you say clean them up?? How are you taking the coins to the bank, lose in a bag?
@JoeyCoins cried on them after not finding any silver
Yikes yuck
Micah Langford - https://www.oldglorycoinsandcurrency.com/
A lot of banks won't take rolled coin now days and if you put a bunch of this into rolls they are not going to created any $500 boxes of rolled coins. These come almost strictly from the counting houses that service the banks who are under contract with the FED. They get coins from various sources but principally banks and the mint. I know no reason it isn't possible an entity that generates a lot of coin might clean and roll them themselves but there's still the box. and the means by which the bank acquired them.
It's just curious to me. Apparently these coins were bought by a bank in significant numbers and then conveyed to a counting house. I have little doubt the coins are legal tender and might have even gone to a good cause. A few bags of stained quarters like this can take weeks to dilute through a local economy. Eventually all the coins end up gone or damaged anyway and these aren't "damaged" in their ability to transact business, merely in their appearance. Perhaps the issuer could add something to the water to minimize this effect.
This is not a big deal. Ok- the coins are stained, but what's eventually going to happen to them? The bank will distribute them to their business customers who need change for their stores. The businesses will dump a roll of them in the till and pass them out to customers one or two at a time. The people who get them in change will spend them somewhere else. Nobody will care one way or the other that the coins are not nice enough to consider 'collectible'. The End.
By George I think you got it. Nobody cares if the coins in circulation are in a collectible condition or not. Obviously the government would stop people from intentionally degrading large numbers of coins but it's doubtful they pay a lot of attention as well.
It really doesn't matter much as stains like this soften in time and it doesn't affect their usage very much. The coins pass into normal circulation and are lost among all the other culls and worn coins before themselves being lost forever.
But this sort of thing is still very instructive since it shows how coins circulate and degradation accumulates. Meanwhile finding nice collectible coins from the '60's and '70's get harder and all moderns are suffering increasing attrition.
These specific coins are likely to go back to the counting house from the bank but mixed in with more coins. The $500 box with be spread out across ten or twelve boxes Each time one comes back it will be further from another of the batch until they eventually are randomly dispersed by the constraints of the forces affecting them. They'll each acquire more wear and marking until they become lost.
This all seems to be happening outside the notice of coin collectors and has been for 61 years. Collectors don't pay circulating coinage any minds. Even when the coins were silver they paid them little mind but then they collected the coins and everyone knew you couldn't find a nice chXF '15-S nickel in circulation. But in those days the reason was much different. Today you can't fins a nice old modern because coin stocks are rotated and nobody has a lot of the coins and nobody collects them. You couldn't find a '15-S nickel in 1957 because everyone collected them and would snag the date in any condition. You could buy a single digit coin in AG-3 for $2.50 that was called G or even VG. You can obtain a '69 quarter in better than VF that isn't a cull. They weren't saved and they've been gone for years. A nice '15-S is 300 or $400. Or you might be able to find a F with a stain for $50.
There's no fees if you take a gift card in payment. I usually go for the Home Depot option.
I never used a coinstar. Thanks.
" Meanwhile finding nice collectible coins from the '60's and '70's get harder and all moderns are suffering increasing attrition."
Give it a rest, already. You need to check a calendar- it's not 1965 anymore. There never has been a time that it was easy to find nice collectible 50-60 year old coins in circulation.
"This all seems to be happening outside the notice of coin collectors and has been for 61 years."
Coin collectors are unaware that coins are being worn down over time while in circulation? Are you really making that claim?
What a Horrible mess of ruined coins.
Will the bank them? Or drive thru?
Think of all the Jacknbox good food u could get with them.
Yes!! Exactly!! The difference this time... ...drum roll, please... ...nobody saved the old moderns in nice condition. Nobody needed to save old silver coins because they were horded as specie.
[is this thing on]
_Copilot-
"Yes — exactly. And that’s the point.
There never was a time when nice 50–60‑year‑old coins were easy to find in circulation. The difference now is simple:
Nobody saved the old moderns in nice condition.
Silver survived because it was hoarded as specie. It had an automatic preservation mechanism. Clad never had that. The attrition curve is different, the survival curve is different, and the supply profile is different. People assume moderns exist in endless pristine quantities because they imagine 1965‑era circulation still exists.
It doesn’t.
The hobby is still living in a world where “modern = common,” but the actual physical supply doesn’t match the belief. That’s the disconnect."_
No one said flooding AFTER the most recent rolling.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
You might as well talk directly to Copilot.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
It was implied by your very own statement: "Stored in a basement that may have flooded or was just damp for a while"
No, it was inferred by you. I was talking about the coins not the rolls.
Flooding ruins the rolls also. No one suggested that the fire, damp basement, wishing well, or metal detector finds were of those coins in THOSE rolls. Those rolls also don't look like they were in a wishing well. 🤣
The 50 pounds of estate coins i took to the bank were dumped in the coin machine not left in the moldy rolls
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
A mystery that will never be solved or answered within this thread (unless you read it).
Beyond any keepers / I would try the bank. Then spend drive thru, food store, etc. perhaps a new money clip for one of them. Some stores have boxes of stuff marked down - about to be thrown out. Very low priced. Recently finished some cookies from that. What you save can go for coins!
Beyond that leave to you. Suggest used /washed plastic sandwich meat holders to use for - make good junkbox for stuff in 2x2.
At shows put those junk boxes out, put some slabbed coins on top. Nice display . However, They will ask to see the junk boxes a lot of the time.
What they all way?
What you see is what you get. The coins in this picture will be in pretty good condition compared to others of their date in less than 25 years. These coins are ratty and won't be saved but neither will nice examples of most of these.
Every day the coins deteriorate, degrade, and disappear because everyone knows that so many were made they'll be common forever.
First off they were very hard to find in Gem and within a few years they were impossible to find in chBU except in mint sets. By the '90's they were no longer available in XF and by 2010 in VF. Now 95% of them are heavily worn and cull and are hard to find in F if you can find one at all. You don't see many of a few of the dates. The mint sets are gone.
This thread is just a reminder that time is fleeting. Everything comes and goes and several thousand dollars worth of quarters have left the building. I usually see these coins here and there, not all at once.
Your kidding
Those junk coins - were they stored in garage - would spend them at JB.
They made them by the millions if not a billion lol. Wouldn’t even want them for junk box material.
Uh, oh—Co-pilot is gonna be pissed.
Co-pilot wants to pat him gently on his head.