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Poetic Justice, or The Scammer Who Scammed Himself.
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,804 ✭✭✭✭✭
(This tale is a rerun- I've told it before, so forgive me if you already read it a while ago). Great true story, though, I thought. I never tire of telling it.
I was in Bill Wright's shop in Asheville, NC, around 1993 or so. He was extremely busy with customers, so when a man offered him two or three rolls of circulated Buffalo nickels, Bill opened the end of each roll, peeked in, saw circulated Buffaloes, and quoted the man his buy price, based on an average circ roll of Buffaloes. The customer took his offer, left the shop, and was never seen again.
When Bill opened the rolls later to sort them, he found that there were only one or two Buffaloes on each end of the rolls and the rest of the coins in the middle were circulated modern Jeffersons. Scammed! That man had taken a big risk pulling the scam, as Bill's the sort who would probably have put a .45 caliber hole in him for a stunt like that. How he knew that Bill would not open the rolls right away is anyone's guess.
Now here's the funny part. Out of only 6 or 8 Buffaloes Bill got out of the deal, one of them turned out to be a strong Fine, genuine '37-D 3-leg! Too funny! We laughed about that one for the next few days!
"Poetic justice" does occasionally happen. What comes around goes around, occasionally. I only wish I was around to witness it more often. Watched it with my own two eyes, that time. I wonder if Bill remembers it.
I was in Bill Wright's shop in Asheville, NC, around 1993 or so. He was extremely busy with customers, so when a man offered him two or three rolls of circulated Buffalo nickels, Bill opened the end of each roll, peeked in, saw circulated Buffaloes, and quoted the man his buy price, based on an average circ roll of Buffaloes. The customer took his offer, left the shop, and was never seen again.
When Bill opened the rolls later to sort them, he found that there were only one or two Buffaloes on each end of the rolls and the rest of the coins in the middle were circulated modern Jeffersons. Scammed! That man had taken a big risk pulling the scam, as Bill's the sort who would probably have put a .45 caliber hole in him for a stunt like that. How he knew that Bill would not open the rolls right away is anyone's guess.
Now here's the funny part. Out of only 6 or 8 Buffaloes Bill got out of the deal, one of them turned out to be a strong Fine, genuine '37-D 3-leg! Too funny! We laughed about that one for the next few days!
"Poetic justice" does occasionally happen. What comes around goes around, occasionally. I only wish I was around to witness it more often. Watched it with my own two eyes, that time. I wonder if Bill remembers it.
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It just doesn't pay to be dishonest. Thanks for the story.
Some people !
Rob the Newbie
Since I recently resurrected another one of my ancient, 17+ year old story threads, I thought y’all might enjoy another “blast from the past”.
Way cool. I'm glad he made out
I can't imagine any competent coin dealer being so careless as to buy a roll of coins without first checking them.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Great story! I don't remember reading it the first time around but thoroughly enjoyed it this time.
THAT'S what you got out of this story? 🙄
Missed this the first time.... Thanks for resurrecting it LordM.... Cheers, RickO
I truly believe in karma. I try to be a mensch. Doing bad only causes yourself and everyone around you pain.
My experience, I purchased two British sovs from someone a couple of years ago. They looked legit. When gold spiked I decided to sell them. The guy I took them to checked them on his verifier and they showed .770 gold; counterfeit. The seller was long gone by this time.
I took them home, took a punch and disfigured them to the point of being unrecognizable and sold them for scrap. I couldn't live with the thought that someone might continue to pass them on if I sold them as sovs.
USAF (Ret) 1974 - 1994 - The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Remembering RickO, a brother in arms.
Wow what a story!
Collector
91 Positive BST transactions buying and selling with 56 members and counting!
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My point was that the dealer was careless and allowed himself to be scammed but he also got lucky.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
True on both counts, but you had to be there that day. The shop was full of people- it was extremely busy. Bill just did the cursory peek at the lot for the sake of expediency. Any other time, he probably would’ve spilled ‘em all out for a better look.
His downside risk wasn’t all that huge, considering what he paid as his going wholesale rate for average circ Buffaloes at the time. I forget what that going rate was, but it wasn’t much.
Even if he hadn’t lucked into the 3-leg, and had ended up eating that one, he’d still have been out a sum less than his daily cigar budget. (The man had a penchant for fancy cigars.)
Good point. On a slower day he would have probably performed a more detailed examination of the coins.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Great story LordM @lordmarcovan , hope you are well
boston
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That's Awesome!! I love Karma!!
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Considering the dollar value of the expected rolls it was a reasonable gamble. With more expensive stuff you have to check. One time a guy came into the coin shop with a solidly packed roll of gold Maple leafs and said he wanted to sell a roll of Maple Leafs. Ten pieces, right?
I got a tray and took them out and there were 9 pieces. Looked at the end of the tube and it had been neatly cut down. Of course the guy was shocked, shocked that he had been cheated by the guy he got them from. I did not believe him.
Another time some people came in with seven of those black metal "paint cans" with the tabs on the lids and tops of the cans that you can bend over or put seals through. Supposedly was seven $1,000 bags of .900 fine junk silver that the seller's now-deceased Dad had bought many years earlier. Bob popped open two of them and I ran them through our coin counter and they were good.
We were real busy and Bob thought about taking the others on faith, but decided to at least open the cans and verify that there were bags of silver in them, and sure enough one of them contained old pipes and washers and stuff that basically matched the weight of a bag of junk silver. In this case I believed the people when they said that they had no idea that their Dad had been screwed.
Oh yes, I’m sure Bill or anyone else would have stopped everything to check, had it been a roll of gold Maples or something like that!
Scammers are opportunists. They strike when you’re at your busiest.
USAF (Ret) 1974 - 1994 - The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Remembering RickO, a brother in arms.
coin roll scam
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