Anyone else remember this...?

[greenwyvern]

When you could get your change cleaned and returned to you? Keep in mind I am an old geezer but I remember my grandfather going into the lobby of hotels and turning over his change to be cleaned. Usually there was an old black man behind the teller like bars and he would spin the coins manually in a tumbler full of soap, water and I guess some abrasive. I remember at one hotel you could just exchange your dirty coins for clean coins or you could get a receipt for the amount you left and come bake later to claim the exact same coins you left. There was one I remember that had converted an old sewing machine with the big foot petal so he could sit and read the racing news while pumping the pedal to turn the canister with the coins.

I don't know if they took a percentage for doing the cleaning or if the hotel paid them. The shoe shine table would always be near-by.

This was the early 50s and maybe it was because of the polio scare. My parents and grandfather thought you could get polio by looking wrong at someone. I guess during the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s there were a lot of people who would not use paper money, my grandfather being one. When he walked he jingled. He told me that's how he got his ladies. Sometimes if he somehow got some paper money it was my job to walk to the bank and exchange the bills for silver dollars. He would give me a nickel for doing it. boy I worked cheap....but really miss those days.

 

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[bradyboy]

interesting post, never heard of this, but I get it, if its true
Brady

 

[greenwyvern]

interesting post, never heard of this, but I get it, if its true
Brady

Some hotels still do it. Google "hotels wash coins".

Reporter: Rachael Bale

Rob Holsen likes to tell people he launders money. But take a look at his business card, which is a bit more descriptive: Rob Holsen, Coin Washer. Holsen literally washes coins. It’s part of his job at San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis Hotel. The hotel has provided the service since the late 1930s, when the hotel’s Mural Room restaurant (now the lobby) attracted the rich and famous.

San Francisco’s wealthiest ladies would come to lunch at the Mural Room every Monday. Mondays are when the laundresses would come to their homes, Holsen says, and the ladies “didn’t want any part of that.”

The lunches were big social affairs, attracting the richest and best-dressed ladies in town. The Mural Room would serve food and host a fashion show, while the ladies gossiped and socialized.

But there was a little problem.

“The general manager noticed that the coins - which in those days would buy your lunch - were dirtying the ladies’ white gloves,” Holsen says, “So he said, ‘We can’t have that. Let’s wash the money.’”

 

[Escape]

You opened a window to the past and allowed us to join you. Thank you for sharing that memory.

 

[Deft Tones]

I never heard of such a thing. Thank you. Today I learned.

 

[UnderMiner]

Gives new meaning to 'money laundering'

 

[Mackaydon]

Here's a guest coin washing machine pic from 1924.
Refers to a hotel in LA;wonder if it were the Biltmore?
Don...

 

[Keith Jackson]

I remember seeing a story about some guy who did that back in the '80s. It was on that wonderful show 'Real People', I think.

 

[Msbeepbeep]

They say money is one of the dirtiest things you can handle, so that would make sense to try and keep bad germs from spreading and making people sick.
Now at lest half the population uses plastic.

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[fistfulladirt]

Except for silver. I've read that no known disease-causing organism can live in the presence of even minute traces of silver.

 

[Msbeepbeep]

Ya they used to put silver coins on wounds to keep them from getting infected.

So the cleaning of silver would have been to just improve the eye appeal.

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[fistfulladirt]

Ya they used to put silver coins on wounds to keep them from getting infected.

So the cleaning of silver would have been to just improve the eye appeal.

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And a few pieces of silverware in the water tank, and a silver dollar in a container of milk would let it keep longer without spoiling.