Newbie Adventures in CRH

[twincapes]

After reading folks' experiences here for a few weeks, wife finally took the plunge and picked up $110 in halves...3rd roll produced a 43 Walker...gee this is easy! LOL got 4 40% out of that lot. Had to travel over the weekend so we took turns "hitting banks" on the trip, it was lots of fun, got $300 of halves at one bank and $110 at another. We were all excited to go thru them in the hotel room that night. The $300 produced one 40%, and you had to look at the date to see it, so someone must have searched the edges but missed that one. The $110 produced 16 40%, that was cool and a lot of fun. Since we were out of town, didn't matter where we dumped them, so deposited all back into our account at a bank we belong to.

Wife is now hooked and ordered our first box, that comes in Wednesday. I started hitting banks on my lunch hour, but got either "No, I'm not interested in getting up" from tellers or "We have the new dollar coins". I carried a Kennedy and actually had to show it to a couple of tellers. I'm in a city and a lot of them seem to be recent immigrants, so seriously, I don't think they'd ever seen one before (!)

Was desperate for CRH action (LOL) so got $100 in dimes yesterday and went thru those 20 rolls, boring boring till the last roll when I saw a nice solid ring in the middle ...42 Merc! Woo hoo I can't believe you can find a Walker and a Merc in circulation anymore, that is cool. I could metal detect schoolyards for months without finding either. A good development was that one bank in my area has coin counters in the lobby of all their branches, so no need to talk make nice with a teller, just walk in, dump, and print out a slip and get it cashed. I did the 1000 dimes and this looks like the way to go.

This is fun, as opposed to recent post about hoarding as somehow evil,the hunt is the rush, and you actually make $$ in the end, as opposed to most hobbies that you pour money into. Or as someones signature block on here says, "It's not the gold, it's the finding of the gold."

Sorry for rambling, just wanted to pass on a newbie's excitement.
HH!!!

 

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[morris0863]

Great luck so far. I am amonth in and no a Walker yet but some good and poor days makes it still a rush. Welcome to the addiction

 

[LJ]

Welcome TwinCapes. I know you & your wife will certainly enjoy the hobby. It is easy to get hooked because like you mentioned.....your making money and it is fun doing it!!! Good luck to both of you & post those finds....and pictures if you can.....I love looking at the pictures....ha!

BTW - Congrats on the Merc & Walker.

 

[TxTim]

Sounds like you're having fun!
That's the whole point, ain't it? - the pursuit of happiness!
It's hard to believe what you can find under your nose in plain sight without a metal detector.
Way to go! Hope you find hoards & hoards!

 

[prizm II]

Keep up the hunt and good luck! Is this a great hobby or what? My wife and I have been at it for three months now and have been in maybe 50 banks and opened 38 boxes have found 62-90%(1936-1964) and 274-40%(1965-1969), better than I expected

 

[scotto]

Good going, welcome to the addiction!

 

[GMan00001]

A good development was that one bank in my area has coin counters in the lobby of all their branches, so no need to talk make nice with a teller, just walk in, dump, and print out a slip and get it cashed. I did the 1000 dimes and this looks like the way to go.

In the Twin Cities, there are two banks in my area that most have the self serve machines, Wells Fargo and TCF Bank. TCF uses coinstar but they waive the fee for people with an account. They are open later and in some grocery store locations are even open on Sunday for cashing in.

I have found that one of the local Wells Fargo branch's machines hates half dollars, though, as it spits out about half of them as rejects which can be really loud and annoying as it clunks along to spit out the rejects. All the other branchs' machines seem to have no problem accepting halves, so I just bring lower denom stuff to the one branch instead if I need to cash in there (I try not to cash in there often as I buy coins there frequently).

Though I will agree, self serve is the way to go as the tellers never have a problem with bringing bag after bag in since all they see is the paper receipt. I have noticed that the different branches treat the machines differently. Some make the customer sign the receipt and in some the teller signs the receipt. Personally, I prefer when the teller signs it as that means there is no record who's been cashing in all the coins.

 

[schramm]

A good development was that one bank in my area has coin counters in the lobby of all their branches, so no need to talk make nice with a teller, just walk in, dump, and print out a slip and get it cashed. I did the 1000 dimes and this looks like the way to go.

In the Twin Cities, there are two banks in my area that most have the self serve machines, Wells Fargo and TCF Bank. TCF uses coinstar but they waive the fee for people with an account. They are open later and in some grocery store locations are even open on Sunday for cashing in.

I have found that one of the local Wells Fargo branch's machines hates half dollars, though, as it spits out about half of them as rejects which can be really loud and annoying as it clunks along to spit out the rejects. All the other branchs' machines seem to have no problem accepting halves, so I just bring lower denom stuff to the one branch instead if I need to cash in there (I try not to cash in there often as I buy coins there frequently).

Though I will agree, self serve is the way to go as the tellers never have a problem with bringing bag after bag in since all they see is the paper receipt. I have noticed that the different branches treat the machines differently. Some make the customer sign the receipt and in some the teller signs the receipt. Personally, I prefer when the teller signs it as that means there is no record who's been cashing in all the coins.

Gman,you say the tellers never have a problem with you bringing in bag after bag since all they see is the paper receipt.

It got me thinking,what quantities($) are you bringing in each time?

The few banks near me with counters all fill a bag at $500(halves),I am not sure with other denominations,plus the machines are behind the counter so you MUST deal with a teller .Also a 5% charge for non customers and 2% for people with accounts

Do you always bring in less than $500 each time or how do you get away with not having the tellers need to change the bag while you are there?

I can't imagine their bags holding more than $500 because that's 25 pounds and it would be hard for the average teller move a bag heavier than that.

 

[GMan00001]

Gman,you say the tellers never have a problem with you bringing in bag after bag since all they see is the paper receipt.

It got me thinking,what quantities($) are you bringing in each time?

The few banks near me with counters all fill a bag at $500(halves),I am not sure with other denominations,plus the machines are behind the counter so you MUST deal with a teller .Also a 5% charge for non customers and 2% for people with accounts

Do you always bring in less than $500 each time or how do you get away with not having the tellers need to change the bag while you are there?

I can't imagine their bags holding more than $500 because that's 25 pounds and it would be hard for the average teller move a bag heavier than that.

The self-serve machines are in the lobby not behind the counter (customers lift and pour in their own coins) and they don't have bags to fill per se. They have one big metal bin on wheels that all denominations get sorted into after being counted. This bin takes a lot of coinage to fill up and is determined by volume of the coins instead of dollar amount. I have brought in 3 heaping canvas bags of coins at one time (approx. 7500 pennies, 6000 nickels and 2000 half dollars. The total was $1691 so I obviously forgot exactly what was cashed in) and still never filled the bin. And the bin had to have already been partially filled before I got there.

No charge for coin machines near me at any bank unless you do not have an account. At the non-self serve locations, they are frequently changing out the bags when I cash in, so I rarely cash in at those locations anymore to keep on friendlier terms with the tellers. That is unless they are a stickler for charging fees for getting coins or are otherwise unpleasant to deal with (only one branch that this tag applies to currently). Or if their bag is almost full and I can buy it back after filling it.

Regarding the bag sizes for those banks that have bags, here are the possible sizes:
$100 - numerous banks have this or a small plastic bin and no bag for halves and dollar coins
$500 - fairly common from what I can tell.
$1000 - not too uncommon. (and yes the tellers do struggle lifting it, even the merchant tellers)
$2000 - I only know of one bank that has this unless the teller was mistaken and its really 2000 coins or $1000. I am inline to buy the bag when it fills up, but it only has about $250 in it and the bank doesn't run a lot of coin so it could take awhile.

The size of the bag is determined by the type of coin counter the bank uses and possibly some settings that they have control over.

If you read my other posts, I search a wide variety of denominations quite frequently so the amount I bring in varies wildly. Though I usually try to get at least two boxes worth of coins before cashing in so I don't have to be seen at the bank as often. If I tried to break up my cash-ins on all denominations I would need to be cashing in at 4-5 locations almost every day which just isn't feasible for me. For me it seems easier to bulk up and cash in at each branch with larger amount and do it only occasionally. I try not to cash in at any one branch more than once or at most twice a month and when I have absurdly high totals of coins, I will drive a little out of my way to a bank that see less frequently.

Once I complete the search on all the coins I have on hand right now (due to my recent road trips), I will have searched over 335,000 coins. Now if I was done today 03/18 (which I am not) that would be an average of 4350 coins a day for 77 days. Pretend all the coins were halves and I wanted to break them up into amounts under $500 per cash in. I would still need to stop at 5 dump banks a day (including sundays).

Instead I have cashed in only 42 times this year (I track where/when/and how much for each one) and a few of those were just to buy back the half dollar bag from the machine. This also means my average cash-in is over 7000 coins. Most cash-ins were to the self-serve machines and I have yet to fill a bin in 2007.

Hope that answers your questions.

 

[schramm]

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

Those sound like true dream banks where you live,I read of another dream bank on a separate thread where the guy orders in boxes and dumps to the same bank/branch.

That bin you spoke of makes a lot of sense-no hassles for the tellers to change a bag very often and it would probably take a very long time to fill with just average customer piggy bank use-different story with a crh

Also would save a lot of plastic from the landfills as they would only have a reuseable bin to change and not thousands of plastic bags being torn open and tossed so they can run the coins through the counter/rolling machine at the facility.

I wonder how they handle the bin when it is full?Maybe they have an armored truck with a liftgate come to pick it up?Must have real smooth bearings in the wheels to make it pushable by hand.

The few banks near me with counters have separate bags for each denomination hung inside the machine.They have multiple bags for the $.01,.05,.10,.25.But only 1 bag for the halves and dollar coins so if I were to use them to dump at they would have to change the bag every few minutes.The half bag holds $500 and the dollar bag $1,000.

The bin idea would alleviate this problem altogether.I don't use them anyway because they charge 5% but it sure would make crh a lot easier and less frustrating.

Do you know if the coinstar machines at grocery stores operate with the bins or bags?I have never been at the store when they open one up.

 

[GMan00001]

I wonder how they handle the bin when it is full?Maybe they have an armored truck with a liftgate come to pick it up?Must have real smooth bearings in the wheels to make it pushable by hand.

I have seen them change the bin three times (all when the machines first came out). And there is a little handle that they use to push it around. The tellers struggled a bit with it, but not too bad considering its weight.

Do you know if the coinstar machines at grocery stores operate with the bins or bags?I have never been at the store when they open one up.

No idea.