One day when I was working for a bank, a lady who was a regular customer came in. She had lost her husband in an accident the week before and she was obviously having a hard time making ends meet. She went up to a teller and wanted to cash in some coins for currency. The teller called me over and asked if we could accept a box of unrolled coins. I quickly looked through them and suggested that the lady take her box of coins to the local coin dealer, that he would give her much more money for her coins than she could ever get at any bank. She looked a little puzzled but walked out the door. About 2 hours later she returned to the bank and came up to me. She had a big grin on her face and told me that the coin dealer had counted out the coins and that the face value was $5.32 (something like that, the details are a little fuzzy after all these years.) but that he gave her $25.00 even for them. She said she could now get some gas and go to the cemetery to visit the grave of her recently departed husband.
I didn't look closely at her box of coins because it was Friday and Fridays were always busy at the bank. I do know that she had at least one silver dollar in that box. Had it been any situation other than her's, I might have exchanged the coins for currency at face value and then I would have checked with my bank manager to be sure I could buy them at face value from the bank cash. But since I knew her history I couldn't let her miss an opportunity to get some extra cash. I never regretted doing that although I think if the manager knew that I had sent a customer away he might have had a few words with me.
There were many times during the summers when the ice cream truck owner would bring in bags of coins to be run through the coincounter. He had a business account so running his coins through the machine was part of the bank's service to him. Anyhow, he always had some silver and older coins in the bags. I used to count his coins, give him credit for his account and then ask the manager if I could buy the silver from the bank cash. The manager was always good about letting me do that.
About one year before I left the bank, a customer came in who wanted to turn in some US gold coins. The man was elderly and thought that he'd get into trouble if he tried to spend them like regular coinage at the grocery store. He remembered that gold was to be turned in during the 1930s but he had not abided by the law. He apparently had not heard that during the 1970s is was again legal for people to own gold. Well, as luck would have it, the manager was standing right next to me so I could not tell the elderly gentleman to go to the coin shop. Instead, the manager asked the man to go over to his desk to discuss the coins. I could overhear the conversation and it turned out that the manager offered the old man about $30.00 for each coin. I know that some of the coins were $20.00 pieces and others were $10.00. The manager made out really good that day, but he screwed over an old guy because those coins had to have been worth at least $75.00 to $100.00 apiece even back then. I never had any respect for the bank manager after that.
Then there was the time that we were robbed, but that's for another thread. LOL
