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 Replies: 15 / Views: 3,911 |
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New Member
United States
1 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1166 Posts |
I don't know of any collector who marks coins or any dealers who make their bread and butter by selling coins. Roll hunters mark the paper rolls to indicate they've been searched but don't mark coins.
Edited by ikandiggit
04/30/2011 10:01 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
1244 Posts |
When I was a child, we put a blue "x" on a $2 Australian coin with a marker, and spent it!
It took 6 months to come back to me in my change...it was cute that I found another $2 with a black "x" and someone had a note with there name marker on it.
People put markers on coins for fun and there circulation coins anyway, so it's not hurting anyone, but I think it would be wrong to carve "x" in a coin that damages it.
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Valued Member
United States
393 Posts |
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
chevyout: welcome to the CCF!
Most of the deliberately damaged coins you see are done by folks wishing to amuse themselves, with no thought of how the value of the coin may be affected.
I have seen quite a lot of small sized 19th century U.S. silver that have been holed, presumably for jewelry purposes. Needless to say, I find these pieces disappointing enough not to want to keep any, although some may have interest in them. Some coins are deliberately altered to deceive, in the hope of making a huge but dishonest profit.
There is also a class of deliberately marked coins dated from the 18th century, right back to ancient times. These coins were deliberately marked by collectors for their collections. Most of these are only found in museums and are highly valuable, because they have an ownership history attached to them.
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Valued Member
United States
294 Posts |
I can give you another example. Quite a few years ago, I was assigned to an ambulance station in a rural area. The local car wash guy told us to get a roll of quarters and mark the coins (he suggested painting them red) so that we could wash the truck at his place, and when he removed the change from the machine he would set aside the painted coins and return them to us. He did this so we essentially washed the unit for free. I have seen a lot of coins marked in a similar fashion over the years, and assume that at least some of them were because somebody, somewhere, offered a free service to someone else.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
 There are numerous reasons coins get marked or scratched with and for something. Many do as already noted to see if it ever comes back to the marker. Some use permanent markers and some just scratch an X or a few intials on them. Some scratch something on a coin with the thought of if I can't have it, no one else will want this one. This is usually done by someone with a limited amount of money to use for collecting coins. Naturally there are those that drill holes in coins to make a necklace, bracelet, etc. Not long ago there was a post on all the things people do to coins. Don't know how to find old posts but if you could read that one, it would answer a lot of your questions. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
14454 Posts |
My Grandfather used to get upset when he would find a coin like that, he acted like they did it just so no one would keep it. His theory was someone had it in their collection and they got hard up for money and couldn't keep the coins so they marked them because if they couldn't keep it they were going to make sure no one else would want to either. My theory is it could have been kids or anything because you never know what anyone is doing at the time or what their intentions were
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
2448 Posts |
Welcome to the CCF! Once a cashier at a discount store wanted to use the pen for checking FRN counterfeits on a well circulated Susan B dollar I was using. I told her it wouldn't work on the SBA but she said her manager told her to check anything that looked suspicious and she had never seen an SBA dollar before. Go figure. |
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New Member
United States
37 Posts |
I do know that at one time I considered rubbing an entire box of cents on sandpaper to scratch them just to see how long it would take before I got one back in change. But that would be a sin. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Not to mention the time it would take to scratch 2500 cents.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Quote:
Roll hunters mark the paper rolls to indicate they've been searched but don't mark coins.
I've met two people that do mark all the coins in a roll with a marker to see if they are getting the same rolls back. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1745 Posts |
My young daughter and I once marked a few Lincolns with green nail polish, never did see them again.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1348 Posts |
I agree some people (not normally collectors) just mark their coint o see if they ever get it back. I have seen many carved Xs in silver coins. I think that has to do a lot with checking the coin for silver.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
8904 Posts |
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New Member
United States
24 Posts |
When I was a kid my Uncle had painted dimes for retrieval in the Swamy Fortune machine. He would hand me some to play in the machine. That way he could tell which were his and which were from outside people in his cafe.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
5239 Posts |
If you can imagine someone doing something to a coin, so has somebody else and it has been done. Billions of coins in the hands of hundreds of millions of people means that everything possible, however improbable, has been done or has happened.
Sometimes coins are altered in an artistic or interesting way: counterstamps, love tokens and Hobo Nickels are some examples. These have developed a collector interest.
Edited by oriole
01/07/2024 11:12 am
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Replies: 15 / Views: 3,911 |
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Posted 04/30/2011 10:34 pm
