The bags I get have mostly modern (up to 2019) coins and older (some pre 1900 pennies etc) coins. Interestingly, no Euros, no high value modern US, AUS, Canadian or NZ coins. Lots of low value asian coins (especially India, Malaysia, Thailand, Phillipines, South Africa etc). At one point I enquired with my bank regarding rejected foreign coins and was told they donate it to Unicef. Sure enough, Unicef has a coin donation program BUT I suspect many of the coins come from Unicef. Why? Firstly, it takes time (= money) to sort all the coins into country of origin. Secondly, once sorted, those coins have to be shipped to each country (= money) in order for them to be used as intended. I believe the low value of many of the coins would mean that the above mentioned costs would exceed the monetary value of these coins. So, my thinking is that Unicef do a quick sort of these donations with an eye for high value coins, especially Europe, USA, Aus etc. These are the coins they will get a profit from after shipping costs. The rest of the coins get sold in bulk to coin dealers who add their own unwanted coin, mix them all up, then repackage into units for sale to the public. Does anyone have any info on this conundrum? Am I correct or close?
Posted 09/27/2020 8:55 pm
I think a lot of these coins come from cruise ships. Over the last few years my wife and I have taken a few cruises and I noticed on some ships they have a donation barrel, where you can drop your coins in. Also when we come back to port , there is usually a large container where you can drop coins and/or banknotes.
Steve :)
Steve :)
