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How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:43 am
by capthowdymp
Every bank I go to I ask if they would sell me the penny bags from the coin counter. They all seem to have the same answer no,those pennies have to go straight to the fed it is our policy. How do you guys get your bags?

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:53 am
by mishra142
Just keep trying. Be sure to throw in there that you understand thy may be off a little maybe even under $50 sometimes and that you are ok taking that risk.

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:17 am
by NHsorter
PERSISTANCE. Ask for the vault teller or the head teller and try to reason with them. Ask why they don't want to save a couple bucks to pay to ship the bags. Tell them you just look for the older ones(true). Tell them you WILL NOT bring them back to their bank. Smile :D

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:59 am
by LooseChange
capthowdymp wrote:Every bank I go to I ask if they would sell me the penny bags from the coin counter. They all seem to have the same answer no,those pennies have to go straight to the fed it is our policy. How do you guys get your bags?

I get the same thing everytime I ask. I always hear "Its policy, we can't do it". I'm still going to keep trying at different branches, perhaps one will work with me.

This is the same bank where in order to get CWRs, I had to make a deal with them to trade them one for one "My CWRs" that way they don't lose quantity. It's an even exchange at this point, they just didn't want their rolls on hand to get to low and were only selling me about 10 rolls at a time previously...using the exchange method, I've been able to swap north of 100 rolls at once. Unfortunately doing it this way, rolling is very time consuming, and there are now several branches in the area that only have my marked pennies in their Vaults :mrgreen:

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 11:06 am
by capthowdymp
yeah I would not really want to do that. I get pretty lucky with the CWRs in my area. I guess i will just keep chugging along.

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 12:03 am
by HoardCopperByTheTon
I would love to be able to offer them 100 machine wrapped rolls for every bag.. that might work for them.. except no banks in my area have any lobby machines.. hence no bags. :mrgreen:

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 12:35 am
by Engineer
HoardCopperByTheTon wrote:I would love to be able to offer them 100 machine wrapped rolls for every bag.. that might work for them.. except no banks in my area have any lobby machines.. hence no bags. :mrgreen:


The only problem with that strategy is you'd wind up recycling the zincs in your own area rather than diluting them through the Fed repository.

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 6:34 pm
by ScrapMetal
It seems that many tellers make up their own rules. My father gets coin counter bags at some banks and not others. So I decided to try at my bank. The first attempt was successful and they seemed happy to sell it to me. I do not dump at this bank, so no reason to deny me the next time, but met with the statement that it is against the bank's policy to sell bags from the counter. Hmmm, so I sent email to corporate to get the real answer. Seems corporate has no policy about selling the coin bags. So bottom line, someone is lying or does not know the actual policy. I have also had tellers telling me they must charge any where from 10 cents a roll to $7 a box for pennies. My father gets the pennies at cost, yet at one branch he has just encounter a teller that tells him that the bank charges $7 a box. He is the only teller there that seems to want the surcharge.

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 10:50 pm
by baggerman
I have better luck with credit unions than I do with banks.

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 11:44 pm
by frugi
I used to always get these bags straight from the coin counter/sorter, no problem. Until one day some other local idiot, dumped at my honey hole, and threw the (Brinks) plastic bag in the trash, and a Brinks person found it, and now it is impossible to get any bags anymore from my local bank. such a pity, they were first rate bags, I always found good stuff in them, whether it be cents or half dollars. :(

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 5:50 pm
by jldco
I've been in and out of banks, S&L's, C.U.'s, you name it, for 25 years. You guys saying that the tellers make up their own rules are exactly right. Somebody is making it up somewhere. If you are willing to pay face value for a bag, there just aren't any reasons other than it's a pain for the teller (at least in her own mind) to do so unless it's because they never did it that way before and they sure aren't gonna try to find out unless you are persistent or can motivate them to find out that they can do it after all...
Case in point. Last week I sold a new coin sorter to a bank (not a lobby unit although it wouldn't matter). When we took the bags off the old sorter and ran them thru the new one, I purposesly held the halves til last. Then I told the head teller who I was training on the new machine, that her halves wouldn't match the figure on her old machine I was hauling off. WHY! she asked in a panic. You see those picks, plastic tokens, non half dollar coins and other crap in your halves? Yes... those all got counted as halves. Your old machine says you have $320 dollars in halves... but you don't. You'll be lucky to have $300. Well that stinks she said! Now I'm gonna be off in my vault! So, I saved the day and bought the bag for what her old machine said it had in it. She asked me why I'd do that and I told her I saw a few silver halves in the bag and that would make up the difference to me and make her balance. (I also was told she had silver halves at home that she'd sell me because she trusted me and she wasn't sure about all the folks up and down the street waving signs that say we buy...) No policy.. No regulation... just legitamatley making the figures match. They can do it even easier with full bags.... if they will. You will just need to warm them up to the idea before they fill out their paperwork to ship them via their armored car and get them to hold them for you. It could take some time to get them used to the idea of holding them for you.
BTW the bag of halves was richer than I first thought... almost a third of the bag was 40%ers with two 90%

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 5:16 pm
by John_doe
tell them you are with the FDIC and you are stress testing their branch. :thumbup:

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 5:42 pm
by John_doe
Wear a ski mask (banks keep their branches extra cold to avoid coin collectors) this will show them that you can withstand the frigid temperatures. Also carry a banana in your front coat pocket for a post pickup celebration snack, (real centers thrive on potassium) but be weary and keep your hand on it at all times (some of the employees might try to snag your tasty treat). Last but not least use a firm assertive tone.

This trick will work every time.

Re: How Do I obtain penny bags?

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:36 pm
by stlouiscoin
frugi wrote:I used to always get these bags straight from the coin counter/sorter, no problem. Until one day some other local idiot, dumped at my honey hole, and threw the (Brinks) plastic bag in the trash, and a Brinks person found it, and now it is impossible to get any bags anymore from my local bank. such a pity, they were first rate bags, I always found good stuff in them, whether it be cents or half dollars. :(


wasn't me frugi!! I can never get bags any where either... or get them to save the crap out of the counters.. :thumbdown: :thumbdown: