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I have an opportunity to get bags off of a local banks coin counter. They tell me that their machine does not sort so the bags are mixed. I was wondering if anyone else on here has bought mixed bags before and what their experience is with it. It seems like it might be a pain to search it as opposed to searching on denomination at a time, but I think I am going to try it out. Are there any specific benefits/problems associated with doing this?

Would love to hear what you find.

you can buy a mixed bag of different denomination of coins, at face value? and you're wondering if you should do it ?
If I had the chance, I'd do that all day long. Zero risk unless they don't have an accurate count of face value. easy to grab the pennies of course, then ryedale them, then done.
I still get funny faces from bank employees asking to buy their bags of pennies. Saves everyone time, effort and money and still they won't do it around here for me.

Heck yes you should do it.

As for a possible miscount, I can guarantee it will be in your favor. All the dimes counted as pennies... All the times the cleared jams dump the customers coins in the bin and don't get counted...

TCF's lobby counters use a bin with all the denominations mixed. I have hounded them for years, asking to buy the whole bin, I would supply the bags and do the labor myself transferring the coins to my bags. Always got a no for an answer.

To have an opportunity like that is awesome. Definitely go for it.

That would be neat to try. I would do it.

Thanks for the replies! Why did I even question this in the first place? Of course I should buy lobby counter loose coin!!!

I was just thinking that it might be a lot of work to pick out all the pennies. I might just hand sort instead of Ryedale-ing them since I will be basically handling them individually anyway.

Bluegill, you have me all excited about getting 1 cent dimes now!! Sweet.

What did you end up doing about the mixed bags? Are you still able to get them??
Anyone else have this opportunity now or in the past?

Do you have a coin separator? Run them thru there first.

I occasionally go and get mixed bags from this source. Problem is that it is usually mostly quarters. I have found a few silver quarters, but it is quite rare. I could get about 2-3 thousand a week from them in mixed bags. I usually take about half of what they have. I only go there about once a month on average. It's a little out of the way. So far, no collection dumps. Percentages of dimes, coppers, war nicks is about what you would expect from sorting boxes. Got 1 x 40% half one time. Barely any halves in these bags. Probably 1 cuni half per $1000 face coin.

I have a ScanCoin 303 that I use to separate the coins by denomination. It is a little bit of a pain doing it one denomination at a time, but overall it does save me time over just clawing through an unsorted bag a handful at a time. Wish I had a better sorter!

If I can get bags of dimes and cents from my other source, I'll do those first for sure. That source is not as consistent though, so if they are slow then I will swing by the mixed bag bank to grab a few bags if I am looking for something to sort.

Oh, if only I could get some of those. If you have a normal counter like a Mach 7 you just drop them in the top and it will separate all the denominations and give you a total count so you wll know immediately if you scored some dimes. If you have a single denomination counter they you just sort biggest to smallest to seperate.. halves, dollars, quarters, nickels, pennies. Then you can run the pennies through the Ryedale while you sort the rest of the load for silver. Be sure to dump somewhere else. Tell us the results.

You are always going to get more quarters. Folks tend to dump the higher denominations first. At least with them in the bags you won't get any nickels in the rolls like those of us that occasionally take quarter rolls from the bank.

Hoard, that is what I do with the SC303. I sort out from biggest denom to smallest. I usually have the ryedale doing cents as I edge search the quarters and dimes. If I get a big load of dimes (usually dont) then I use the ryedale for those too. Nickels I save up and hand sort in front of the boob tube at a later date.

Results from the last pick up: 3 bags totaling just under $1300.00. Over $900.00 of it was quarters. Found: 3 silver rosies, 1 war nickel, got about 30% copper with a handful of common wheats. Return on these bags was average to slightly above average from what I usually get.

HoardCopperByTheTon wrote:Oh, if only I could get some of those. If you have a normal counter like a Mach 7 you just drop them in the top and it will separate all the denominations and give you a total count so you wll know immediately if you scored some dimes. If you have a single denomination counter they you just sort biggest to smallest to seperate.. halves, dollars, quarters, nickels, pennies. Then you can run the pennies through the Ryedale while you sort the rest of the load for silver. Be sure to dump somewhere else. Tell us the results.

Mach 7? I was looking into a Mach 6 or 9. I havent seen 7's? I need a sorter that will do more than a SC303/360...

mtldealer wrote:

HoardCopperByTheTon wrote:I need a sorter that will do more than a SC303/360...

Don't we all!

NHsorter wrote:

mtldealer wrote:

HoardCopperByTheTon wrote:I need a sorter that will do more than a SC303/360...

Don't we all!

Nah, we don't all really need 'em. I have a Mach 3, a Mach 5, and a pair of Mach 7's. I hardly ever fire up the 7's. Those puppies weigh about 200 pounds each.. and I can't change the bags fast enough at 4,000 CPM. I could use a Mach 9 or Mach 12 for the collection.