Marked Halfs

[creshka46]

Well that's a new distance record for my J's. It would be hard to beat that unless some turn up in Alaska or Hawaii.

Haha, yeah. I was shocked at that too. but a simple "J" is pretty generic, I wondered if maybe it's just a coincidence that someone else around here marks their halves with a J too. I don't know

[HoardCopperByTheTon]

Best marking I have come across so far is 2 letters actually punched into the halves.. usually NIFC post 2001 halves The letters are R C. I call them my RealCent halves.

[halfhunter]

I was finding marked halves in fed rolls as far back as '01 when I started mining halves. My dump bank required coin to be rolled so I rolled them then put my mark on both ends. 1 in 10 coins got marked with a bright red Sharpie dot right in the center. I was doing 2, then 4, and finally 6 bricks a week + CWRs from all the banks in a 50 mile radius of Podunk GA. By 2009 the take had dwindled off so much it wasn't worth the work and hassle anymore.

Ended up trading/selling the entire pile of 90 & 40% halves to a large bullion dealer in Panama City, FL for ASEs and some cash. Paid off some nagging bills left from a divorce and paid for a nice vacation for the new GF & I.

HH

[TheJonasCollegeFund]

My second box had hardly any marked ones at all...maybe 10 or so. And the $500 bag I bought off of their coin machine....another 10 or so marked halfs.

[mtldealer]

I figured I would reliven this thread... I have been seeing these lately. Anybody know where they are coming from?

[reddirtcoins]

Dots, I hate dots!

[RedRockGirl]

SM is alive and well in my boxes in Utah. The others I haven't seen. I find a ton of black SM, a green marker line, and red nail polish dot. Probably 50-100 coins per box are marked.
Can someone fill me in on what the point of marking every coin is? How exactly is it helpful to these people? I personally find it obnoxious.

[uthminsta]

I don't know if they mark every coin, but if you start seeing a lot of your own marks (or a lot of someone else's), you might want to switch sources. It is just an indicator of how much redundancy you have when you get your stuff.

I sorted some last week, and there were several with marks on the shield. Either a big blotch or a circle around the shield. Marks on the eye or ear also. Or along the bust truncation line.

[scyther]

SM is alive and well in my boxes in Utah. The others I haven't seen. I find a ton of black SM, a green marker line, and red nail polish dot. Probably 50-100 coins per box are marked.
Can someone fill me in on what the point of marking every coin is? How exactly is it helpful to these people? I personally find it obnoxious.

It also destroys the numismatic value. Even if they don't really have any, it destroys the aesthetic/common collectible value. I can see why they do it but it's really pretty destructive if you think about it...

[mtldealer]

SM is alive and well in my boxes in Utah. The others I haven't seen. I find a ton of black SM, a green marker line, and red nail polish dot. Probably 50-100 coins per box are marked.
Can someone fill me in on what the point of marking every coin is? How exactly is it helpful to these people? I personally find it obnoxious.

SM is from San Diego... I see a handful a box. I have been lucky I think L.A. is a hub or something because when I first started I put in 250 marked coins per bag figuring a 25% ratio would ensure that I would see something back. I never did. That was over two years ago.

[fasteddy]

any with an "e" in the field on the obverse behind JFK's neck? Those were me a couple of years ago. For some crazy reason I find more silver in boxes with alot of searcher marks. Poorest taste mark I have seen....red bullseye on JFK's neck. someone writes the date when thye searched....man that is alot of work. Such Wasted time.

[Chief]

Last 6 months or so, I've seen a lot of 10, 11, or 12's here in NE. I'd like to know where that person is located.

[Numis Pam]

SM is alive and well in my boxes in Utah. The others I haven't seen. I find a ton of black SM, a green marker line, and red nail polish dot. Probably 50-100 coins per box are marked.
Can someone fill me in on what the point of marking every coin is? How exactly is it helpful to these people? I personally find it obnoxious.

It also destroys the numismatic value. Even if they don't really have any, it destroys the aesthetic/common collectible value. I can see why they do it but it's really pretty destructive if you think about it...

I too am totally against people marking coins for any reason! It is so destructive for future collectors of any kind, esp. the young ones when that is all they will be finding in the wild....

[BlackOut]

I figured I would reliven this thread... I have been seeing these lately. Anybody know where they are coming from?

Crh sw is coin roll hunting streetwalker from another board. Can't remember exactly where he is from though. He was doing high volume and marking a lot for awhile. Last I knew, he backed off because he was sorting his own dumps.

[mtldealer]

All the guys I have made contact with (SM, CRH and others not pictures in this thread) have been really nice. We've talked and traded stories. I'm looking for "Ha" in the picture. What you can't see is that someone painted the side of all the coins that say "ha" with silver marker. It doesn't affect me. I'm just curious where its coming from. On a side note. The fact that this one hunter thought that marking coins silver and then writing "ha" on the front as if to say ha I got you it's not silver just means that they are not playing in the same field as they could be. Without getting to much into it. I don't hand sort, I machine sort... Thousands of coins a minute with pretty much no losses on finding silver. So painting the side of a coin silver is in my opinion not just defacing the coin... It's done purposefully mean hearted to fool others. For me that's not what CRH IS ABOUT. Can you imagine every time someone won money in a casino someone ran up to you and threw your chips on the floor? Or wrote something nasty on your chips? I know that I have a "different" perspective on this but this is what I do to unwind, to decompress and have some me time. Sorry about the rant.

[uthminsta]

What you can't see is that someone painted the side of all the coins that say "ha" with silver marker.

That's small-minded. I wanna be bigger than that. I took my latest sort and went out on a double date with friends. I paid our half (haha) with halves. The lady gladly took them and chuckled, "I actually just had someone ask me tonight if I had any of these!" So I heartily replied, "Now you can say you do! You're welcome!" Imagine if I had them all marked up. They're virtually unspendable, because now you have to explain why they all have paint and marker on them.

Again, small-minded.

[mtldealer]

I have been accused on more than one occasion of having a small mind... but I make up for it in other areas.

[RedRockGirl]

The size of your penny hoard?

[HPMBTT]

Like Hoard....when I was out in CA, I used to get the ones stamped with RC regularly (1 or 2 per week). I was fooled just once with a half that looked like silver and it said "no" on it.

I've marked halves over the years, but not so much now. When I did mark them, I did two for every $10 roll. I usually marked them with the initials of the out-of-town city that I was going to dump them in and always with a different colored marker for each out-of-town city. Almost all of the cities were at least 1.5 hours away from the home city (wherever I was at the time). In most cases, I dumped large amounts (ie $4000 or more) to make it worth it. The good news was that I never did get any of my original halves back.