One of the most rewarding ways to collect coins is finding rare coins in regular circulating coinage from the bank. You can't go wrong with searching bank-wrapped rolls of coins! However, you will need patience. You buy the coins at face value, search them for errors, varieties, and rare coins, and then sell the rejects back to the bank to get more coins to examine! You only have to invest your time in using this risk-free methodology. But it's not as easy as you think. In addition to knowing what varieties, errors, and rare coins to look for, you must deal with the fact that a bank is an institution based upon making a profit. Knowing how to overcome this limitation will help you get the rolls of coins you need to search through. Additionally, demand for coins varies with the economy. When demand is high and there is a coin shortage, no matter what you do, a bank teller may be reluctant to sell you a large volume of rolled coins.
Most Bank Wrapped Coins Come from the Federal Reserve
Unfortunately, there's a glitch. Most banks don't like to sell rolled coins to their retail customers. Additionally, to get the bank to acquire rolls of coins fresh from the United States Mint is virtually impossible. Part of the problem lies in how the Federal Reserve System distributes coinage to the banks. The Fed charges the banks a fee to place special orders for coins and currency unless the coin qualifies as a "Commemorative Issue" and has a designated Special Ordering Period. The Statehood Quarters and the Presidential Dollars qualified under this designation when they were first released.
However, even if you can get your bank to special-order rolled coins, there is no guarantee that the Federal Reserve will send your bank mint-state coins! The Fed isn't required to honor requests for mint-state (what they call "new") coins, but they say they do when inventory levels allow. The Federal Reserve always sends out "mixed" (circulated or used) coinage first.
The point here is that even if you found a bank willing to cooperate and order new coins for you, they might not get them! The result is that the bank fills out a Special Request form, possibly paying additional fees, and then doesn't understand what you wanted anyway, resulting in unhappy customers. Furthermore, if it is an odd denomination, like a half dollar, the bank may be stuck with them for several months or years since very few customers asked for them. The banks' solution to this problem, typically, is to avoid doing any special ordering for coins at all.
Finally, banks in smaller markets may not be ordering directly from the Federal Reserve Bank. Instead, the Fed may contract with a large regional bank to distribute their coin and paper money into smaller markets. Since the bank is acting as a middleman, this increases the cost of handling the rolled coins. The large regional bank also collects a fee from the ordering bank for handling these special requests.
How to Crack the Bank's Refusal to Sell Rolled Coins
Now that you understand the reasons why banks are reluctant to order and provide rolled coins, you can learn to work with them to get what you need. Whether you are looking for mint-state rolls of Sacagawea Dollars or circulated pennies so you can sort out the copper from the zinc, the first step is to define your goal.
If your goal is to get mint-state coins, your best bet is a smaller, full-service bank that doesn't usually deal with a lot of merchant accounts. Such banks are typically positioned as higher-end "enterprise banks," and don't have the free types of checking and savings accounts. But if you're a hard-core coin searcher or like to lay up a lot of mint-state rolls, a bank of this sort will be the type most likely to order and get "new" coins. They will most probably pass the fees along to you, too, and having an account at the bank will be mandatory. Source
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