Coin Roll Hunting - Help

News: Welcome to the Canadian Paper Money Forum.

Hello All;

In case you haven't noticed,  pre-2000 coins are disappearing from circulation at an alarming rate and Coinstar is responsible for this. 

For instance, I live in Toronto and when I go to any one of the TD Banks and ask for rolls of coins, all I get are machine rolled coins.  When you open these rolls all I find are 2000 to 2014 coins 100% of the time which are predominantly composed of steel. 

What seems to be happening is that the company who gathers and rolls the coins (Coinstar ...the owners are also government cronies) remove every pre-2000 coin and returns them to the mint.  The government then pays them for this service + commission incentives.  This is probably why Coinstar has placed coin counters in every bank location.

I recently started up my coin roll hunting hobby again and I'm extremely ticked off that the fun I once had has been taken away from me....(they did the same thing to me with the newer paper money).

I've developed another strategy of which seems to be working for the time being in retrieving hand wrapped rolls.  I've looked through tons of rolls most of which seem to exhibit a wide variety.  I have only found one silver dime in the hundreds of rolls I've looked through (that's why it's a history preserving project and not for profit).

The questions I have for my fellow coin roll hunters are the following:

1.  Do you know why all pre-2000 coins are disappearing and has the government kept hush hush about it?  Does nickel have something to do with it?
2.  Are there Canadian banks that still provide only hand rolled unfiltered/sorted coins?
3.  Have you seen this hobby take a turn for the worse recently?  It seems that all the older and silver coins have been completely wiped out of circulation.  My success rate years ago was so much better. 
4. Are pre-2000 coins worth holding on to these days?  I sometimes think that these coins will be the next "silver coins".

Anyways, any input would be greatly appreciated as I haven't coin roll hunted in about 10 years and I seem to be out of the loop.

Regards,
Canada

Hi Canada,

Yes, I also noticed the same situation here in Vancouver.

The government of Canada has a program called the "Alloy Recovery Program (ARP).   As a result, you are seeing what's occurring today... recently issued coins. 

The Canadian Coin News did a small article about this program:

http://canadiancoinnews.com/alloy-recovery-program-keeps-canadians-pocket-change-fresh/

It's getting harder to find regular (non-mechanical) rolled coins.

The fact that Coinstar is profitable, and even exists, is a testament to how outdated out coinage system has become. When people are willing to unload their coins for only 90% of their face value, you know there is a problem.

The problem is that our coins have been designed for purchasing power way back from the 1870s. The 10¢ and 25¢ have been the same size all of that time, and of 5¢ dates from the 1922. A century ago these coins had real purchasing power. Now they have lost 95% of their purchasing power due to inflation, but they are still all the same size. Our coins are long overdue for a revamping that will restore their size/purchasing power ratio to something more sensible. Something like this:

5¢: eliminate it
10¢: make it smaller like the old pre-1922 silver 5¢
20¢: make it the same size as the current 10¢
50¢: make it the same size as the old 1¢
$1: make it the same size as the 5¢
$2: Make it the same size as the 25¢

That will leave some wiggle room to eventually introduce  $5 and $10 coins that won't be the sizes of dinner plates. Then finally we will have some useful coinage that people will spend again instead of throwing in a jar. Remember 65¢ lunches at the diner in the 1950s? Two medium size coins and two smaller ones? It'll be the same again if we adopt this system.

The time to do this is now, it isn't going to get any easier by waiting.