Original Bank Rolls "OBW" Buying Guide rev1

Most of the time you can just use GS roll pricing. I don't think anyone publishes specific OBW pricing. If the rolls are truly OBW, and at least meet the criteria at beginning of this thread, then they can command a premium. I usually figure 1.5-2x GS bid for true OBW for typical dates. Dates with more/valuable varieties are probably worth a bit more than this.

That 44-D roll is very likely not OBW. I have never found one that was a true OBW. All have been searched.

RK Stimpler was a marketing ploy of someone in the 90's. Not sure who. I have a few with this marking, and have opened some. They were not OBW, but they were nice rolls nevertheless.

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Originally Posted by ray_parkhurst

Most of the time you can just use GS roll pricing. I don't think anyone publishes specific OBW pricing. If the rolls are truly OBW, and at least meet the criteria at beginning of this thread, then they can command a premium. I usually figure 1.5-2x GS bid for true OBW for typical dates. Dates with more/valuable varieties are probably worth a bit more than this.

That 44-D roll is very likely not OBW. I have never found one that was a true OBW. All have been searched.

RK Stimpler was a marketing ploy of someone in the 90's. Not sure who. I have a few with this marking, and have opened some. They were not OBW, but they were nice rolls nevertheless.

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Thanks Ray, this collection has some very interesting coins. It also had 6 Bricks and ~ 150 extra rolls of 2009 Lincoln Bicentennials :D

I was in LA on Halloween and picked up some 1955-S OBW rolls. Many of the rolls were pretty rough, and some had clearly been "dated", ie the wrapping pulled back near the date to check date and mintmark. I selected 5 rolls from a group of perhaps 15 that I thought were good enough to put away. 1955-S is a good year for OBW rolls as many were put away from banks across the US, so you can put together an interesting OBW roll set from a wide variety of banks. They are also instructive for showing what a "real" OBW roll looks like from this era. The ones I bought had clearly been handled quite a lot in their 59-year lifetime, but given the physical evidence I am 99.99% sure they have not been opened or searched. These rolls also were accompanied by several tubed rolls with coins having the same characteristics as the OBW, so it appeared the owner opened a few, checked them out, and decided not to open any more. Here are pics showing all the 5 rolls together from top and both ends. They are from the California Bank, whose Head Office was in LA. Hopefully these are interesting to folks as examples of rolls that are truly original, yet don't have that "clean tight-wrapped" look so common on fake rolls.

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/a...v2014013_1.jpg
http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/a...v2014018_2.jpg
http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/a...v2014019_3.jpg

Great Images as always, thanks.

Those rolls look in good shape also... I would bet the coins inside are in excellent shape!!!

I wrote the below text in response to another thread, but I thought it might be useful in this one as well...

I never wear gloves when searching rolls. I have tried cotton, latex, and nitrile and have had more mishaps wearing any of these types of gloves than I have with my bare hands. Of course I always wash my hands before doing a roll search, and wait a few minutes after washing for the water to evaporate. I have a small mirror at my desk, and if when I touch it I leave any steam around my fingerprint then my hands are still too wet. I should not leave a fingerprint on the mirror either. And of course I only touch the coins by the edges.

For the last 20 years, my process for tubed rolls starts by viewing the edges of the coins, and the visible sides of the end coins. For original rolls that have been properly stored, the edges of all coins should be fairly uniform. The end coins are often not the coins, or at least not the side of the coins, that were exposed if the roll came from OBW. Most folks will put a "nice" coin on top and often on bottom of the roll to make the roll look "better". The quality of this end coin can tell you a lot about what to expect from the rest of the roll.

I continue the process by carefully dumping the the roll out on a velvet-pad tray, spreading the coins evenly across the tray to maximize visibility. If the roll is original and unsearched, the coins will be in a very random orientation vs one another. No two coins will have the same orientation. I pick each coin up by the edges, rotate them so they are all in same orientation, and stack them in 10-15 coin stacks. Any taller and they fall over too easily. I stack the heads and tails in separate stacks and note how many of each I end up with. Original unsearched rolls will have a nearly 50/50 split heads/tails.

I then start the actual searching by viewing each stack of coins using my stereo microscope. I use a Bausch & Lomb Stereo-1 pod with 10x eyepieces, so total magnification is 10x. I have a ringlight for even illumination. I search in multiple passes. First I look for repunched mintmarks and any doubled dies that show in the date. I put anything I find aside in separate stacks and continue searching. Next I look for doubling in the other devices; for die breaks like BIEs; for any lamination or other errors; and for VEDS coins. Finally I look at the reverses for double dies, errors, etc.

The coins I don't find anything interesting on I place back into stacks, and then view them without magnification, segregating them into 6 groupings: Gem; Choice; Average; Cull; Roll-Ends; and Toners. These get placed into their own separate stacks. If I am searching only a single roll, the Gems go into 2x2 or Lighthouse snap-fit holders. The roll ends go into an ongoing Roll-End roll. Toners go into small snap tubes I get from TAP plastics (yellow tubes hold 15 Cents; clear tubes hold ~30 Cents). Culls are coins with heavy fingerprinting, spotting, damage, etc and go into a box in my desk drawer. Eventually I will spend them, or so I tell myself. Choice and Average coins go into tubes, awaiting more of the same until a full roll is completed.

In this process, I have handled each coin perhaps a dozen times. I am careful to touch only the edges, and never either too lightly (to avoid dropping the coin) not too tightly (to avoid wrap-around to the rims). I have rolls of Gems and Toners that I put away 20 years ago that are as pristine as the day I first searched them. Unfortunately I also have rolls that have degraded, but not due to my handling of them. Most of the degraded rolls have white spots from dust, which is my nemesis, or possibly moisture droplets from not being careful not to breathe on them. Dust and water droplets are far bigger enemies to copper than is handling of coins, as long as your hands are clean and dry and you only touch the edges.

The subject of bank rolls is of interest to me, since I have two that have tails showing on both ends and I've never knew what to do with them without opening them and gently turn one end around with a tooth pick, or something more clever than that, which I have not thought of yet.
Any experience on this situation?

OBW rolls have value above similar rolls in tubes because they might contain interesting or valuable coins such as varieties, errors, beautiful toners, high grade gems, or some combination of these. In other words, they are a mystery, and may contain treasure, so they appeal to treasure hunters and command a premium. Tails-tails rolls add another dimension to the treasure hunt, in that not only could the coins inside be valuable, but they could be an extra valuable date/mm. So a tails-tails roll commands an additional premium due to the potential of it being an expensive roll.

But what if you own one of these, and don't know what's inside? Your options are:

- Open it and find out. This gives you the thrill of the treasure hunt, but once the roll is opened its mystery value is gone. Yet it may actually contain something cool.
- Sell it. You can market it on eBay as a great mystery roll. How much it sells for depends on its characteristics (bank, wrapper markings, quality of wrapping, etc...all the things discussed in this thread) and how well you hype it up. But if you sell it, how will you feel when the buyer finds something really cool and worth 10x the roll price?
- Kick the can down the road and put the roll away for a rainy day. But you're just procrastinating...

I personally like to open such rolls, since I care more about the treasure than the potential reduction in value. That said, I have many, many tails-tails rolls sitting and waiting for me to open them, so I am also a procrastinator.

Thanks for your guidance.
I opened one and it was a roll of 1968-S.
Thanks!