Question about Canadian pennies...

[coppercoins]

This thread is for the many like myself who consider receiving Canadian pennies in rolls a MAJOR pain...

So what can we do with them? The bank won't take them back, even though it was the bank that gave them to us in the first place. I feel completely cheated every time I go through a roll and hit a Canadian penny. I don't care to look at them, I don't collect them, and it's technically illegal to spend them inside the United States.

I know many will respond that they just re-roll them and take them right back to the bank. That's all fine for some people, but not for me. I have a moral issue with NOT providing 50 spendable United States cents to the NEXT person who happens to get my roll. I also usually take my coins to a machine that will summarily reject Canadian pennies just like I wish I could do at the bank.

So, without rolling them back up, really...what can we do? Should we make a central repository that will take them in? Is there anyone here who lives IN or close to Canada who would be willing to take US cents and exchange them one for one with Canadian cents we send in? I have about $3 face in them and cannot do anything legal with them.

Now that Canada is done making them, are they also going to stop taking them? Am I just stuck with these things?

Added for clarity: PLEASE READ - I love Canada and I really like most of the Canadians I have encountered in my lifetime. I do not like their coins, and that is all I am speaking about in this thread - the coins. Canadians are wonderful people, their country is beautiful - I just wish people would keep their coins in their country. That's all. I won't spend my Lincoln cents in Toronto, and they shouldn't spend the Queen in Sarasota - Just sayin.

[coppercoins]

Same problem existed in the NCO clubs on military installations in Europe back in the 80s (and before, I'm sure). Seems that Belgian 1 Frank coins were the exact same size and composition as U.S. nickels, but were about 10% cheaper. I cannot tell you the number of times I would win a 500 coin jackpot in a slot machine at the NCO club and get 20% totally unspendable coins in my payout. I took them to the cashier window just to be told that they couldn't take the coins because the were not American or German. Duh.

One time I took a road trip to Belgium. In my back seat was a BAG of about 1,200 Belgian francs. I took them to a bank, got paper, and bought gas. But that was a 100 mile road trip. Canada is well over a thousand miles from here. Same option doesn't exist.

[Roller]

I search about $50's worth per week and get my share of Canadians and island coins. I don't mind them I loose far more than the 10 to 20 cents per week I get in foreigns with bonehead spending or, for instance, my wife leaving a new $16 umbrella I bought that day in NYC last Monday in the cab {that's a lot of Canadians}. I happen to like the maple leaf design (don't care much for the Queen obverse, not that I have anything against her) and have found at least one pretty good DDR. Don't send me yours though (LOL) I don't need more than I get in rolls. I just toss them in a jar and watch the volume grow.

[coppercoins]

I guess the biggest burning issue with me is that a bank can hand them to me and refuse to take them back. Now that I've had time to think about why a created this thread in the first place, that's it. I want to be able to take them right back to the bank and tell them I don't want foreign coins - I want US coins.

Fact is, the same would be the case if I was receiving coins from the Bahamas, Jamaica, or Zimbabwe...they are not US coins, and that's what I go to a US bank to buy. US coins. If I get anything different, I should be able to take them back and tell them they owe me ($) back because that's the loss I took from their unchecked rolls.

Of course in the same breath I should be willing to take all the dimes I get in rolls back to them and give them 9 cents back for each dime I received because they overpaid me by that much.

I guess in the end it doesn't make a difference, and I could just bury the coins in the park or at the beach and watch the metal detector guys go nuts digging them up. That would be worth more than their US face value in entertainment value.

[Roller]

Yeah. I do agree that there is an additional aggravation factor when you do not do it to yourself, rather someone else (the bank) is doing it to you.

[Maineman750]

I just turn them back into the bank when I dump them. I don't keep them seperate and I don't make an issue of announcing that I have them. Like you said, they gave them to me, so I don't have a problem giving them back.In other words, no problem here

[coppercoins]

I generally take them to a place where I dump them into a machine that counts and sorts them. "Giving them back" is not a possibility because the machine spits them out as scrap. The other bank I went to weighed the rolls and knew if there were not 50 US pennies in the roll. Either way, I was stuck with them.

The arrangement I have now is that the bank gives me a large plastic bag into which I dump the coins, and they sort/count them and deposit the total into my account. This method also discounts Canadian coins.

And still yet, I have an issue with putting them into the rolls because it is not ethically or morally okay. If it's okay to put Canadian pennies into a US roll, then it's also okay to put a lead filled dowel into a roll and call it 50 cents, or to give a blind man a slug for a pencil. It's just wrong, and I cannot do it.

By the way, I once saw a story on the local news where someone was taking wood dowels, filling them with lead, and wrapping them into quarter rolls and taking them to a bank for cash. This was back when the banks just "trusted" that every orange roll that looked the right size and weight was a roll of quarters and was worth $10. I think I remember seeing that the guy got away with more than $2000 before getting caught. Since this was in the early 80s, $2K was worth much more than it is now.

[coincollectingenterprises]

If you amass a large enough amount to make it worth shipping them to me, I'll purchase as many as you can get your hands on.

[coppercoins]

Well, there you have it. I KNEW there would be some legal and moral way to get rid of them. But what do YOU do with them?

[coincollectingenterprises]

I get inquiries on purchasing Canadian pennies through my website. I suppose I'd simply sell them as opposed to turning people away. I wouldn't expect much of a profit margin, but I really find a lot of satisfaction in seeing happy people finding what they want. so in the end, depending on the quantity of coins we're discussing here (a few versus a pound, versus hundreds of pounds?), I'd potentially design some new web pages centered around them as a product line available for the public as cheap as I can possibly afford like everything else I do.

I suppose you could simply list them on your website for sale as an alternative product. But hey, that's what I would do with them.

[coppercoins]

You're more than welcome to the ones I get. If I happen to get a few rolls worth of them together I will contact you. I'll sell them at US face plus shipping.

[coincollectingenterprises]

Thank you very much.

[papatony420]

I would be willing to send you the same amount of unsearched US bank rolls for what ever you want to send me. Exchange roll for roll? I wanted to put together a book of all canadian so that is the reason I would do that. I would also like to do other country cents too so I would take whatever you wanted to get rid of.

[coppercoins]

Most of the Canadian stuff I get is not in collectible condition - it's just change, junk. Some scratched, some damaged, and just about all of it is very modern. I wouldn't feel right sending it to someone as collectible coins, because I certainly wouldn't collect coins in this condition.

[papatony420]

Thats ok Coppercoins, I dont mind.