Dryer Coins For The Win!

Good morning, friends!

Got an email from a friend wondering what the heck those coins are above (his subject line was literally: “Fake dimes?!”), and after being stumped for a few minutes I did some sleuthing :)

Turns out, these aren’t actually fake coins at all – they’re 100% authentic! And they even have a name!

Dyer Coins

I.E. coins that are accidentally left in pockets when they’re put through the wash, only to fall out and get stuck in the process of drying and get spun around and around (and around and around and around, ad nauseam!!!) until eventually their rims are flattened and overall diameter shrunk.

According to an entry on CoinCommunity.com,

“Commercial machines had an inner (clothes) tub, and an outer tub that surrounded the inner.

Coins would slip out of clothing being put into the machine and fall into the skinny opening (at the “mouth” of the machine”) between the two tubs and be tumbled through many cycles.

On a front-loading machine, after awhile the coin’s thickness could increase enough such that the coin would be rolling on its edge between the two tubs rather than continually being carried upward and dropping back down”

*******

So basically after going around and around for Lord knows how long, they’re eventually dug out and are found to be much smaller – and cleaner! – in the process, lol… Pretty neat! :)

And up until now I’d never seen any others in my entire lifetime, but funny how once you notice something it tends to keep popping up now that it’s in your conscious! Not only have I come across a few dryer coins in a collection I recently liquidated, but I JUST FOUND SOME IN MY OWN DRYER THIS WEEK TOO!!! What the heck???!

[In a collection I was liquidating – two dimes and a cent!]

[Found IN MY DRYER!! Look at that right cent compared to the left one – it’s gotten so tiny!!! If it weren’t for the remaining coloring and part of “Liberty” still showing I would have assumed it was a dime.]

[Close-up of rims after all that circling.]

Now interestingly that same member from Coin Community says these coins come from *commercial dryers* and not inside the main tub where clothes go, but turns out he’s wrong in both cases.

These puppies were found at the bottom of my normal average dryer, AND inside the main tub where my clothes were! I saw something shiny lodged down at the bottom in between a crevice, and when I plucked it out with pliers (it was in there good!) I noticed it was a coin! I scanned the rest of the tub and found two others lodged but I was able to pull those out with my fingers.

The crazy thing is that they couldn’t have been in there too long as I do our family’s laundry every single day and most likely would have noticed them? So I’m completely stumped here… Unless they somehow fell in between the tubs initially like that poster up above said, but then managed to squeeze through the crevices later to appear in the main clothing tub?! But that’s not possible right?

Either way, they’re pretty neat, and as you can see it afflicts all kinds of denominations – not just dimes. This below cent was particularly interesting – it turned so *glossy* and completely changed the coloring of it! I now see why my friend thought his dimes looked fake – they just don’t look, or feel, “right” when you hold them.

(The rim on the left is so thick and kinda looks like a “covering” on the coin vs a rim! I even slipped in a flat head screwdriver just to see if I can pop it off but had no luck ;))

45 years on this Earth and never come across these before, and now all of a sudden I’m the proud owner of 6 cute little dryer coins, lol… And maybe you have one in your collection – or dryer? – too and don’t even know it?! I guess you really can find coins anywhere! 😂

Happy Collecting!

PS: They’re not really worth anything over face value, in case you were wondering… though I bet your collector friends would trade you for ’em since they’re so cool :)