UNUSUAL BANK BAGS

The collecting of various bank and mint bags is popular with some collectors. Most commonly collected are the cloth or canvas bags issued to a banks depositors from the 1930's to the 1960's. Most modern banks now use vinyl or plastic bags of which few are collected. Other bags commonly collected are those canvas and cloth bags used by the U.S. mint to distribute large quantities of coins from cents to dollars and even pre 1933 gold coins. The latter are presently quite rare and often valuable.

In addition to the above mentioned bags there are several other categories most of which are scarce and which I have pictured here in this article. These include leather bags usually issued by individual banks of which the larger ones were very likely intended for heavier coins or gold with the small ones probably used as a coin purse. Leather bank bags are seldomly encountered.

Bags other than those distributed by the mint and usually designated for a single denomination and often printed on the bag the year of issue for the coins can come in a number of formats. Shown later is simply a medium size bag which states $100 Silver. There are a couple of bags which state $10.00 Pennies issued the the Metals Bank and Trust Co. in Butte Montana and another stating Treasury Department $10.00 Cents from Washington D.C. Small denomination bags especially for cents or pennies are quite rare and why only $10 which even back in the 1930's would be a log of coins and are interesting why they were even made.

 

The bag shown on this page is from the Bingham State Bank in Utah and also shown is a picture of this bank which no longer is in existence.

 

 

The two other leather bags, one from the Citizens National Bank in Sedalia Mo, and the coin purse size one from The First State and Savings Bank from Klamath Falls Or, are also shown. Leather bags which were stamped with the identification of the bank held up fairly well but the lettering very often is almost impossible to read.

 

 

Finally, a $1000 Gold bag from the First National Bank of the Republic in Utah is shown, The gold bags, which are extremely rare were probably not used for gifts to their depositors but rather for storing and accounting specific quantities of gold in their vaults. These bags are all from my personal collection and like coins, tokens, or anything else numismatic are a link to the past and banking a hundred years or more ago.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web