A man from California is drawing attention online after he received a roll of smashed quarters from his local bank. The coins are so heavily damaged that he claims the washing machine in his apartment rejects them. While not a major problem, thousands of online users sympathized with the man’s pain of being handed unusable money from a bank.
“The washing machine spits them right out,” Reddit user kihaju groaned in his post on r/mildlyinfuriating. “Now I have to go back to exchange them 😮💨.” His uploaded photo of the quarter doesn’t just show quarters chipped or slightly warped; some of the coins are so bent out of shape that it’s not hard to see why any coin-operated machinery wouldn’t accept them. Thousands upon thousands of Redditors found the post irksome yet intriguing.
“They look like coins from the Roman Empire,” remarked one commenter. “These are straight up doubloons,” added a second. Many people recommended kihaju just keep the quarters as souvenirs since they have a sort of “archeological” look to them. “Those need to be out of circulation!” exclaimed a third.
Many Redditors Believe the Quarters Were Supposed to Be Destroyed But Accidentally Weren’t
As to why OP would attempt putting such damaged coins into a washing machine in the first place, he explained that he blindly empties quarter rolls from the bank into a tin. Their sole use is to pay for laundry. And as for the explanation of where such quarters came from, the majority of commenters agreed they were probably supposed to be destroyed but were accidentally put back into circulation.
This isn’t the first time someone has handled very damaged coins like these quarters, either. According to Reddit user DevlynBlaise, it’s a fairly common sight at their retail job: “Every roll in the box has at least 5 damaged coins. I have to pick them out so they don’t jam the self checkout machines,” they explained.
