Neat WW I Item & cautionary advice
RINATIONALS
Posts: 171 ✭✭✭
About 20 years ago a young woman around 25 comes in with a grouping of coins to sell. It's fairly mundane, couple of SBAs, Ikes, 2 Morgans, a Peace $1, some 90% and other common stuff. I spread it out, sort it and write up an offer which comes to a little over $100. She says 'I've saved the best for last' reaches in her purse to pull out a balled up tissue. As she unwraps it a coin falls on the glass display case with a thud instead of the usual ringing sound. She tells me it's a $5 gold she inherited from her aunt who had told her grandmother had given it to her father before he went off to Europe in WWI. I go to pick it up thinking 'Oh no I'm going to have to tell her its counterfeit' but quickly realize it's real. I tell her you have something odd here. Looking for a seam I find one on the reverse and then it's just a case of getting it open. Find it, pop it open and as you can see there's a picture inside and an inscription reading 'Douglas from Mother March 1917'. Needless to say shes surprised as she had thought it was just a lucky coin.
We talk some more, I'm figuring oh well shes going to want to keep this and her 1st words are is it worth less because they did that? I tell her no I'll pay you extra because of being so cool. I ask her what she knows about the woman & Douglas and sadly it's nothing beyond her thinking he was her great grandfather. I ask were there any notes with the coins? No, just loose in a box with the 3 silver dollars and gold coin in an envelope. She knew nothing of Douglas, her own mother had passed 10 years before and now the aunt was gone. Did she have any old family photos or letters? She said they just kept some of her mom & aunt growing up and thrown away a bunch of others when cleaning out the aunts house after her passing.
While I ended up with a cool piece sadly all the backstory is lost to history and what should have been a family heirloom turned into just an object to sell because of having no historical/emotional tie.
Just a couple weeks ago I had a guy in his 40s sell me the family coin 'accumulation' of just over 8k in 90%, Silver $1s and partially filled blue albums to help pay his daughters college tuition. Many had come from his grandfather and he remembered ty he fun th hey had looking at them together. He decided to keep a nice silver dollar to pass on to each of his kids. He said they never really known him since he passed when his oldest was 2 and before ty he others were born.i suggested he write a note about his granddad and put it along with pictures of him with the coins. At least they'd know something about him and there might be a family resemblance and therefore a reason to keep them.
Please, if you're planning on passing on any collectible tell the recipient why it means so much and hopefully they will cherish it rather than just running to the closest store to sell it!
Comments
I realize we can't keep everything, but I also find it sad when folks sell or throw away their family history.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
A couple years ago I took the 750,000
family pictures out and changed all of them that said, "Dad and me" ...etc.
to the NAMES of the folks.
Dunno who cares, but it pissed me off not knowing who "me" was.
Very interesting coin (object), how would you know what price to put on it?
All good advice.
I am amazed that such cherished mementos can become just something to sell for a little cash.
There is a lot of stuff in my family that is currently in the "custodianship" of a side that has no next generation lined up to inherit it, and I am trying to pry some of it loose and reallocate it so it can a chance of meaning something to the representatives of the youngest generation.
I also find that to be a sad story....I have a strange personal history that I had been aware of, but without details... My Mother never discussed it and I did not press it....However, now I am the oldest member of the family... the history is lost....although I was able to trace some of it through DNA.....What I possess from past family, I have preserved...and now must determine who would carry on with it....Cheers, RickO
I love finding coins/currency with a provenance. The back story can be far more valuable than the item. The history of how and where and who is important.
bob
I wouldn't have sold that $5 gold coin for anything.
Smitten with DBLCs.
When President Roosevelt announced that circulating gold coins were required to be turned in to the Federal government in 1933, my immigrant grandmother didn't trust the Government and put around $70-$80 of gold coins in her safe deposit box. She thought if they were going to take the gold coins, they would also take the silver dollars as well, so about thirty or forty of them also went into the safe deposit box.
Dad showed them to me when I was thirteen. There wasn't anything of numismatic value. We still have them. I wouldn't have a problem unloading the silver dollars, if my brother and sister were okay with that, but the gold coins to me are family heirlooms, and they're going nowhere, except possibly to my niece and nephew or to my stepdaughters when we're no longer around.
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
A great idea -- my mother and aunt ran into so many roadblocks in old photos years back while trying to do our genealogy. Ancestry & other more modern means are invaluable in getting the names on the right line but the images for the most part just fade away like ghosts.
I have all of the family photos going back to 1900. In most cases I know who is pictured but in some others I just have to guess based on family stories I recall from long ago. All the people who could confirm my guesses are now gone.
If you have such photos and know who is in them write the names, dates and places on the back.
Since it is Veteran's day, Ancestry.com is having a free access to their military records portal. Draft cards, DD214's etc. I was able to find multiple records on my father and grandfather, in the WW1 WW2 era.
If you had a name, it might pan out.