If the forum had been around in the early 70's

gonzer

In this era of parking lot finds and electron microscope errors I think it would have been a hoot to have posted the following: 'I found this 1969 penny in a roll with double images. Is it rare? I'll show a picture later.' The responses would have been great!
Now most of us know that '68 and '69 were known for an abundance of MD strikes. I would follow up with this photo...
You see, that's exactly what happened to me in 1972 while roll hunting. Sold for the crazy amount of $385, lottsa money for a 15 year old. ( PS. the coin in the photo is similar in condition to mine )

koynekwest

1972 was a great year. I got out of the military, got married, and started my career job. Never found a '69-S DDO-001, tho. Not even a 1972 DDO-001. I sure looked extensively for the latter and found multiples of the more minor d dies. You found a helluva coin in that '69-S.

JRocco

You found a 69S DDO !
Nice.
Not many can make that claim.

RichieURich

Great find!

1630Boston

That is splendiferous
@gonzer

stockdude_

Cool story and picture

CaptHenway

There was a forum in the early 1970’s. It was called “Collectors Clearinghouse” and it appeared once a week in your mail box in the pages of Coin World. If you thought you had something you wrote a letter, wrapped it around the coin and stuck a 10 cent stamp on the envelope. Eventually you got an answer, and if it was interesting you might one day see it written up in smudgy newsprint. I did that for years, then went to work there and wrote some of the answers and some of the stories.

1630Boston

@CaptHenway said:
There was a forum in the early 1970’s. It was called “Collectors Clearinghouse” and it appeared once a week in your mail box in the pages of Coin World. If you thought you had something you wrote a letter, wrapped it around the coin and stuck a 10 cent stamp on the envelope. Eventually you got an answer, and if it was interesting you might one day see it written up in smudgy newsprint. I did that for years, then went to work there and wrote some of the answers and some of the stories.

Great memories you have.............
the 70's were great in many ways

CoinJunkie

@1630Boston said:
the 70's were great in many ways

And less than great in others...

1630Boston

Bell Bottoms?

WAYNEAS

1972
I was in the Middle east
No Lincoln's in the parking lots there lol

koynekwest

I remember Collector's Clearing house quite well. Back then I would go to the nearest coin shop and pick up a copy of "Coin World" weekly, without fail. I then subscribed up until the 90s. I always enjoyed reading that column.

Hydrant

If the forum was around in the early 70's (and there was the internet), I would have been a lurker. I was collecting then but I would have been too intimidated to contribute because everyone else knew so much more than me. Heck, I was a lurker here for 3 years before my first post. And you know what? Most around here do know more than me even now. This place is for learning. And fun. And I like it just that way!

1630Boston

Learning is the key to everything

CaptHenway

I remember the day a fellow named Del Romines came into the office with two low grade 1943/42-P nickels. I told him it looked like he had something so I took pictures, developed the film, wrote a short “Does anybody have a nicer one?” story, and watched it roll off the press into the mail.

A week later I ran into Bern Nagengast in line at the Sidney post office. Knowing his interest in nickels, I asked him if he had seen the article. He said he had gotten his issue on Saturday and cherry picked a BU on Sunday. I asked him to bring it by the office, he did, I photographed it, developed the film, wrote another article for the front page and wah-lah, the variety was confirmed. Hardly took more than a month.

TD

TurtleCat

It would be a lot like the old BBS days. We would use a lot of original ASCII art to demonstrate coins.

Smudge

That would have been difficult as Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet.

ricko

I was working/living in Barbados and then Portugal during that period...no U.S. coins ..... Still looking for those DDO cents.... I have a gallon jug of wheaties to go through some snowy, winter day.... Cheers, RickO

ambro51

Hmmmmm......If the forum was there in the ‘70s, I do think Walter Breen would be an active participant. Disregarding his other “baggage”, he had a wealth of knowledge and certainly would have commented on the 69 S Ddo. Great Find!

Zoins

Imagine the threads on the 1964 and 1970 Peace Dollars?

I wonder how many of the posts would be on blue/brown envelope Ikes and upcoming bi-centennial coins.

Back then we had things like the Numismatic Scrapbook which can still be read today. I'd wonder if any of the content in the forum of the 70s would survive to be read today or if it would simply disappear?

messydesk

Imagine the complaints about how long it took to get stuff from the Mint.

1630Boston

The World's First Microprocessor - The Intel 4004
Photo of the Intel 4004

In 1970 and '71, responding to a request for 12 custom chips for a new high-end calculator, and with incredible overkill, a young startup company named Intel built the world's first single-chip general-purpose microprocessor. Then it bought back the rights for $60,000 (~$320,000 today).

The Intel 4004 ran at a clock speed of 740 kHz and contained 2300 transistors (see chip photo). It processed data in 4 bits, but it used 12-bit addresses. The 4004 addressed up to 4096 bytes of program memory (ROM) and 640 bytes of data memory (RAM), as separate entities. It had sixteen 4-bit registers and ran an instruction set containing 46 instructions, each taking either 8 or 16 clock cycles to complete, yielding performance of about 60,000 instructions per second (92,000 peak). This made it roughly equal to the original 1946 ENIAC in the size of a fingernail, at a time when the CPUs of most computers still took several large circuit boards.

The 4004 was a very big deal for the young Intel company, which was only three years old at the time – it was founded in 1968 by Bob Noyce (renowned for his co-invention of the silicon chip in 1959) and Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame). Ted Hoff had the original idea of building a single general-purpose processor instead of 12 custom chips, while Federico Faggin was the lead designer of the processor itself. Faggin later went on to found his own chip company, Zilog, which competed with Intel for most of the 1970s, resulting in Intel attempting to "disown" him and deny his crucial role in the birth of the microprocessor.

CoinJunkie

I remember my father buying one of the first 4-function calculators at Sears in the early 70s. It seemed radical at the time and I think he paid close to $100, which was a lot of money then.

1630Boston

I still have and use my HP 41CX scientific calculator that I bought in 1980!

ambro51

I was the only toll collector at my plaza in 1972 with a Calculator. $89 from Sears! Made banking out a Breeze!

metalmeister

California in the 70's was still a pretty hip place. Surfing, Muscle cars, Dirt bikes. The Girls. The back yard parties. Hundreds of high school kids at house parties. Those were the days.....

1630Boston

Back in 1979 the Sunset Strip was filled with billboards of all the hottest musicians of the day -- Judy Collins, Cher, and Eddie Money. In addition to the billboards, just take a look at those vintage cars.

1630Boston

long before the internet and social media, people actually spent face-to-face time with friends and played outside at the park while growing up in SoCal in the '70s.

ernie11

@messydesk said:
Imagine the complaints about how long it took to get stuff from the Mint.

Agreed. I remember how long it took for proof sets to arrive.

BryceM

I love the old HP41 calculators! I have one that I tried to get working again, but no go.... I’ll probably treat myself to one on eBay if I can find one.

CoinJunkie

@BryceM said:
I love the old HP41 calculators! I have one that I tried to get working again, but no go.... I’ll probably treat myself to one on eBay if I can find one.

I have both of you guys beat. As a junior in HS, I paid a few hundred bucks for an HP-45, which actually predated the HP-41. You might have guessed that I was a big math nerd. I don't remember what happened to it, but I don't really have any desire to buy a vintage one at this point.

BryceM

I’ve used the 45 as well. Good memories. I currently use an HP-41CX emulator app on my iPhone. My engineer brain still thinks in terms of XYZT registers and RPN logic.

To keep this coin related, I met a guy at a coin show who used to work for HP and was one of the original designers/programmers of these calculators. We had a good long chat about it.

FredWeinberg

I saw Elton John at his US debut at the Troubadour in West Hollywood
back in 1970 - not his first night there, but the 3rd night. He knocked
the socks off everyone when he went from his first song "Your Song"
to "Burn Down the Mission'"! Didn't expect that kind of R&R from him
after listening to Your Song on the radio ........

That photo of the Strip brought back lots of memories - we used to
cruise Sunset Blvd., Hollywood Blvd., and Van Nuys Blvd. on either
Friday or Saturday nights (sometimes both if none of us had dates!)

1630Boston

Gotta love calculators that DO NOT have an 'equals' sign.............saves a lot of button clicks

ambro51

And what the hell happened to the “Cent” sign??

1630Boston

gonzer

@CaptHenway said:
There was a forum in the early 1970’s. It was called “Collectors Clearinghouse” and it appeared once a week in your mail box in the pages of Coin World. If you thought you had something you wrote a letter, wrapped it around the coin and stuck a 10 cent stamp on the envelope. Eventually you got an answer, and if it was interesting you might one day see it written up in smudgy newsprint. I did that for years, then went to work there and wrote some of the answers and some of the stories.

The Clearinghouse was my fix as a YN error collector back then. I was lucky to have my '73 Lincoln struck on a Filipino 5 centimo w/ a nice strike-thru featured once along with other coins. There's no describing the excitement I felt as I saw MY coin on the page of a renowned periodical. Great time back then, as many of the responses here attest to.

CaptHenway

@ambro51 said:
And what the hell happened to the “Cent” sign??

Damn right!

CaptHenway

@gonzer said:

@CaptHenway said:
There was a forum in the early 1970’s. It was called “Collectors Clearinghouse” and it appeared once a week in your mail box in the pages of Coin World. If you thought you had something you wrote a letter, wrapped it around the coin and stuck a 10 cent stamp on the envelope. Eventually you got an answer, and if it was interesting you might one day see it written up in smudgy newsprint. I did that for years, then went to work there and wrote some of the answers and some of the stories.

The Clearinghouse was my fix as a YN error collector back then. I was lucky to have my '73 Lincoln struck on a Filipino 5 centimo w/ a nice strike-thru featured once along with other coins. There's no describing the excitement I felt as I saw MY coin on the page of a renowned periodical. Great time back then, as many of the responses here attest to.

Every contributor got a tear sheet mailed to him or her after their item appeared.

On January 6 of 1973 I happened to get a shiny new 1973 cent, which I thought was pretty early in the year. Back then Coin World used to print reports of finds of the new year's coinage, and the first one in got their name in the paper. I took it home and stuck it in an envelope to send it to them, and added a note that the reverse had been changed and the designer's initials FG were now twice as big as before.

Must have been a slow news week as the hub change was the cover story. I already had an application to work there on file, and in November when they were looking to hire a proofreader who knew something about coins Margo went through the applications on file and remembered my name from that story. They offered me the job, I figured it was a foot in the door and took it. Six months later the original Clearinghouse Editor retired and I moved sideways.

1630Boston

.That sounds like a great time @CaptHenway