U.S. coins in the Movies

mrdq

Tonight I saw "The road to Perdition"

In one scene Paul Newman is paying a debt to a kid and he's giving him a nice shinning Morgan Dollar. You can't tell what it is from the first shot but when the camera moves behind him you can see the head. In another scene Jude Law is doing the "gambler's roll" thingy where a coin/token is rolled across the knuckles and it's a Walking Liberty Half. I've never seen coins close enough in any films before to notice what issue they actually were.

tom

Flash

There is a scene in Windtalkers in which the soldiers are gambling. Of the coins on the table I managed to see some Mercury dimes, Walking Liberty halves, and Washington quarters.

Cam40

There was a movie(made for TV?)were JFK(insert cheesey actor) is on Airforce One and he finds a 1964 Half Dollar with his portrait on it ofcourse.

Bet it was an AH Half too.

jtryka

What a coincidence, I was watching the untouchables (the movie) today, and in the scene when they took Frank Netti out of the courtroom for having a gun, they made him empty his pockets, and he put a bunch of change on the table and I immediately noticed a standing liberty quarter. There were some others, but I couldn't make them out since I was distracted by the SLQ!

coynclecter

How about the "Cincinnati Kid" , Set in the 1930's. Edward G. pulls out those 5 $1000 bills, yeah, those babies were real. It added so much more than movies where the bills are obvious fakes.

lclugza

Thanks to the VCR and freeze-frame, we can now see if a movie or TV show actually used coins from the correct era! I've seen TV Westerns that were set in the era of Seated Liberty coins, that instead used Barber coins, or even worse, used current coins with presidents on them from the era the show was filmed! I also think I saw a Peace dollar on the supposedly-19th-century "The Big Valley!" Does anyone else know of any similar bloopers in TV shows and movies?

nwcs

It wasn't in the movies but on TV. One of the Star Trek TNG episodes (times arrow) shows them playing poker with morgan dollars.

jom

There was a Baber dime in Titanic. Also, in a movie called "Geronomo" (with Wes Studi and Matt Damon) I saw a number of $10 Libs.

jom

XRing

In "Sleepers", there is a Peace Dollar tossed to decide who kicked off a footbal game.

Dustin

nucklehead

There's an old episode of Hawaii Five O that was about the theft of a 1913 Liberty Head nickel and they used the real deal in that show. And not to long sgo Law and Order showed an old rerun about a coin dealer who was robbed and murdered, turned out to be his mistress (SURPRIES!!)

griffin6

There was a movie some years back with Ted Danzen where they showed a PCGS Saint as the big robbery target and showed the "alleged" PCGS grading room as being like an old bank with graders wearing visors!

Flash

There was a made-for-TV Matlock movie in which the murder was solved when Matlock found a 1936 proof quarter on the carpet that had came from the 1936 Proof set that had been stolen. I don't recall the entire plot of the movie.

Bear

ultradmpldollars

I believe that it was Titanic the movie, Leonardo flipped a dime in the air, which appeared to be a Roosevelt...

smprfi

"Presidio" with Sean Connery.The general has a collection of Morgan dollars on his desk.

razorface1027

Tonight I saw "The road to Perdition

You forgot to mention the part when the pop & kid were in the garage, and they left the old folk some loot in the black sachel. All those "Red Seal" notes. Lest we forget paper currency?

MacCoin

their were a lot of gold eagles in the old westerns.

Cameonut

In "Somewhere in Time" Christopher Reeve (with Jane Seymour) buys a handful of pocket change from 1912 to assist him in time travel to that date. I only remember the Lincoln, but there may have been other denominations.

Turns out a current coin actually triggers his return from 1912 when he finds it in his pocket while time traveling.

Not a well known flick, but worth watching even without the coinage.

Cameonut

mrdq

I just got back from France yesterday and on the flight I TRIED to watch Hidalgo and I got just about as far as where he does a coin toss with a Morgan Dollar... that was the limit of my cheese-O-meter and I switched to a different movie. (about 10 movies available on the seat ahead of you, kind of neat but that's for the movie form )

anablep

In Gangs of New York, there was a gambling scene with some coinage from the day on the table. Don't remember what was there, just remember seeing silver coins.

Gonfunko

In UHF, one of the characters shows something he claims to be a 1955-D DDO cent....

LAWMAN

What's the play that was made into a movie about a Buff nickel?

cdwegner

It has been a long, long time since I have seen Ferris Bueller.

I was surfing the other day and found the script.

In the script, there is a scene where he breaks open a mint set and robs a Whitman book..

http://www.idiotsavant.com/bueller/script.htm

Look at #33 and #35...

Was that in the movie? I don't remember...

And what's up with the principal from that movie -> http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0702041jones1.html

Uhhhh... he looks a little creepy.

c

wingedliberty

Its a subject thats long fascinated me from the begining. I always try to look for numismatic accuracy in films, sometimes I am pleasantly surprised, sometimes not, but its worth it in the end.
Its the same thing I do with my other hobby of firearms. , that is more prevalent in film/TV, somehow the guns never jam and never run out of ammo., reality is different., samething with coins on film, the inaccuracies are plenty, but its still fun to watch both.

1907Quarter

speaking of "Somewhere in Time" numismatics plays a key roll in what I believe to be the climax of the movie. While he carries Barber dimes in his pocket he carelessly keeps a modern 1979 coin(I think that's the date) there as well. When he accidentally pulls it out and he AND the camera look at it, he is horrifically pulled out of his dream. The moment still gives me the heebee geebees, a clever trick in science fiction.

jom

Wow, who found this old thread?

jom

Cherwood

I wonder if a coin used in a particular movie, that could be verified, would be more valuable? As movie memorabilia or coin collectable?

relayer

"Casino"

Talking about his ex-wife who died of an OD after taking $2 mil from him

"...All she had left was $3,600 in mint state coins..."