I have never had a rare coin in the wild find but I can relate to your cleaning story Arkie. I was quite young when my grandmother gave me half a dozen low grade Indian cents. I thought they looked a little dirty so I cleaned them up with some baking soda and water. Of course they turned the most horrid color of orange in the world. live and learn. James
@seatedlib3991 said:
Of course they turned the most horrid color of orange in the world. live and learn. James
I think I know the color you mention... I call it sweet potato orange.
Every now and then I find an Indian in bad shape while metal detecting and use it for my little dipping experiments, like what dissolves tar, clays, etc. on copper coins and how long each takes so that they can be identified at least before it really goes sideways ("oh crap! there was an S under the wreath of that Indian I just turned baked sweet potato orange!") Every now and then there's a cent that reacts differently than most and it goes sweet potato orange within seconds with certain chemicals. I'm not sure if its environmental or if the metallurgy of those coins was inconsistent or what... but I've come to the realization that NO chemical dip (not even the ones that people claim are mostly benign/non-surface destructing) has reliable results.
@Tomthemailcarrier said:
Back in the 1960’s when I was about 10 years old I found a tin box in my grandmother’s attic that contained an 1814 & 1834 half dollar, two 3 cent pieces from the 1860’s and a 1907 Indian head cent.
@Tomthemailcarrier said:
Back in the 1960’s when I was about 10 years old I found a tin box in my grandmother’s attic that contained an 1814 & 1834 half dollar, two 3 cent pieces from the 1860’s and a 1907 Indian head cent.
What condition (roughly)?
There was a couple of small rust spots on the lid but otherwise it was in pretty good shape.
Not mine but my uncle found a 1$ bill from 1967 up here in Canada with the print of the back on the front over the normal side and the back also just had the regular back. Value about 1000$. I remember him showing it to me back in the 1980's.
As for me nothing. Came up close to have some good serial numbers (1 digit always wrong in the sequence) but that was it.
@Tomthemailcarrier said:
Back in the 1960’s when I was about 10 years old I found a tin box in my grandmother’s attic that contained an 1814 & 1834 half dollar, two 3 cent pieces from the 1860’s and a 1907 Indian head cent.
What condition (roughly)?
The halves were about EF 40. I still have the 3 cent pieces.
Once in 1962 I bought a roll of dimes from the change lady at the Skaggs Drug Store in Reno and they were all silver. I paid with four Morgans and one Peace Dollar that I earned from mowing lawns.
PillarDollarCollector’s mention of the $1 reminded me of an almost near “oak island” moment I had for the greatest find several years back. ;-)
It had rained HARD one day and the culvert that ran under the edge of my property was doing some hard core flowing… flooding. After the water receded I went to check if there was damage to anything and found two $1 silver certificates laying in the mud! I walked down the drain to see if any more had flowed out but found nothing. The bills aren’t in great condition, btw — but hey, free old money.
My imagination got the better of me and after a couple days I had to crawl up the culvert to make sure there wasn’t a break somewhere that exposed a hoard of bills and gold! LOL We lived about a mile off a CW battlefield so, “maybe, an old guy buried his savings at some point and lost it or died before returning for it and it was JUST outside the trench for the culvert”.
After crawling on my belly in a pipe about 24” wide for 200 feet… I found nothing but frogs and crawdads. :-( Never figured out where/how those $1 randomly came out, but I would check again every time a big storm would come through. 🤔
If found money counts when he was just a kitten my ginger cat Elliot came running in through the pet door one day with something in his mouth. I have seen a lot of dead baby bunnies, birds , live snakes etc. over the years but Elliot brought a ten dollar bill home. We told him to look for more of those but it is about 20 years later and hasn't happened again. James
@CCDollar said:
Once in 1962 I bought a roll of dimes from the change lady at the Skaggs Drug Store in Reno and they were all silver. I paid with four Morgans and one Peace Dollar that I earned from mowing lawns.
So my sister worked at a CVS drugstore in the’80’s and one day a woman came in and asked for a 5 dollar bill for a roll of dimes. She made the change and as she was putting the dimes in the register to her surprise- all Mercury dimes. I ended up with them.
@CCDollar said:
Once in 1962 I bought a roll of dimes from the change lady at the Skaggs Drug Store in Reno and they were all silver. I paid with four Morgans and one Peace Dollar that I earned from mowing lawns.
CC
in 1962 all the dies were silver.
Actually, they were steel.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
@jmlanzaf said:
A silver center cent walked into the LCS about 18 years ago. It had been in the family for 200+ years.
Heard this story about 15 years ago when talking to a local coin dealer. He said the family was local-Rochester, New York.
Yes. Correct.
I believe it was the Wolcott family. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence who settled just east of Rochester.
The dealer guided them to the ANA which I think was in Pittsburgh that year (about 5 hour drive). They sold it with the year at auction. The dealer still had the auction catalog that was gifted to them by the family.
Thanks for the additional information. I believe there was an article in Coin World magazine written about this story too.
A blue Whitman folder of very worn Indian Head pennies that had evidence of being in a damp environment (verdigris and such). But a few were positioned in such a way they were better protected. This one was in the blue book and amazed me in how out of place it was compared to the rest of the set:
The family who inherited it agreed to have me grade the coin while at FUN last January:
Liz C. helped us to find her a new home... By the way, it also CAC'd.
Edit: This is a great way to celebrate my 3,000th post. Yes it is! I have other stories to savor for later.
A Barber Quartet is made up of Nickels, Dimes, Quarters, and Halves.
Arkie's story reminded me that as a kid about 8-9 years old, I found an AU+ 1876-S dime sitting in 6 inches of water at the edge of a pond. I spotted a round disc, cleaned off a fine layer of silt, and it turned out to be a lustrous, though stained, seated dime. Being a dumb kid, I tried polishing the stain off a bit. It's now in my 7070.
I've put in a few hundred hours metal detecting, but the most valuable find that was truly "in the wild" was this 1876-S dime spotted along the edge of a lake. I suspect it was washed into the lake when the bank collapsed. I've always wanted to walk around a large recreational lake with a metal detector, sweeping along undercut banks. I occasionally look for round discs on the silty bottom along the edge of lakes as a result of that find.
Within the past year I have found the following: 1890, 1896, 1898, and 1903 IHCs, an 1871 shield nickel (low mintage), 1884, 1887, 1902, and 1905×2 V nickels, a 1911-D barber dime, and an assorted 220 or so silver coins. There is a lot more than you think circulating.
God bless all who believe in him. Do unto others what you expect to be done to you. Dubbed a "Committee Secret Agent" by @mr1931S on 7/23/24. Founding member of CU Anti-Troll League since 9/24/24.
Evaluating a large collection of silver dollars for the grandson of an Idaho lady (many dollars found in rolls), this lady used to go over the border into Nevada on weekends with her egg money and grabbed $20 silver at a time over many years from casinos. In addition to CC dollars, this 1884-S was in one of the rolls. I saw it as stellar and sent it to PCGS for grading. Came back MS62:
A Barber Quartet is made up of Nickels, Dimes, Quarters, and Halves.
The oddest find for me was in college (1981). I rented a low-end furnished apartment one summer, in Burlington WA. Rent was $100 a month, and that included all utilities. I know, yikes! The building was once the Burlington Hospital, and my apt was basically three hospital rooms converted to a single apt. The place was a total dive, as you might imagine. The place was beyond filthy, so I decided to clean the kitchen before using it. As part of the cleanup, I pulled the ancient oven away from the wall, and I cleaned the floor beneath it, which was absolutely black. As I was scrubbing the floor, I notice a round, metal object, which clearly was a coin of some kind. I assumed it was probably a Roosy dime. I pulled in out of the 1/4 inch of junk, and gently ran warm water over it. To my total shock, it was an 1881 Seated Dime! Grade-wise, it was about VG-F. I still have to coin 40+ years later, although I haven't stumbled across if for years. I'll see if I can find it and post a pic.
The real question is had it been 100 years since that kitchen floor was last cleaned???
Dave
I just Googled the place and it still stands!
Always looking for original, better date VF20-VF35 Barber quarters and halves, and a quality beer.
Couple of years ago bought a bunch of full, mixed and part date Buffalos for $75 and found my second 1916/16 with some of the date showing. (First one was dateless) Sent it in to GC and it ended up in a PCGS-6 slab, which surprised me since I was thought it was probably AG-3 with a stretch to G-4. Sure enough, sold for G4 money, more than enough to buy some fancy camera equipment for my other hobby and still have some left for coins.
Proud recipient of the coveted "You Suck Award" (9/3/10).
Fun histories shared so far.
The @Dave99B one reminded me of an incident of mine from years back.
Back in the late 1970’s, I was working on a crew remodeling a lavish but run down old Victorian house in downtown old Salinas.
Upon ripping out some old carpet to go back to the wood floors, I spotted a bright red 1909 Lincoln cent that looked as fresh as the day it was minted. I wasn’t collecting coins at that point in my life and passed it along to a younger crew worker who showed some interest in it. The poor kid got lead poisoning on that job from dry sanding the painted kitchen cabinets without any protection/masks. His dentist actually diagnosed it from a dark line which appeared on the lower margins of his gums.
Crazy times!
Edited to add: I know it’s not a particularly stellar or rare find, but an interesting history nonetheless.
Happy, humble, honored and proud recipient of the “You Suck” award 10/22/2014
I like to find things out and about and take chances on them. This year was a 1907 $20 Saint NM that I found in an antique store for melt. It graded 63. I have a set of Peace dollars that I call the pawn shop set, all graded dollars from pawn shops, usually bought for melt. It's all common dates so far, but most are 64 and up.
Several years ago, I got this one in the wild from another dealer's inventory. He wasn't too keen on it and I think I spent $150 on it. It graded 64....but that isn't really the point on that coin...
And I also got a collection this year that had a standing lib set in it. All graded mid AU to low MS (some cleaned), and this bad boy. It's the only one of is kind for the date. 58+FH.
Back around 1990 I went and visited Mission San Jose in California. To my chagrin I had to park down the road from the mission and walk through a construction site as the sidewalk was being repaired - I peaked what looked like a cent in the dirt and picked it up - it had obviously been there a very long time and was disturbed with all the foot traffic caused by the sidewalk being out - to my complete surprise it was not just a wheat cent, and not just old - but a scarcer early Lincoln - a 1926-S. I still have it.
Tir nam beann, nan gleann, s'nan gaisgeach ~ Saorstat Albanaich a nis!
In the late Seventies I started collecting coins and my Grandmother had a friend that had 92 Wheat pennies in a jar and Grandma bought them for $1.00. She was so concerned that she over paid for the coins. We went through them and found a 1924-D in XF. At the time the coin was worth a couple bucks. Not a huge score, but Grandma was relieved that she did not over pay for the coins.
In 2009, I bought the following coin off Ebay in a buy it now listing for $235. It graded MS-62 Chopmark and was tied for the finest 73-P chopmark T$ with a population of 2.
Not the rarest, but a “tiny” greatest finds in the wild.
When the 2007 GW gold dollars were released, many smooth Edge error coins ended in banks in the LA area.
I was fortunately enough to work for a bank at that time, and acquired app. 100-150 error coins.
Sold essentially all of them w/in a couple of weeks. Some went for 150-175 each.
@TennesseeDave said:
In 2009, I bought the following coin off Ebay in a buy it now listing for $235. It graded MS-62 Chopmark and was tied for the finest 73-P chopmark T$ with a population of 2.
>
That is absolutely astounding. Great coin and great find. In terms of scarce finds, this has to be WAY up the list. In my 2-3yrs collecting chopped T$s I have seen two 73-Ps for sale total, one horribly polished XF and a cleaned VF. I bought them both and for multiples of your price.
Many years ago I had this thing for clashed die coins. I found this coin in the junk box at my local dealer. I ask the dealer what he thought about it and he said it was just damaged. He also said I was stupid for looking for varieties. I paid him a few dollars and took it home.
I just knew it was a clashed die coin but could not match the clash to the reverse of the coin. Years later I bought my first CPG and found the coin listed. The clash came from the obverse die from the 1857 $20 gold piece. Rick has it listed as the S-7 Probably the best buy I ever made.
Fast forward and the coin is now on it's way to PCGS. I hope it will grade 30 or 35. It goes to auction after that.
My friend Paul is 86. He created his collection of Morgans by going to the bank in the 1950's and early 1960's. His collection had an 1892-cc that both a reputable dealer and myself evaluated as an MS-62.
Paul also found an 1889-cc EF cleaned at around the same time.
1900 O/CC Morgan at local coin club show. Marked as AU unattributed. I believed the coin MS all day long. They were asking $30 and I offered $25 which was accepted. I sent in and graded MS64 with attribution.
It's not uncommon to find old coin boards with coins still in them. Although I rarely bid on these, I do occasionally find a rare board that I want/need with coins which then requires me to bite the bullet. These coins are almost always nothing special, but I did get a 1921-P Mercury dime (F-12), a 1912-D Liberty Nickel (VF-30), and a 1928-D Buffalo Nickel (MS64) that more than paid for my troubles.
When I was a kid in elementary school, a casual friend of mine brought an 1865 2-cent piece to school one day. I bought it from him for $4 which was a small fortune for me at the time. The coin graded XF as I recall.
@AUandAG said:
My best was a group of 3 Morgan dollars I got off ebay for under $800. Early in 2014. One of the three was a 1888-o Scarface that I had PCGS grade: MS63. Sold on Great Collections shortly thereafter for $10,005. It was from a seller in Portland, OR, that appeared to have a brick and mortar "collectibles" store.
bob
vegas baby! https://www.greatcollections.com/Coin/184550/1888-O-Morgan-Silver-Dollar-Scar-Face-PCGS-MS-63-CAC
Interesting price since your ex: Scarface isn't the final stage ie the rarest. You got to love that variety and yours was clean and in high grade. Check out Californiaking further up this page for a ms61 pcgs latest stage die crack as an example of what I am describing. You did GOOD
OK even my friends are having a tough time believing this one - I will try to add pics tomorrow. I picked up two old Whitman Lincoln Cent albums from a local Craig's list post only to discover (later when I looked at them) a 37-s and 1922 No Date. They've been verified they are real, however the 37-s has been cleaned. I had the same thing around the same time happen with a 1914-d but alerted the seller when I saw it who decided to keep it.
@Jobessi said:
Found this beauty (I zoomed in on the pic) amongst a bulk lots of SLQ's and Silver halves. I know it's hard to tell from the seller pic, but ended up being what I thought it was. A 1916 SLQ! The coin has since been sold, but I'll try and fins the one I took of it.
Hope you finally made things right and gave the buyer their money back for that obvious 1917 quarter - it's the right and honest thing to do.
My father found a Lincoln 1909 VDB in pocket change when he was a kid (not an S). When he was growing up there were a lot of silver still in circulation like Mercury Dimes, Walkers, and Peace Dollars. My grandmother found some Morgans and Peace Dollars. By the time I was searching pocket change, I basically couldn't find anything of value. My father still hunts pocket change and says it's really hard to find anything pre-1970s anymore. Maybe there's better luck with bank rolls, but he doesn't hunt those.
mikebyers.com Dealer in Major Mint Errors, Die Trials & Patterns - Author of NLG Best World Coin Book World's Greatest Mint Errors - Publisher & Editor of minterrornews.com.
When I was a teen I spent a lot of time sifting through ebay for coins to buy for my collection and to resell. One day a 1904 Morgan dollar popped up with typical blurry pics but looked very different from most that I'd seen. I bought it cheaply thinking it could be a high grade coin. When it arrived loose in an envelope it was obviously polished and hairlined, but it was ~$35 anyway so i threw it in a box with a bunch of other loose circ Morgans.
Around 10 years later I dragged out the box again to sell them on the BST. I had 10 Morgans including this coin and was asking $25 each with some other junk silver. No takers after a few days so I took the ad down, but when I looked at that 1904 again, it was interesting enough that I made a GTG thread here, sent it for grading, and it ended up as PR61 at PCGS.
One time when I was visiting my grandparents at their independent living apartment, I was in the storage room getting out Christmas decorations when I noticed a big plastic storage bin marked "coins". This was very soon after my first numismatic experience, a gimmicky chest of old foreign coins at a summer camp fair. I hauled the tub into the living room to marvel at its contents - cardboard boxes and cans full of silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars, old make-up powder tins full of wheat cents and buffalo nickels, and two Library of Coins albums with a wide assortment of US type coins. If I didn't have "the bug" yet, that was the moment I got it. There was nothing of extraordinary rarity, but everything seemed rare to me. Nearly half a page full of high grade 1913-D type 2 buffalo nickels, two Liberty head gold eagles, and an 1837 capped bust half dollar, to name a few.
Young Numismatist • My Toned Coins
Life is roadblocks. Don't let nothing stop you, 'cause we ain't stopping. - DJ Khaled
Not anything amazing but a few years back, I stopped by my local Goodwill in Arizona on a Sunday when they had a 25% discount. They had a full state quarter album marked at $10, which was already less than the value of the coins. With the discount, it came to $7.50. It’s not every day you walk out of a store with more money than you walked in with!
Back in 2000 or so, a fellow comes into our shop in Arizona and shows us an 1855 Dahlonega
gold dollar in an ANACS AU53 holder - a truly rare coin.
It seems that a family member had passed away in Ohio, and the executor of the estate had shippd him some coins to check out.
He showed me the box they were shipped in, which barely had room on it for an address. The coins had been shipped loose with $100 insurance, and amidst the numismatic debris (worth nowhere near $100) was this one gold coin. Once he had discovered what he had, he sent it to ANACS to be certified.
SO, not my coin (although I did buy it from him), but aside from a couple of my customers’ metal detecting finds, that’s my best “in the wild” coin story.
30+ years coin shop experience (ret.) Coins, bullion, currency, scrap & interesting folks. Loved every minute!
Unless I ran past it, this thread seems to be missing perhaps the most significant "in the wild" find ever. The only known 1870-S half dime, which sold most recently last year for $3.12 Million, was purportedly found in a junk tray and then purchased as a common type coin over the counter by an Illinois dealer. You can read a lot more about it in the Heritage lot description. According to Garrett's 100 Greatest US Coins, there may be another in the second San Francisco Mint cornerstone.
"Look up, old boy, and see what you get." -William Bonney.
The only known 1870-S half dime, which sold most recently last year for $3.12 Million, was purportedly found in a junk tray and then purchased as a common type coin over the counter by an Illinois dealer.
I've heard this story before and I have always thought this story was total BS. How often has anyone found a mint state half dime in a dealer's junk-box?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Comments
I have never had a rare coin in the wild find but I can relate to your cleaning story Arkie. I was quite young when my grandmother gave me half a dozen low grade Indian cents. I thought they looked a little dirty so I cleaned them up with some baking soda and water. Of course they turned the most horrid color of orange in the world. live and learn. James
I think I know the color you mention... I call it sweet potato orange.
Every now and then I find an Indian in bad shape while metal detecting and use it for my little dipping experiments, like what dissolves tar, clays, etc. on copper coins and how long each takes so that they can be identified at least before it really goes sideways ("oh crap! there was an S under the wreath of that Indian I just turned baked sweet potato orange!") Every now and then there's a cent that reacts differently than most and it goes sweet potato orange within seconds with certain chemicals. I'm not sure if its environmental or if the metallurgy of those coins was inconsistent or what... but I've come to the realization that NO chemical dip (not even the ones that people claim are mostly benign/non-surface destructing) has reliable results.
What condition (roughly)?
There was a couple of small rust spots on the lid but otherwise it was in pretty good shape.
There are treasures to be found in circulation still. Last year I found a Liberty Head Nickel in my register till.
Did someone plant it for me knowing that collects coins? Nobody fessed up to it.
BST transactions: dbldie55, jayPem, 78saen, UltraHighRelief, nibanny, liefgold, FallGuy, lkeigwin, mbogoman, Sandman70gt, keets, joeykoins, ianrussell (@GC), EagleEye, ThePennyLady, GRANDAM, Ilikecolor, Gluggo, okiedude, Voyageur, LJenkins11, fastfreddie, ms70, pursuitofliberty, ZoidMeister,Coin Finder, GotTheBug, edwardjulio, Coinnmore, Nickpatton, Namvet69,...
These threads are what make this forum great. So many amazing stories!
Not mine but my uncle found a 1$ bill from 1967 up here in Canada with the print of the back on the front over the normal side and the back also just had the regular back. Value about 1000$. I remember him showing it to me back in the 1980's.
As for me nothing. Came up close to have some good serial numbers (1 digit always wrong in the sequence) but that was it.
NFL: Buffalo Bills & Green Bay Packers
.
The halves were about EF 40. I still have the 3 cent pieces.
This was a cash register find. Even though it was my business I still replaced it so I guess this one cost me 10 cents.
Once in 1962 I bought a roll of dimes from the change lady at the Skaggs Drug Store in Reno and they were all silver. I paid with four Morgans and one Peace Dollar that I earned from mowing lawns.
CC
PillarDollarCollector’s mention of the $1 reminded me of an almost near “oak island” moment I had for the greatest find several years back. ;-)
It had rained HARD one day and the culvert that ran under the edge of my property was doing some hard core flowing… flooding. After the water receded I went to check if there was damage to anything and found two $1 silver certificates laying in the mud! I walked down the drain to see if any more had flowed out but found nothing. The bills aren’t in great condition, btw — but hey, free old money.
My imagination got the better of me and after a couple days I had to crawl up the culvert to make sure there wasn’t a break somewhere that exposed a hoard of bills and gold! LOL We lived about a mile off a CW battlefield so, “maybe, an old guy buried his savings at some point and lost it or died before returning for it and it was JUST outside the trench for the culvert”.
After crawling on my belly in a pipe about 24” wide for 200 feet… I found nothing but frogs and crawdads. :-( Never figured out where/how those $1 randomly came out, but I would check again every time a big storm would come through. 🤔
If found money counts when he was just a kitten my ginger cat Elliot came running in through the pet door one day with something in his mouth. I have seen a lot of dead baby bunnies, birds , live snakes etc. over the years but Elliot brought a ten dollar bill home. We told him to look for more of those but it is about 20 years later and hasn't happened again. James
in 1962 all the dies were silver.
So my sister worked at a CVS drugstore in the’80’s and one day a woman came in and asked for a 5 dollar bill for a roll of dimes. She made the change and as she was putting the dimes in the register to her surprise- all Mercury dimes. I ended up with them.
Actually, they were steel.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
See the Goldberg's description at https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/auctionlots?AucCoId=7&AuctionId=486&page=100
Story 1:
A blue Whitman folder of very worn Indian Head pennies that had evidence of being in a damp environment (verdigris and such). But a few were positioned in such a way they were better protected. This one was in the blue book and amazed me in how out of place it was compared to the rest of the set:
The family who inherited it agreed to have me grade the coin while at FUN last January:
Liz C. helped us to find her a new home... By the way, it also CAC'd.
Edit: This is a great way to celebrate my 3,000th post. Yes it is! I have other stories to savor for later.
A Barber Quartet is made up of Nickels, Dimes, Quarters, and Halves.
Arkie's story reminded me that as a kid about 8-9 years old, I found an AU+ 1876-S dime sitting in 6 inches of water at the edge of a pond. I spotted a round disc, cleaned off a fine layer of silt, and it turned out to be a lustrous, though stained, seated dime. Being a dumb kid, I tried polishing the stain off a bit. It's now in my 7070.
I've put in a few hundred hours metal detecting, but the most valuable find that was truly "in the wild" was this 1876-S dime spotted along the edge of a lake. I suspect it was washed into the lake when the bank collapsed. I've always wanted to walk around a large recreational lake with a metal detector, sweeping along undercut banks. I occasionally look for round discs on the silty bottom along the edge of lakes as a result of that find.
Within the past year I have found the following: 1890, 1896, 1898, and 1903 IHCs, an 1871 shield nickel (low mintage), 1884, 1887, 1902, and 1905×2 V nickels, a 1911-D barber dime, and an assorted 220 or so silver coins. There is a lot more than you think circulating.
God bless all who believe in him. Do unto others what you expect to be done to you. Dubbed a "Committee Secret Agent" by @mr1931S on 7/23/24. Founding member of CU Anti-Troll League since 9/24/24.
Story 2:
Evaluating a large collection of silver dollars for the grandson of an Idaho lady (many dollars found in rolls), this lady used to go over the border into Nevada on weekends with her egg money and grabbed $20 silver at a time over many years from casinos. In addition to CC dollars, this 1884-S was in one of the rolls. I saw it as stellar and sent it to PCGS for grading. Came back MS62:
A Barber Quartet is made up of Nickels, Dimes, Quarters, and Halves.
The oddest find for me was in college (1981). I rented a low-end furnished apartment one summer, in Burlington WA. Rent was $100 a month, and that included all utilities. I know, yikes! The building was once the Burlington Hospital, and my apt was basically three hospital rooms converted to a single apt. The place was a total dive, as you might imagine. The place was beyond filthy, so I decided to clean the kitchen before using it. As part of the cleanup, I pulled the ancient oven away from the wall, and I cleaned the floor beneath it, which was absolutely black. As I was scrubbing the floor, I notice a round, metal object, which clearly was a coin of some kind. I assumed it was probably a Roosy dime. I pulled in out of the 1/4 inch of junk, and gently ran warm water over it. To my total shock, it was an 1881 Seated Dime! Grade-wise, it was about VG-F. I still have to coin 40+ years later, although I haven't stumbled across if for years. I'll see if I can find it and post a pic.
The real question is had it been 100 years since that kitchen floor was last cleaned???
Dave
I just Googled the place and it still stands!
Couple of years ago bought a bunch of full, mixed and part date Buffalos for $75 and found my second 1916/16 with some of the date showing. (First one was dateless) Sent it in to GC and it ended up in a PCGS-6 slab, which surprised me since I was thought it was probably AG-3 with a stretch to G-4. Sure enough, sold for G4 money, more than enough to buy some fancy camera equipment for my other hobby and still have some left for coins.
Fun histories shared so far.
The @Dave99B one reminded me of an incident of mine from years back.
Back in the late 1970’s, I was working on a crew remodeling a lavish but run down old Victorian house in downtown old Salinas.
Upon ripping out some old carpet to go back to the wood floors, I spotted a bright red 1909 Lincoln cent that looked as fresh as the day it was minted. I wasn’t collecting coins at that point in my life and passed it along to a younger crew worker who showed some interest in it. The poor kid got lead poisoning on that job from dry sanding the painted kitchen cabinets without any protection/masks. His dentist actually diagnosed it from a dark line which appeared on the lower margins of his gums.
Crazy times!
Edited to add: I know it’s not a particularly stellar or rare find, but an interesting history nonetheless.
Happy, humble, honored and proud recipient of the “You Suck” award 10/22/2014
I like to find things out and about and take chances on them. This year was a 1907 $20 Saint NM that I found in an antique store for melt. It graded 63. I have a set of Peace dollars that I call the pawn shop set, all graded dollars from pawn shops, usually bought for melt. It's all common dates so far, but most are 64 and up.
Several years ago, I got this one in the wild from another dealer's inventory. He wasn't too keen on it and I think I spent $150 on it. It graded 64....but that isn't really the point on that coin...
And I also got a collection this year that had a standing lib set in it. All graded mid AU to low MS (some cleaned), and this bad boy. It's the only one of is kind for the date. 58+FH.
Back around 1990 I went and visited Mission San Jose in California. To my chagrin I had to park down the road from the mission and walk through a construction site as the sidewalk was being repaired - I peaked what looked like a cent in the dirt and picked it up - it had obviously been there a very long time and was disturbed with all the foot traffic caused by the sidewalk being out - to my complete surprise it was not just a wheat cent, and not just old - but a scarcer early Lincoln - a 1926-S. I still have it.
In the late Seventies I started collecting coins and my Grandmother had a friend that had 92 Wheat pennies in a jar and Grandma bought them for $1.00. She was so concerned that she over paid for the coins. We went through them and found a 1924-D in XF. At the time the coin was worth a couple bucks. Not a huge score, but Grandma was relieved that she did not over pay for the coins.
Here is my Washington Quarter Variety Registry Set
This is my Washington Quarter Proof Variety Registry Set
In 2009, I bought the following coin off Ebay in a buy it now listing for $235. It graded MS-62 Chopmark and was tied for the finest 73-P chopmark T$ with a population of 2.
Not the rarest, but a “tiny” greatest finds in the wild.
When the 2007 GW gold dollars were released, many smooth Edge error coins ended in banks in the LA area.
I was fortunately enough to work for a bank at that time, and acquired app. 100-150 error coins.
Sold essentially all of them w/in a couple of weeks. Some went for 150-175 each.
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That is absolutely astounding. Great coin and great find. In terms of scarce finds, this has to be WAY up the list. In my 2-3yrs collecting chopped T$s I have seen two 73-Ps for sale total, one horribly polished XF and a cleaned VF. I bought them both and for multiples of your price.
Many years ago I had this thing for clashed die coins. I found this coin in the junk box at my local dealer. I ask the dealer what he thought about it and he said it was just damaged. He also said I was stupid for looking for varieties. I paid him a few dollars and took it home.
I just knew it was a clashed die coin but could not match the clash to the reverse of the coin. Years later I bought my first CPG and found the coin listed. The clash came from the obverse die from the 1857 $20 gold piece. Rick has it listed as the S-7 Probably the best buy I ever made.
Fast forward and the coin is now on it's way to PCGS. I hope it will grade 30 or 35. It goes to auction after that.
My friend Paul is 86. He created his collection of Morgans by going to the bank in the 1950's and early 1960's. His collection had an 1892-cc that both a reputable dealer and myself evaluated as an MS-62.
Paul also found an 1889-cc EF cleaned at around the same time.
1900 O/CC Morgan at local coin club show. Marked as AU unattributed. I believed the coin MS all day long. They were asking $30 and I offered $25 which was accepted. I sent in and graded MS64 with attribution.
It's not uncommon to find old coin boards with coins still in them. Although I rarely bid on these, I do occasionally find a rare board that I want/need with coins which then requires me to bite the bullet. These coins are almost always nothing special, but I did get a 1921-P Mercury dime (F-12), a 1912-D Liberty Nickel (VF-30), and a 1928-D Buffalo Nickel (MS64) that more than paid for my troubles.
When I was a kid in elementary school, a casual friend of mine brought an 1865 2-cent piece to school one day. I bought it from him for $4 which was a small fortune for me at the time. The coin graded XF as I recall.
Interesting price since your ex: Scarface isn't the final stage ie the rarest. You got to love that variety and yours was clean and in high grade. Check out Californiaking further up this page for a ms61 pcgs latest stage die crack as an example of what I am describing. You did GOOD
OK even my friends are having a tough time believing this one - I will try to add pics tomorrow. I picked up two old Whitman Lincoln Cent albums from a local Craig's list post only to discover (later when I looked at them) a 37-s and 1922 No Date. They've been verified they are real, however the 37-s has been cleaned. I had the same thing around the same time happen with a 1914-d but alerted the seller when I saw it who decided to keep it.
Hope you finally made things right and gave the buyer their money back for that obvious 1917 quarter - it's the right and honest thing to do.
My father found a Lincoln 1909 VDB in pocket change when he was a kid (not an S). When he was growing up there were a lot of silver still in circulation like Mercury Dimes, Walkers, and Peace Dollars. My grandmother found some Morgans and Peace Dollars. By the time I was searching pocket change, I basically couldn't find anything of value. My father still hunts pocket change and says it's really hard to find anything pre-1970s anymore. Maybe there's better luck with bank rolls, but he doesn't hunt those.
When I was a teen I spent a lot of time sifting through ebay for coins to buy for my collection and to resell. One day a 1904 Morgan dollar popped up with typical blurry pics but looked very different from most that I'd seen. I bought it cheaply thinking it could be a high grade coin. When it arrived loose in an envelope it was obviously polished and hairlined, but it was ~$35 anyway so i threw it in a box with a bunch of other loose circ Morgans.
Around 10 years later I dragged out the box again to sell them on the BST. I had 10 Morgans including this coin and was asking $25 each with some other junk silver. No takers after a few days so I took the ad down, but when I looked at that 1904 again, it was interesting enough that I made a GTG thread here, sent it for grading, and it ended up as PR61 at PCGS.
One time when I was visiting my grandparents at their independent living apartment, I was in the storage room getting out Christmas decorations when I noticed a big plastic storage bin marked "coins". This was very soon after my first numismatic experience, a gimmicky chest of old foreign coins at a summer camp fair. I hauled the tub into the living room to marvel at its contents - cardboard boxes and cans full of silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars, old make-up powder tins full of wheat cents and buffalo nickels, and two Library of Coins albums with a wide assortment of US type coins. If I didn't have "the bug" yet, that was the moment I got it. There was nothing of extraordinary rarity, but everything seemed rare to me. Nearly half a page full of high grade 1913-D type 2 buffalo nickels, two Liberty head gold eagles, and an 1837 capped bust half dollar, to name a few.
Young Numismatist • My Toned Coins
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That’s a beautiful DCAM Kennedy-congrats!
Dealer’s junk silver box find from about 25 years ago. $3.
Great thread!
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Not anything amazing but a few years back, I stopped by my local Goodwill in Arizona on a Sunday when they had a 25% discount. They had a full state quarter album marked at $10, which was already less than the value of the coins. With the discount, it came to $7.50. It’s not every day you walk out of a store with more money than you walked in with!
Back in 2000 or so, a fellow comes into our shop in Arizona and shows us an 1855 Dahlonega
gold dollar in an ANACS AU53 holder - a truly rare coin.
It seems that a family member had passed away in Ohio, and the executor of the estate had shippd him some coins to check out.
He showed me the box they were shipped in, which barely had room on it for an address. The coins had been shipped loose with $100 insurance, and amidst the numismatic debris (worth nowhere near $100) was this one gold coin. Once he had discovered what he had, he sent it to ANACS to be certified.
SO, not my coin (although I did buy it from him), but aside from a couple of my customers’ metal detecting finds, that’s my best “in the wild” coin story.
30+ years coin shop experience (ret.) Coins, bullion, currency, scrap & interesting folks. Loved every minute!
Garage sale find.
Local coin shop find. Listed to NOT be a Full Head (FH) coin, came back as FH from 3rd party grading at our hosts:
The difference between non-FH to an FH coin for the 1919-D is pretty significant:
A Barber Quartet is made up of Nickels, Dimes, Quarters, and Halves.
Unless I ran past it, this thread seems to be missing perhaps the most significant "in the wild" find ever. The only known 1870-S half dime, which sold most recently last year for $3.12 Million, was purportedly found in a junk tray and then purchased as a common type coin over the counter by an Illinois dealer. You can read a lot more about it in the Heritage lot description. According to Garrett's 100 Greatest US Coins, there may be another in the second San Francisco Mint cornerstone.
"Look up, old boy, and see what you get." -William Bonney.
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I've heard this story before and I have always thought this story was total BS. How often has anyone found a mint state half dime in a dealer's junk-box?
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"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
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