1851 Trime find and reintroduction to the hobby

West22

Hi all,
Over here from the baseball card side of CU. Fun but slightly frustrating story! I was cleaning out my grandmother's basement of years of garbage this past spring (1910 house). Came across a junky mid century wooden dresser that wouldn't fit out the basement door. I smashed it up and while breaking apart the drawers in the darkness I heard a little tinkle on the floor. Turned out to be an 1851 Trime below.

I didn't have a whole lot of time but I searched the rest of the dresser and managed to find one other 1851 trime down in the drawer frame rails. Slipped both coins in my pocket and about ten minutes later as I was loading up my trailer with garbage I went to put the coins in a safer place. Of all things, I happened to be wearing a pair of work pants that I had a 1/2" hole in the bottom of the pocket! Sadly one of the trimes was lost. Felt like the kid from The Polar Express. I believe it fell outside as I didn't hear it fall in the basement and would probably have found it on the concrete floor. and although I can probably narrow its location down to a 20' circle around the house I may not ever find it. It may give me a fun surprise in the next few years with metal detecting as I usually do that yard a few times a year despite the volume of trash I dig up.

Kind of neat to imagine that some kid from the 1950's probably had these set aside and somehow they found their way to the bottom of an old dresser.

All this to say it has brought me back to two hobbies I quite enjoyed as a kid - metal detecting and collecting silver. I've really enjoyed reading the posts on this forum (and a few subreddits) and hope to one day contribute as I get back into the hobby. As a longtime baseball card collector I kind of feel as though my participation in that hobby has run its course and become stale, and I've been looking for an outlet for my hobby income and attention that doesn't take up quite so much space in my house. One of the more enjoyable parts has come from selling large bulk lots of cards and replacing them with a much smaller amount of silver that holds the same value. Easier on the eyes and I think the wife likes to see less junk in the house. And (not meant as a slight on cards too much) the fact that silver coins hold commodity as well as collectable and historic value makes me feel better about it.

I've been looking on eBay a bunch in the last few months and made just a couple purchases from MBarr Coins. They seem reputable and I'd like to study up on how to spot cleaned coins a little better before making any raw buys from eBay sellers. I've also noticed the proliferation of fake silver out of Hong Kong and Taiwan eBay sellers. That seems a shame and no doubt a decent amount of it makes its way here and into the secondary market.

Creg

Welcome—thanks for the intro.
If you shop raw coins on eBay, take screenshots of the funny offers that you encounter and post them in the ”…Laughable…” thread.

Flatwoods

Neat finds.
It takes a lot of studying to be able to detect cleaning even in person.
Reading everything here and looking at pics helps.
With that said, most of the raw coins on Ebay are that way for a reason.

divecchia

Hi @West22 Welcome to the coin side of the CU forum. I collected Nolan Ryan baseball cards for 27 years before selling them off a few years ago. I sold off so I could concentrate more on coins. I did not have enough disposable income to do both at the level I wanted to.

There is a lot to learn about coin collecting. I would buy a Red Book to start learning about coins before you get too deep into buying coins. There's a lot of great info here that you can read for free and pick up some valuable knowledge.

Good luck going forward.

Donato

johnny9434

All the best to a fresh start again. Hope ya do real well with it 🙏

West22

@divecchia said:
Hi @West22 Welcome to the coin side of the CU forum. I collected Nolan Ryan baseball cards for 27 years before selling them off a few years ago. I sold off so I could concentrate more on coins. I did not have enough disposable income to do both at the level I wanted to.

There is a lot to learn about coin collecting. I would buy a Red Book to start learning about coins before you get too deep into buying coins. There's a lot of great info here that you can read for free and pick up some valuable knowledge.

Good luck going forward.

Donato

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome!

Donato, appreciate the advice. I will pick up a red book as I prefer reading in hand books vs computer research/kindle whenever possible. I have learned quite a bit just browsing this forum and eBay sold listings.

So far I have only made purchases of bulk silver half and Morgan dollars from large sellers like M Barr Coins. For the moment I just prefer to stack silver as an investment. Eventually I may find something specific that interests me. I have bought Sprott Physical Silver and Gold trust over the years in my IRA as my primary holding but I also find it interesting to explore the coin world and learn about American history.

Nolan Ryan is a great choice as a player to PC in baseball cards as his long career spanned some of the greatest years and sets in the hobby (IMO). As a millennial I didn't have attachment to 60's and 70's and was mostly priced out of those years even if I'd wanted to collect so what I ended up collecting was some of the nicer unopened boxes of the 80's and 90's. But as is often the case it gets old and I am looking to reduce the physical size of my collection as well as the total $ amount invested. The nice thing about these hobbies is they aren't going anywhere and a break can be refreshing.

golden

Cool find.