Wheat Cent Hawg-Heaven!!!!!!! you won't believe the outcome!

keets

I made my weekly------OK, tri-weekly------visit to the local coin shop today. picked up a nice 1964-D kennedy that Russ can't have and a couple of sweet Ike's, a 1974-D and a 1977-D. the buzz in the shop, though, is that my pal bought 40 bags of wheat cents!!!! 120,000 pennies for kripe sake!!!! he's getting them in the morning(Saturday)so i'll be up there to see what a hoard like that looks like. it was pretty funny today, he had the chick that works with him cleaning up all these buckets to dump the coins in as they're being counted and re-bagged. he already has a buyer in upstate new york so he's just getting them already sorted by date----1910 to 1920, 1920 to 1930 and so on----and will be bagging and selling them at a profit. i'm sure i'll get a chance to look through some, but it'll be a riot just seeing that many "wheaties" all together at one time. my mind swims thinking about the dates that are there.

al h.

keets

well, i went to the shop today and got the bad news. all you lincoln cent guys better sit down and get out the crying towel!!!

apparently the cents were the original hoard of an old time collector who died and his son inherited them along with his fathers, shall we say, lack of savvy regarding coin storage and handling. it seems the father had stored all 120,000++ cents in coin tubes and had FILLED THEM WITH OIL so that they wouldn't tarnish!!! to make matters worse, along comes the son who EMPTIES THEM INTO BUCKETS FILLED WITH GASOLINE in an attempt to clean them!!!! they ended up being a real mess and wouldn't even go through the coin counter. my pal, rich, told the guy no sale, that they were probably worth just face value now. he wasn't a happy camper, let me tell ya. i had a good laugh over the whole thing, we both did really, but that's a lot of cents that are effectively out of circulation for good now. and for the clincher, rich's fingers are that black color you get fromold cents, a reminder of the whole thing for a few days!!

anyone out there ever see or hear of a nightmare like this?

al h.

1jester

That's so sad!!! Makes my heart bleed. I bet many of them were uncirculated?

Well, look on the bright side. They could be sent to ACG.......

CharlieB

That's the worst thing I heard yet.
What was going on in his head to do that?

keets

it takes me back to my beginning's when a shiny penny was a good penny. i was a lucky kid too, cause we had lots of comet and brillo pads!

al h.

TheNumish

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is quite a story. All these years they probably thought they had a kings ransom and due to their ignorance have jack squat. Guess there is a lesson here. Don't fill your tubes with oil and then clean them with gasoline. I'm going to have to remember that.

1jester

I've heard that oil is a great way to protect the coins from the effects of the environment. But cleaning them afterwards might be tricky. On the other hand, if they were in tubes (I assume, non-pvc) then that should have protected them anyway. What a sad outcome.

Petescorner

There's a simple solution here. Drop a match into the hoard and burn off all the oil and gasoline at the same time! As a bonus, think of the BEAUTIFUL TONING you'll get!

-Dan

braddick

It would be funny to be Bill Gates rich and send all 120,000 Wheatbacks to that new NGC curration service.
Ouch.

kranky

Yikes! What a sad story.

Who wasn't a happy camper - the shop owner, or the seller? (Both, I guess)

pontiacinf

lol
and i thought worst could happen is hed get all 40's and 50's