Sad Sad Thing...

Cladiator

I just got back from a Pre-Christmas dinner at my Mother-in-Law's. Over the meal her husband and I are talking coins. He is beyond a novice...never really has had any interest at all. He mentions to me that he has a shoe box completely full of pennies that he had gotten from his mother after she passed. He says he remembers as a little boy seeing the box of pennies tucked away somewhere already full. He is 72 years old which puts his early memories of the coins in the early 1930's. Who knows when his mother, (born in the 19th Century), began tucking these away.
Needless to say I was more than anxious to peruse through the coins after dessert. We finished eating and he went to locate them in the garage where he last remembered them a few years ago. When he couldn't find them we asked my M.I.L. if she had seen them. Here was her reply......"Oh that box of old pennies? Yeah, they were an unsightly thing and I tossed them into the trash bin about a year ago. I thought about spending them but what can you buy with a penny now a days?"

FrattLaw

hamiltonjh

braddick

Here's hoping the 1909-S VDB's & 14-D's that were in that mini hoard were all only VG's and NOT XF's!

cherrypickincoin

I'm honestly amazed by the varying responses by people on the outside of the hobby. Some people seem to think that just because the coin is old, it must be worth something and then they get frustrated when you tell them it's only worth a few cents. Then we have others that think any old coin must be worthless so it can't be spent so what's the use? All I can say is there's a trash dump somewhere with a few million bucks in coins in it. Any psychologists in the house want to shed some light on why there are such varying responses from people outside of the hobby?

1jester

So sad.

cosmicdebris

Geez

ccrdragon

Ouch!

BAJJERFAN

I wonder how she would react if she knew they were worth millions LOL.

rkfish

very sad !!

BAJJERFAN

I hope my wife doesn't throw out that original mint bag of 1895 Morgans sitting in the garage. In another 20 years they will be perfectly toned and then I'll have one for you John.

izzy452

Oh My !

Walt

razorface1027

......"Oh that box of old pennies? Yeah, they were an unsightly thing and I tossed them into the trash bin about a year ago. I thought about spending them but what can you buy with a penny now a days?"

Oh cripes...I'm ready to get sick...

XpipedreamR

Oh well...

Dennis88

Bad Luck

Dennis

1956Quarter

Thats more appalling than the ACLU.

MrEureka

I tossed them into the trash bin about a year ago

Cool! Makes mine more valuable!

NoGvmnt

Rich, is your M.I.L. a lifelong homemeker and has she recently purchased a new Hummer?

Jim

SarasotaFrank

PART I:

When I was but a Pup, in the late 50s, I developed an interest in baseball, and what's baseball without baseball cards when you are seven? FOr a nickel you got a pack of cards and some of that great stale, tooth rotting bubble gum.

So I was buying these from about 59 to 63 or 64.

My mother was the second yougest in a family with 13 brothers and sisters, which gives me 34 first cousins on her side - all but two of which are older than I. I have a first cousin who is 35 years older than me.

So as my cousins got late into their teens - their mothers started cleaning house and were kind enough to drop their baseball cards by for me. These were accumulated in the 40s and 50s by my older cousins.

Rough estimate, six shoe boxes, all categorized and organized by year and team. I can see them in my mind like it was yesterday.

We had a number of crawl-in type storage spaces in our attic, and after I got married and moved on, all of that stuff remained in the attic.

Part II:

At about age 10, I also was voraciously reading comic books. Superman, Batman, X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Justice League, Hulk, Spiderman. They were eight cents or a dime at the time, and even at that early age, I was working all weekend washing cars and mowing lawns. And naturally, it all went into baseball cards and comic books. I had a huge collection of these in two large cartons in the attic.

PART III:

For Christmas one year, my parents got me an Aurora "Model Motoring" set of HO race cars. We had an unfinished basement and I had a huge layout on a 4 x 8 and a ton of great cars, track, controllers and scenery. Two huge cartons in the attic.

Time goes by and perhaps fifteen or so years ago, I am at my Dad's. I asked him about the baseball cards, as I knew they had to have some real value - not that they were gem mint, but just by volume of scarce cards.

Turns out it wasn't more than a couple of months after I got married my mother when on a cleaning bings and threw out - the baseball cards, the comic books and all but one small box of the model motoring stuff.

sjbrian

those stories are depressing.
my wife's, girlfriend's, mother has/had hoards of old silver halves and dollars. she had no idea what they were. the mother was going to bring them all to the bank, to trade for cash. i talked to my wife's friend about it and offered to give them cash for them. i think i said too much to her, cause she never brought them over.

i can't imagine someone bringing rolls of silver halves to the bank. her mother literally has hundreds if not thousands of silver halves and dollars.

Wolf359

Any women that would throw away your family possessions is worthless too. Out she goes.

paigowjohnny

get a rope

Lakesammman

My FIL had a large wad of bills, all 500's and 1000's, that he kept in the basement safe (he lost money from bank closures during the depression and has never trusted them). I tried to buy them over the last 25 years but he wanted to keep them. This fall he confided that he had finally deposited them.......

mgoodm3

Depressing stories. Not very Xmassy. My FIL had a small stash of coins that he gave me and didn't even throw away. nothing too exciting. Had a 31s buffalo in F and a 31D merc in VF. I thought we needed perk it up a bit here. Oh, he collects the old fifties from before the redesign. He doesn't like the new ones. He has a huge roll of them in a safe deposit box.