Monday Market Memories
homerunhall
Posts: 2,496 ✭✭✭
What's the earliest thing you remember about coin collecting???
I started collecting coins in 1959. For my 12th birthday my Grandmother bought me a Lincoln cent and Jefferson nickel Whitman album and showed me how to look thru change for coins for my collection.
But why did Grandma start collecting coins?? A very interesting story. Grandma was a smoker. In those days, cigarette machines were all over...drug stores, super markets, corner grocery stores, gas stations. A pack of cigarettes was 22 cents. You put a quarter in the machine and out came a pack of cigarettes. Inside the outer cellophane wrap was three bright shiny new pennies...your change. So Grandma started collecting pennies. She became friends with the husband and wife who owned the corner grocery store and they were coin collectors. And they found a lot of stuff...including a 1916-D dime...which was a big deal even in the late 1950s.
They way most people collected circa 1950-1964 was to look thru change and find coins for their collection. Most didn't worry a lot about condition. At the time dealers traded rolls of uncirculated coins, but they also traded rolls of circulated coins, so a roll of circ 1951-S nickels was a premium item. What did everyone want...what was the dream find...a 1909-S VDB penny, a 1914-D penny, a 1916-D dime, or a 1932-D or 1932-S quarter. The key dates to a circ set.
I joined the coin club at school (7th and 8th grade.) One of the members had a father who cashed his pay check every week in silver dollars...available at the bank, just sitting in the change rack, for face value. He would look thru the 200 dollars he got each week, pull out the few he need for his set, or the upgrades, and then use the rest to pay his bills.
Also at the time, in California anyway, it was a big deal to go to Las Vegas. And the casinos used real silver dollars. So when parents came back from Las Vegas they always gave each of their children one silver dollar from Las Vegas.
As they do today, people ordered proof sets from the mint each year. I think the price was $2.10 for the 5 piece set...face value 91 cents. Then speculators got involved and prices for earlier sets went way up. One local (Santa Ana, CA) coin shop owner...this was circa 1965 or so...had financed his entrance into the coin business with his proof sets. He was a well paid (for the time) salesman. Each year starting in 1950, he had ordered 100 proof sets from the mint. By 1964, his sets were worth a ton of money. So he quit his job as a salesman, sold his proof sets and opened a coin store.
At the time (early 60s), there was a corner coin store in virtually every town in America. It was a huge coin boom, centered on finding coins in circulation. There was also speculation in proof sets and BU rolls. Coin World started in I think 1961, but the ads were for BU rolls, proof sets, modern circ coins. Some silver dollar ads started appearing in the early/mid 1960s. Not much action in gold or rarer coins, and for some reason, I didn't know anything about auctions.
But there were lots of coin stores and most had "bid boards" closing on Saturday afternoons or Friday nights. Downtown Santa Ana had three different stores...today there is probably only three coin stores in all of Orange County. I started a little bid board route. I'd buy proof sets, cut them up and sell the individual coins on the bid board (giving the shop owner his 10% vig.) I could make 50 cents to a dollar on the common 1960-1963 sets.
It all came to a halt in 1965 when silver coins were withdrawn from circulation. Rolls and proof sets were sold for a while...but soon the action centered on silver dollars (by then no longer available at the bank or in Las Vegas.) By the early 70s, it was gold fever...and then older type coins...with people actually looking at the grades of the coins and everyone starting to want "Gems."
Who were the first guys to focus on Gem condition in 1971/1972? Some who are no longerinvolved (or have passed away) like Hank Rodgers, Bill Mitkoff, William R Hall (no relation.) And some who are still dealers...Mal Varner, Ed Milas, and some guy named Julian Leidman.
What was the coin market like when you started collecting????
hrh
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I'm sure they were overgraded, but I remember getting an 09-VDB and a 10-S . . . and I was on top of the world for 3 or 4 days.
Gas was 24.9 . . . and hamburgers at the local chain were 19 cents. I think common Lincolns in GD-4 or so were 5 to 10 cents each via the mail.
Great times . . . .
Drunner
Apropos of the coin posse/aka caca: "The longer he spoke of his honor, the tighter I held to my purse."
I started collecting at 7 years old in 1963 when my dad gave me a silver Roosie Whitman album. I filled it from my parent's pocket change. My dad bought proof sets from the mint. I found great stuff in pocket change including Buffalo and Liberty nickels, early Lincolns and Indian Head cents, mercs, SLQs, Walkers, Frankies, Morgan and Peace dollars. I had a bunch of Walkers (do not remember dates and mm) but went to the local Dairy Queen to trade them in for nickels to look through to fill a nickel album (stupid, wot?). I remember my dad taking me to Dan Brown's coin shop in downtown Denver and buying some coins. My parents bought me a 1950D nickel from his shop for Christmas (still have it). In grade school my class took a field trip to the Denver mint and I was amazed at the collection of gold nuggets, bars and coins on display at the mint in an old safe on display behind bullet proof glass. Saw the production floor on the tour and saw examples of copper, nickel and silver coins being minted at the time (maybe even a 1964 Peace dollar?). A fun field trip. Also went to Rocky Mountain National Park and at the park entrance stopped at a tourist store. My dad bought 4 little glass bottles (like the sailing ship in a glass bottle) containing brand new 1964 D cents (still have them). Also my mom's sister died in Iowa. My mom went to the funeral and the siblings split up their deceased sister's belongings. My mom received a Morgan dollar that her sister found on the street in Denver during a prior visit. My aunt knew I collected coins and she told my mom she wanted me to have the Morgan. So my mom gave it to me when she got back home. It is an 1890 CC Morgan in VG-F condition.
The above and lots of other childhood collecting memories are mine and I would not trade them for anything.
Speaking of the Vegas connection. In the early 60s, while in the military, I worked part time in a gas station in Klamath Falls, Oregon. As we had no room in the till we would keep a bucket under the counter for all those silver dollars that people would spend for gas as they returned home from Las Vegas. Every two weeks or so we would haul them off to the bank.
I began collecting about 11 years ago. I don't actually remember too much about it, I just liked to go through wheaties and fill up the whitman folders. I actually had decent success finding silver in change, and still have a small baggy of silver dimes and quarters that I had plucked out.
Julian is more than "some guy."
Thanks HRH, great nostalgia.
ps. I remember this, "You put a quarter in the machine and out came a pack of cigarettes. Inside the outer cellophane wrap was three bright shiny new pennies...your change"
You have a great memory HRH.
One of the very first purchases I made as a kid came from the bargain bucket of V-Nickels the guy had. I bought a whole bunch (I think about 25 of them) for $6 or $8 dollars. I tried to make a run of dates out of them. I of course put them in a "blue whitman" folder.
Then came girls, cars, sports and whatnot.... the coins would have to wait another 30 years or so to resurface.
As I got back into it I see there is a whole new world... TPG's. A world I guess; you created.
I joined PCGS and as a part of my 8 freebies sent in one of my original V-Nickels... as it turned out my 1912 that I had picked out of the dealers bucket as a kid was an "S". It came back F-12... I'll never part with it...
Now almost 2 years later, today is a particularly tough day numismatically speaking. Even with all I've tried to learn, I find out that I have much more to learn...
I enjoy your posts.
Regards,
Richard Shipp
FWIW, I believe Abe Kosoff was an earlier proponent of Gem condition coins...
"Everything is on its way to somewhere. Everything." - George Malley, Phenomenon
http://www.americanlegacycoins.com
==Looking for pre WW2 Commems in PCGS Rattler holders, 1851-O Three Cent Silvers in all grades
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The proprietor chain smoked and kept one aisle of the shop off limits to yutes.
My best friend brought me there in seventh grade and it was off to the races for me.
Always combing through change and plugging holes.
My friend never stopped and, by now, has been in business as a successful coin dealer for over 40 years.
Me, I'm just getting back into coins and feel like I'm twelve years old.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
The Uncirculated 1878-S Morgan silver dollar given to by my grandfather in 1959 when I was 6 years old. I could not believe that the silver dollar was OLDER than my grandpa as he was SO OLD. That silver dollar was bigger than my hand. I never forgot that.
Back then, you just went to the banks with $1 silver certificates if you wanted silver dollars.
I am sure his net profit on me for the whole year could be measured in dollars on his hands. But you would never know it. When I walked in I always felt like one of his favorite customers. I never even suspected he was humoring a little boy. Soon, I had garnered a few "better" coins in change and I could always count on Joe to share my joy when I would come in and proudly display my recent finds.
Then one Christmas my father did the unthinkable. There was an unusually heavy and unmarked gift under the tree. I was shocked when on Christmas Eve someone called out my name and pushed this heavy package towards me. I had no clue when I opened that green ammo box that I would find $1,100 in face of [common] silver. You could not wipe the smile off my face with a jackhammer. I spent weeks going through that hoard and filled up a Roosevelt and Washington book sans the keys. The rest, as I had completed going through it the third or even forth time, I would take to Joe and he would pay me 12% over face. Sometimes 14% on good days. I would take that money straight to the bank. Never even occurred to me to buy coins with the money. Coins were something you found in circulation and only rich people bought coins.
I could go on, but this is what it was like when I got started 35 years ago.
I started at the ripe old age of 12, in 1953. Like all others, I pulled most of my collection from circulation, with only an occassional visit to the local coin store in downtown Dallas.
My parents also brought home from Vegas the silver dollars still in circulation. The Blue coin folder, where you stuck the coin in an open hole, was the vogue, til the green ones with plastic slides came into being.
I remember only one coin as a gift--all others found, or the money earned from mowing lawns.
The 1909-S vdb for my 14th Bday. It was graded about unc. but was probably only XF. It cost $24 in 1955.
That was my last year to collect, til 1992. I sold everything of value in college, and probably realized 150 dollars.
Hoard the keys.
collect them. It was 1957 that I started my buffalo nickel set. It
was mostly because my father offerred each of us free coins for
our collections and I figured a nickel was better than a cent and
my older brothers already had first and second crack at the cents.
My parents had been given a phamphlet for new parents which
suggested parents interest their children in a hobby like coin col-
lecting. This was right after the war and I've searched everywhere
for the phamphlet. We did get a lot of encouragement and it might
be this that led to the initial interest. My memory is most incomplete
from this era. My mother can't remember other details about it.
I, too, was distressed by the events of '64/ '65. I sold into the man-
ia in rolls and bags but it was the date freezes and the removal of
silver that took a lot of fun out of collecting. So I finished the buff-
alo collection and took a little time off in '68. I came back in '72 and
soon saw an article in the Chicago Tribune that the mint and FED
were going to start rotating their coin stocks. It stood to reason
that if no one was going to save the coins and there was no longer
a mechanism for coins to escape being worn then in very few years
there would be no nice examples available. It was another couple
years befor I even discovered the existence of mint sets.
There were very few people interested in those early years. I was
making no attempt to locate them but it seems unlikely there were
a couple dozen in the country. I started getting interested in the mod-
erns from a collector viewpoint by about '76 and had learned a little
by 1978. Indeed, in 1979 I could tell the mint and date of a clad quart-
er by looking only at the reverse in 75% of cases and was right on the
date usually. In studying the misses I found that sometimes it was be-
cause the mint had used the wrong reverse.
It was about this time that I started trying to contact other collectors.
I was truly flabbergasted to find that there were some who knew things
I didn't know. Herbert Hicks (Proofartworkoncirs) was the first of these
but it seems there are more each year. There are a lot of extremely
knowledgeable collectors and dealers in these coins now days.
It's been a great half century of collecting and I wouldn't mind seeing
another half century.
Us East Coast guys are getting ready for beddy bye by 6:45 pst
Thanks for al you do.
GB
Back in the Delaware Valley (Phila. area), I have early memories of a coin shop I used to go to to get dateless Buffs to supplement my change finds. Used to try to get to really know the series to predict the the date before I brought it up chemically. Was pretty good for a while. Don' recall the store's or the dealer's name, though it seems to be on the tip of my tongue. Later, I used to go to the Downingtown Farmer's Market, a cool one across the pike from the big billboard for Mickey Rooney's hotel. (Folks from the area would remember. Forget it that was Rte 30 or Rte 322.) A dealer in the market named Frank Almond had a great impact on my development in the hobby. Got two major lessons from him. (1) Don't clean your entire Lincoln cent album's collection with apencil eraser to make them shine. (Did that when nearing completion as a young and unknowledgeable collector.) (2) If the dealer passes on coins, don't buy them outside from the seller yourself. (Got my first Morgan dollars that way, both with lead plugs in their holes.) The other lessons were on how the game works and how to approach grading, even with an unfamiliar series. He also taught me about survival rates, to blow a hole in my memorization of the redbook mintages. Back when I also met the occasional shark dealer, Frank was a very honest guy who really cared about setting YNs on the right path with the right coins and lessons.
After moving to another community in the area, I was doing primarily stamps. I had found an old guy, seemed like 100 years old to me at the time. He was selling part time out of the front room of his walk up apartment. I think I was really his only customer in years. I also think he hadn't added to his inventory in decades. Remember getting all of the early airmails and lots of cool foreign stamps from countries that no longer existed. He was practically giving them away and loved the company of a young collector who was interested in things he had interest in. At one point, he had little else to show or sell me. He asked if I ever wanted to start collecting coins. I told I had done a bit of it not long before. So he hauled out cigar boxes of US coins. Never having dealt them before, as these were his own and he had no kids to leave them to, he just winged it and used the only price guide he had available. It was a 1st or 2nd edition red book. I had absolutely no idea what rips I was getting, even for the prices of that day. I got a lot of large cents, mostly in impressive circulated condition. He had been accumulating them in the fertile estate sales in the Phila area for a long time. I essentially bought his collection from him for prices relevant a quarter century prior.
A little later, like others here, I found girls (who naturally didn't find me in the same way) and listened to a lot of Music (mainly the Beatles for a while). Also got into obsessively collecting beer cans. Went off to college. While there, my complete collection was stolen, even my reference books. I was so depressed I didn't want to see another coin ever. After grad school and a couple jobs, someone told me about a local coin shop he went to on the weekends. I decided to go there. My main reason was to just start accumulating silver as it was very attractive then. Bought some and couldn't rip myself away from the coins. I decided to do it smart this time though.
I went to the better investment dealer types to get the real scoops. The TPGs had been going and Teletrade was the new kid spun up. I was able to get a PCGS population report, back when the public didn't generally get or know about them. I wanted to get Bowers' silver dollar books but they the guy didn't have but his own. I had been interested in prooflike Morgans from seeing a little of them in the 70s and reading a tiny bit in a book I picked up a few years prior ('81 I think) by two guys named Leroy Van Allen and George Mallis. He said he had the perfect book just for me. It was an autographed copy of Wayne Miller's book. I loved it. It didn't have a lot of content, to me, but quite a refeshing bit more analysis, issue-by-issue, than others and some great photographs to boot. I decided I was going to use that book, the PCGS pop report and everything else I could learn and confirm from an independent source to make prudent decisions in buying and assembling a nice set of prooflike dollars.
That was the best timing too. The market was in the ditch and really nice coins were still available to discriminantly choose for practically no PQ premiums. I went for the keys and semi-keys first, the best decision I ever made in this hobby and one I would urge newer collectors to consider if they are doing a full date/mintmark set of any series.
Well, I am also a packrat. So when I upgraded a coin, I looked for any excuse to keep the old one. Out came that black hardback VAM book. I found myself assembling not only a date and mintmark set of Morgans, but also included varieties, even the most insiginificant ones. As I went, I found myself with handfuls, then dozens, ... of unclassifiable Morgans, mostly prooflikes at first but more high mint state ones as I progressed. It never occurred to me to try to contact Van Allen or Mallis about them. So they remained in a database partition for years.
Around 1993, I started getting those Annual Real Price Guides from Teletrade as I was buying a lot of coins from them. I found they listed VAM numbers not in my book. So I got the latest edition of the VAM book. In 1996, I think, the Top-100 came out. I think I saw something for it in Numismatic News or somewhere. Anyway, I ordered the prepublication offer. When it arrived it blew me away. I saw all of these varieties. Some I had never seen before in person because they were unknown, or practically so, in uncirculated condition. I also saw these columns for prices of VAMs in PL and DMPL that indicated Unknown. I had quite a number of them in PL and DMPL, slabbed even.
That was when the ball really got rolling. I realized there were actually other Morgan variety nuts out there and a community that grew from that little 137 page book. I also realized I was firmly settled in a good set on the groundfloor of what might be an explosion of interest. I met Jeff and Michael at Long Beach not long after the book came out at an NSDR meeting. I never did ask how my enthusiasm for VAMs appeared at the time. But from that point, the hobby has never been the same for me. No longer was it collecting in obscurity but really getting into varieties with folks who understoof them as well or better and enjoyed them as much. The registries, SSDC, rcc, and this forum only built on the inertia.
I eventually ordered Leroy's updates and realized all the discoveries I could have had over the years. Comparing notes, I found revision points on some and set off ones he still had not seen. I still have quite a few new finds to send from years of accumulations. And am actively looking for more, which is all the more fun, probably the most fun of all.
Well, I went way further than discussing the earliest memories. Sorry. My biggets regret was that I had not found Sheldon back then and learned about and attributed all of those lost large cents. Most were probably common, but I'll never know. I do know it really hit home when I was going through Robinson Brown's second set auction catalogue. But they did come along easy and went out easier with the help of thieves.
NSDR - Life Member
SSDC - Life Member
ANA - Pay As I Go Member
My earliest memory of coins is taking all the pocket change from a family trip to Europe, carefully wrapping each piece in tiny little strips of Saran Wrap, and taking it to school in my pencil box for show and tell. It was downhill from there.
Betts medals, colonial coins, US Mint medals, foreign coins found in early America, and other numismatic Americana
The favorite place to go in the neighborhood on Halloween was a guy who handed out Morgan dollars.
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
NSDR - Life Member
SSDC - Life Member
ANA - Pay As I Go Member
Didn't wanna get me no trade
Never want to be like papa
Working for the boss every night and day
--"Happy", by the Rolling Stones (1972)
My first coin purchase was when I was about 14 years old in 1989. For some reason, I really was interested in gold and metals. I remember buying a 1oz AGE. Though my memory is slightly fuzzy, I want to say the coin was around $400, with me paying half, and my father paying the balance. I kept the coin till I left for college, and sold it in the summer of '93. I distinctly remember getting less for the coin than what I had paid. I then took a hiatus from coins until about age 25 when I had a decent paying career. At that time, I specialized mostly in Chinese gold pandas, and other types of gold/silver bullion. On my visits to coin shops, I'd never even look at U.S. coins, just head straight for the bullion case. Then one day in 2004, as I was shopping for some bullion, I bought 3 Morgan dollars, all common date BU coins. My girlfriend (and now my wife) needed a hobby, and I decided to choose it for her by giving her these 3 impressively large, incredibally cheap silver dollars. Up until that point, I'd think someone would need their heads examined for paying 2 or 3 hundred for a "penny" or a dime. Despite my efforts to cultivate a new hobby for my wife, she really never took to the idea. But I sure did! Fast forward to today, and I cant stop thinking about coins for longer than a few hours. This great hobby has really given me something to be quite passionate about. In May of this year, my wife and I brought into the world a beautiful baby boy. You can imagine that I cannot wait until he is old enough to ask "hey dad, can we go to the coin shop today?".
Will post earlier next week!!!!!!
<< <i>Will post earlier next week!!!!!! >>
<< <i>Hey HRH, if you could start the Monday Market Memories ~@5:45 pst I believe the thread would be HUGE!!
Us East Coast guys are getting ready for beddy bye by 6:45 pst
Thanks for al you do.
GB >>
Guess he heard me.
It's currently at PCGS getting graded.
The auctioneer was a quirky old guy, George Bennett. He looked and sounded like an English WW I veteran, but went as fast as a North Carolina tobacco auctioneer. If you belched, scratched your nose, or even looked at the guy, it was treated as a bid. You had to be quick, otherwise, the $30 bid you wanted to get in would be $35 (and no, he didn't go in $5 on such a coin).
I think it was the best place in Southern California to get coins at the time. You had to be careful, though, as lighting wasn't the best, and there was everything from coins with pristine surfaces to coins with every type of doctoring known at the time; all of them were in 2 x 2 holders.
I was able to buy circ. IHCs by the roll; no one else seemed to want them. Ditto re Unc. Roosevelt dimes. My biggest score was a complete set of Unc. Roosies, missing four common dates. It was at the end of the auction and there were maybe four people left. I got the thing for $15, and finished up the set.
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
There were four of us kids, and we had 5 books to fill - of IHC's, V Nickels, Jeffersons, and Lincolns. Each of us kids had a book, and my dad always helped my mom fill out "their" book. It was the mid-60's and I was five years old.
Back in those days, parents smoked around their kids, and I'll always remember the smell of cigarette smoke from my moms Benson and Hedges 100's burning in the ashtray. I was hypnotized looking at the coins, searching out the next missing date. My grandfather had been quite a penny and V nickel hoarder and sent us rolls of the coins on a regular basis.
Often, my dad would find a coin and hand it to me so that my "young eyes" could verify a date on a well -worn coin. I know now that there was nothing wrong with his sight; he was simply giving me the opportunity to get the thrill of finding a scarce date. We found everything in that stash except for the King - my dad always called it that - the 1877, and an 1864 L on Ribbon with a readable "L". Back then, it didn't matter about the pointed bust - you had to be able to see the "L"
As I grew older, in junior high, I started buying coins from kids at school for lunch money. By then, silver was mostly out of circulation - oh, you'd occasionally find some, but after 1972 or so it was pretty much gone. I'd buy the $.25 to $.50 worth of silver roosies or war nicks, usually for a premium of about half over face.
One kid, who I'm sure was sneaking into his fathers collection, brought in - would you believe it - an XF 1864 L on Ribbon! Pulled it right out of his pocket! That was the best $.45 I've ever spent! Rushed home later that afternoon and snuck it into my fathers Dansco, the one with slides (he finally upgraded). Pulled the book out that night when he got home from work and showed it to him. The look on his face was priceless.
A lot of water under the bridge since then, and my tastes have gotten more refined, but nothing will ever match the enjoyment I got talking coins with my dad (everyone else in the family lost interest along the way)... And he still loves to hear about my new acquisitions.
Check out my current listings: https://ebay.com/sch/khunt/m.html?_ipg=200&_sop=12&_rdc=1
<< <i>Will post earlier next week!!!!!! >>
Ok, we look forward to your Monday Night thread, Mr. Hall!!!!!!
BTW, Bear wants to talk to you about the 10th Anniversary Plat set.
I remember the bid boards in Orange County as well. There was a coin store in Fullerton, California which was the first coin store I ever visited. The owner was Dee Bishop and I remember the Friday night trips. That store I believe is still open today in the same location.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
My entire family collected somewhat but they wern't serious coin collectors. My parents had a few raw Morgan Dollars and lots of 1964 Kennedy Silver Dollars when I was very young and they still have them today.
I do buy my mom a silver proof set evey year and she collects the State Quarters from cirulation. I will also give her the new P and D Presidential Dollar Set just issued from the U.S. Mint.
Box of 20
<< <i>What's the earliest thing you remember about coin collecting???
I started collecting coins in 1959. For my 12th birthday my Grandmother bought me a Lincoln cent and Jefferson nickel Whitman album and showed me how to look thru change for coins for my collection.
But why did Grandma start collecting coins?? A very interesting story. Grandma was a smoker. In those days, cigarette machines were all over...drug stores, super markets, corner grocery stores, gas stations. A pack of cigarettes was 22 cents. You put a quarter in the machine and out came a pack of cigarettes. Inside the outer cellophane wrap was three bright shiny new pennies...your change. So Grandma started collecting pennies. She became friends with the husband and wife who owned the corner grocery store and they were coin collectors. And they found a lot of stuff...including a 1916-D dime...which was a big deal even in the late 1950s.
They way most people collected circa 1950-1964 was to look thru change and find coins for their collection. Most didn't worry a lot about condition. At the time dealers traded rolls of uncirculated coins, but they also traded rolls of circulated coins, so a roll of circ 1951-S nickels was a premium item. What did everyone want...what was the dream find...a 1909-S VDB penny, a 1914-D penny, a 1916-D dime, or a 1932-D or 1932-S quarter. The key dates to a circ set.
I joined the coin club at school (7th and 8th grade.) One of the members had a father who cashed his pay check every week in silver dollars...available at the bank, just sitting in the change rack, for face value. He would look thru the 200 dollars he got each week, pull out the few he need for his set, or the upgrades, and then use the rest to pay his bills.
Also at the time, in California anyway, it was a big deal to go to Las Vegas. And the casinos used real silver dollars. So when parents came back from Las Vegas they always gave each of their children one silver dollar from Las Vegas.
As they do today, people ordered proof sets from the mint each year. I think the price was $2.10 for the 5 piece set...face value 91 cents. Then speculators got involved and prices for earlier sets went way up. One local (Santa Ana, CA) coin shop owner...this was circa 1965 or so...had financed his entrance into the coin business with his proof sets. He was a well paid (for the time) salesman. Each year starting in 1950, he had ordered 100 proof sets from the mint. By 1964, his sets were worth a ton of money. So he quit his job as a salesman, sold his proof sets and opened a coin store.
At the time (early 60s), there was a corner coin store in virtually every town in America. It was a huge coin boom, centered on finding coins in circulation. There was also speculation in proof sets and BU rolls. Coin World started in I think 1961, but the ads were for BU rolls, proof sets, modern circ coins. Some silver dollar ads started appearing in the early/mid 1960s. Not much action in gold or rarer coins, and for some reason, I didn't know anything about auctions.
But there were lots of coin stores and most had "bid boards" closing on Saturday afternoons or Friday nights. Downtown Santa Ana had three different stores...today there is probably only three coin stores in all of Orange County. I started a little bid board route. I'd buy proof sets, cut them up and sell the individual coins on the bid board (giving the shop owner his 10% vig.) I could make 50 cents to a dollar on the common 1960-1963 sets.
It all came to a halt in 1965 when silver coins were withdrawn from circulation. Rolls and proof sets were sold for a while...but soon the action centered on silver dollars (by then no longer available at the bank or in Las Vegas.) By the early 70s, it was gold fever...and then older type coins...with people actually looking at the grades of the coins and everyone starting to want "Gems."
Who were the first guys to focus on Gem condition in 1971/1972? Some who are no longerinvolved (or have passed away) like Hank Rodgers, Bill Mitkoff, William R Hall (no relation.) And some who are still dealers...Mal Varner, Ed Milas, and some guy named Julian Leidman.
What was the coin market like when you started collecting????
hrh >>
Dear HRH,
We know you are a busy man, but how about a Monday market memory???
Thoughts on the Baltimore show perhaps???
Ron Guth on YouTube?
2008 forecast??
Don't be a stranger!!!
Best Regards,
GB
<< <i>
<< <i>What's the earliest thing you remember about coin collecting???
I started collecting coins in 1959. For my 12th birthday my Grandmother bought me a Lincoln cent and Jefferson nickel Whitman album and showed me how to look thru change for coins for my collection.
But why did Grandma start collecting coins?? A very interesting story. Grandma was a smoker. In those days, cigarette machines were all over...drug stores, super markets, corner grocery stores, gas stations. A pack of cigarettes was 22 cents. You put a quarter in the machine and out came a pack of cigarettes. Inside the outer cellophane wrap was three bright shiny new pennies...your change. So Grandma started collecting pennies. She became friends with the husband and wife who owned the corner grocery store and they were coin collectors. And they found a lot of stuff...including a 1916-D dime...which was a big deal even in the late 1950s.
They way most people collected circa 1950-1964 was to look thru change and find coins for their collection. Most didn't worry a lot about condition. At the time dealers traded rolls of uncirculated coins, but they also traded rolls of circulated coins, so a roll of circ 1951-S nickels was a premium item. What did everyone want...what was the dream find...a 1909-S VDB penny, a 1914-D penny, a 1916-D dime, or a 1932-D or 1932-S quarter. The key dates to a circ set.
I joined the coin club at school (7th and 8th grade.) One of the members had a father who cashed his pay check every week in silver dollars...available at the bank, just sitting in the change rack, for face value. He would look thru the 200 dollars he got each week, pull out the few he need for his set, or the upgrades, and then use the rest to pay his bills.
Also at the time, in California anyway, it was a big deal to go to Las Vegas. And the casinos used real silver dollars. So when parents came back from Las Vegas they always gave each of their children one silver dollar from Las Vegas.
As they do today, people ordered proof sets from the mint each year. I think the price was $2.10 for the 5 piece set...face value 91 cents. Then speculators got involved and prices for earlier sets went way up. One local (Santa Ana, CA) coin shop owner...this was circa 1965 or so...had financed his entrance into the coin business with his proof sets. He was a well paid (for the time) salesman. Each year starting in 1950, he had ordered 100 proof sets from the mint. By 1964, his sets were worth a ton of money. So he quit his job as a salesman, sold his proof sets and opened a coin store.
At the time (early 60s), there was a corner coin store in virtually every town in America. It was a huge coin boom, centered on finding coins in circulation. There was also speculation in proof sets and BU rolls. Coin World started in I think 1961, but the ads were for BU rolls, proof sets, modern circ coins. Some silver dollar ads started appearing in the early/mid 1960s. Not much action in gold or rarer coins, and for some reason, I didn't know anything about auctions.
But there were lots of coin stores and most had "bid boards" closing on Saturday afternoons or Friday nights. Downtown Santa Ana had three different stores...today there is probably only three coin stores in all of Orange County. I started a little bid board route. I'd buy proof sets, cut them up and sell the individual coins on the bid board (giving the shop owner his 10% vig.) I could make 50 cents to a dollar on the common 1960-1963 sets.
It all came to a halt in 1965 when silver coins were withdrawn from circulation. Rolls and proof sets were sold for a while...but soon the action centered on silver dollars (by then no longer available at the bank or in Las Vegas.) By the early 70s, it was gold fever...and then older type coins...with people actually looking at the grades of the coins and everyone starting to want "Gems."
Who were the first guys to focus on Gem condition in 1971/1972? Some who are no longerinvolved (or have passed away) like Hank Rodgers, Bill Mitkoff, William R Hall (no relation.) And some who are still dealers...Mal Varner, Ed Milas, and some guy named Julian Leidman.
What was the coin market like when you started collecting????
hrh >>
Dear HRH,
We know you are a busy man, but how about a Monday market memory???
Thoughts on the Baltimore show perhaps???
Ron Guth on YouTube?
2008 forecast??
Don't be a stranger!!!
Best Regards,
GB >>
My 1866 Philly Mint Set
I remember sitting next to John Pittman at a club meeting auction. When no one placed a bid on a common date circ. Morgan dollar with no minimum, he loudly proclaimed JES*S CHR*ST!! Never saw an 80 year old man that P.O. before in my life.
"Everything is on its way to somewhere. Everything." - George Malley, Phenomenon
http://www.americanlegacycoins.com
I bought my first coin (with my Dad's financial help) in Mason City, IA in 1961 or so - a 1909 vdb Lincoln in G/VG. In 1963, I remember buying a BU Roll of 1963-P Lincolns that were the most perfect, well-struck Cents with the nicest pinkish copper luster I've ever seen. Then I dropped the whole roll on my brother's bedroom floor and had to gather them all up by hand. Ooops.
In 1965, I bought several BU 1959-P and 1960-P Lincolns as an investment. I put them into a new felt-lined jewelry box that I had just got as a Christmas present, in one of the partitions. That jewelry box, and the Lincoln Cents, have been with me through High School, College, several other moves, through Marriage and Divorce, and still remain - open to the atmosphere but inside the jewelry box. They seem to have stabilized as slightly-toned BU, 43-year jewelry-box-stored Lincolns, and someday I gotta post them.
I knew it would happen.
<< <i>Will post earlier next week!!!!!! >>
This was HRH's last post in his most enjoyable Monday Market Memories thread(s).
**********************************************************************************************************************
Mr. Hall, on behalf of the C.U. Coin Forum, we are looking forward to a fresh 2008 Monday Market Memories thread.
With the huge increase in precious metal prices in 2008, surely the current market trends should conjure up some juicy recollections.
Best Regards,
GB
ps. Bear says Hi
<< <i>
<< <i>Will post earlier next week!!!!!! >>
This was HRH's last post in his most enjoyable Monday Market Memories thread(s).
**********************************************************************************************************************
Mr. Hall, on behalf of the C.U. Coin Forum, we are looking forward to a fresh 2008 Monday Market Memories thread.
With the huge increase in precious metal prices in 2008, surely the current market trends should conjure up some juicy recollections.
Best Regards,
GB
ps. Bear says Hi >>
...maybe smoe memories about starting PCGS.
We know that it was largely about making coins more fungible but was there anything that made you confident of its success?
From the outside it should didn't look like a sure thing.
I resurrected my collecting passion in 1994 by visiting a local B & M operated by John Bauer, the great grandson of George Bauer who was one of the founders of the A.N.A. Prior to John operating the business which his great grandfather started in 1880, an uncle named Eddie Bauer ran the business. John recalled how his uncle bought Proof Morgan Dollars for a premium of less than a dollar over face value in the 1950's.
"Everything is on its way to somewhere. Everything." - George Malley, Phenomenon
http://www.americanlegacycoins.com