Sorta neat find / Play Nickel
ASUtodd
Posts: 1,312 ✭✭
Found this one today down at the old lodge. (YES ONCE AGAIN NO FREAKING SILVER). This is a 1961 Uncle Sam Play Nickel. I actually found two and right in a pile of dimes and pennies. I think I pulled 3 dimes and 2 pennies out of this hole also.
Todd
Todd
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When I dug that play dime, my heart skipped a beat, because I thought I had found a 3c silver or a half dime at first, since it was in the front yard of a circa-1800 inn.
I count those as being about as good as a Wheat penny find. Which is to say, not quite spectacular, but worth a smile, and they're semi-keepers. I put mine in the Wheatie jar, along with the more modern tokens and foreign coins that aren't quite good enough for my good dug coin album but are too good to throw away or spend.
Todd
It sounds horrendous, as does the rock tumbler, but I have actually had some limited success with the tumbler, too.
Just as ancient coins often require extra cleaning (after all, most of them are dug), so it is with detector finds. The cleaning is a necessary evil.
I do things to my dug stuff that I would NEVER do to a nondug, bought coin. But I try to only do what is necessary, and go no further. (Sometimes I am very successful with this, at other times I have failed miserably, and made a coin look worse).
Some of the silver I dug (and cleaned) ten or twelve years ago has picked up some really attractive secondary toning in the album over the intervening years.
No, I don't do a clad coin album- I spend those. Usually in vending machines, or by mixing them into rolls. I really should tumble them to make them more presentable for spending, but who has time for that?
Have another peek at the last Indian cent I dug recently. There are before and after pics in the thread. Brass wire brush sounds awful, doesn't it? But as you can see, that took off the dirt and revealed the coin's glossy surfaces just fine. Mind you, I didn't go at it for long with the brush. Just a tiny bit, then I backed off and rubbed it with the Vaseline.
Some of the stuff I have done to "conserve" or "restore" my dug coins would make my serious numismatic brethren grit their teeth and shudder with horror. But the only goal is to make the coin look better. That is taboo with bought coins, since "originality" is so sought after, but "originality" in a dug coin is usually no good, anyway- originality in that case usually means "crusty and ugly".
Funny how that works sometimes. If you just become casual about it, nearly forgetting it for a while, then suddenly, *zap!* There's gonna be a Merc dime in your hole. (I am guessing the first for you will be a Merc dime, statistically speaking. For me it was a dateless SLQ, though, so you never know).
Just pretend you don't care, and trick Lady Luck into thinking you have forgotten all about finding any silver at all. That's when it'll show up.
I've never seen any uncle sam play money. The fact that they are dated is really cool!
I want one!
Todd
<< <i>I have two here. PM me your addy and I'll send one to ya.
Todd >>
I appreciate the offer Todd, but I was making reference to digging one myself.
John
Todd
One time I dug a small cache of Wheat pennies and a big aluminum dinosaur medallion that obviously came out of a cereal box, and then the toy cars started appearing. By the time I had finished, thirteen toy cars came to light, all from around the 1960s or so. Some were the same kind I had played with as a wee lad, and a few were just a tiny bit earlier.
Another time I got a handful of small change from the 1970s, a Bermuda ten cent piece, and two or three marbles in the same hole. Doesn't take much imagination to figure out what age group of person was likely to have buried them.
Yet another time I found fifty pennies that had probably once been wrapped as a roll, ranging from later-date Wheats to early Memorials. I think there was a marble or two in that hole, also.
Yet ONE MORE time I found something like 29 Wheat cents in the same hole. All but two (a 1918-S and a 1920-something) were dated 1944, and it was plain that the 1944 coins had been new when they were lost or buried. The coins were scattered in about a three-foot square area, which was part of a sidewalk strip next to a giant oak tree.
I must second what LM said about "silver obsession". It'll come and you be happily surprised.
G Man
A-Googling I shall go...
(Edit- no hits except for some scattered on eBay and places.)
The "falsa pecunia", of course, means "fake money".
I have seen some as early as 1953 (I think I might have personally dug a 1950, but have to check my Wheatie jar where all the lesser-but-cool tokens and coins go.)
These might be better than I've given them credit for. The dates make them more collectible. Granted, there are probably not many collectors out there, and they might be cheap items, but I saw some priced in the $2-3 range (by optimistic sellers), so maybe that's almost as good as a silver Roosie or War nickel. Then again, I would rather have the real silver. But there are bound to be more silver coins out there than there are Uncle Sam play pieces, so these aren't an everyday find.
Like the finder himself concluded before anybody commented, these definitely fall into the "kinda neat" category. I agree. I always smiled when digging one.
Todd
<< <i>Wait, was West Point mint open back in the 60's? >>
No. But the Waterbury (CT) button factory has been around since the early US times. They make buttons at Scovill and places like that, and even struck coins for foreign mints, so naturally I think of Waterbury.
But that might not be it, either.
Todd