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The "Waitress Hoard"
Pokermandude
Posts: 2,710 ✭✭✭
<> New updates at the bottom of this post <>
** New photoalbum link: Waitress Hoard
- Links for the sub-albums for each individual German State are at the bottom right of the page
Recently I got into contact with a woman who said she had "a whole bunch of old coins" she was looking to sell. I'm sure many of you have heard this line from non-coin-collecting folk before. Usually it indicates someone with a bunch of semi-modern 1950's and onward coins. Junk silver coinage in a moderate quantity at best.
I talked to the woman for about 10 minutes on the phone and she said that she (about age 60 currently) and her mother had both been waitresses for many years. And they saved/collected EVERY world and odd coin that was left as tips, as well as from the tills. I inquired as to how many coins she has and she sighed, paused, as if she was either totally unsure or it was just taking a long time to compute the number in her mind. I ask "Hundreds?". She replies "oh no, much more!". "Thousands?" "...I think so, I've spent months going through them and there's still more!". I think my jaw actually dropped a little bit. Visions of hoards of junk silver and oddball world coins were probably in my dreams that night- but unfortunately I didn't remember any dreams when I awoke the next day.
I made the hour long drive this evening to her house. We sat down at the kitchen table and she brought me the first box. In the box was a large plastic bag... Filled with hundreds of smaller bags each neatly labelled with a date, country and denomination. Mostly Canadian coins, common pennies and nickels. A few large cents, late 1800s ones in terrible condition, common early 1900's cents in decent condition. Smallish amounts of junk silver. Each small bag contained multiples of most dates.
Next box was full of world coins. Subdivided into country bags, subdivided into individually baggies for each date/denomination combination. Mostly 1920's-1950's, some silver. As I am flipping through the bags like searching a deck of cards for the ace of spades, a worn thin coin catches my eye. 1700s either German or Austrian. I pull it out and take a closer look. She comments, "some of the coins are quite old, there's a bunch that old, even some from the 1600's".
After about an hour and a half, I've pulled out approximately 1/4 of the coins I've searched. I picked out anything silver, most anything pre-WWII and any world coin I didn't recall owning yet. I'm now through all the bagged coins.
"There's more" she tells me. She brings back a jar about the size of a medium coffee tin. I figure there's probably 300 coins in there, estimating about 75 more "salvageable" ones for my collection/reselling. We dump them onto a towel that's laid out on the table. Immediately, I spot about a dozen early milled coins. George III, Queen Anne, a German in a powdered wig. Most are fairly well circulated. Unfortunately, many of them have various amounts of tape residue on them.
Both my hands immediately go to work as I quickly pick out every old, skinny coin and place it in an ever-growing pile off to the side. At first, my eyes are finding interesting coins faster than my hands can pick them up. The pile at the side grows and grows. I search and research the pile painstakingly, like when I was a kid looking for specific lego blocks.
Eventually, the "keepers" pile is nearly equal in size to the original pile. Out of those probably 300 coins, 40 or more were 1600s-1800's. About another 50 were early 1900's.
We reach an agreement on price. Once the deal is done, I comment "I hate to think what most of the coin dealers around here would have paid for these coins, maybe (1/8th) of what I just did!". Turns out she did take a large number of the coins to one dealer many years back. She said that he looked at a jar and without even giving it a second look, let alone dumping it out to see what might be inside, he offered around 1/10th of the price I just paid. She quickly left his shop.
I can't say I hit a total home run. Many of the coins are in pretty rough shape. Quite a few of the older ones have tape residue that I will need to deal with. There might even be a number of fake coins in the lot. I picked out 3 or 4 tourist fakes of "pirate treasure" type coins, they were way too dark in color, very lightweight and had obvious casting seams. Only put one in my pile of "keepers". There might be others though that I missed on the first go around.
Sept 17 - First pics - ugh tape residue! (All the pics work, some of the thumbnails are broken)
Sept 17-25 - Acetone treatment went very well for most of the coins. Many, many hours spent conserving coins. Had a lot of not so valuable 1940s-1950s coins to practice on
Sept 27 - With forum help (thanks again) I have attributed the last of the ~50 pre-1900 coins. Pics soon!
Sept 28 - PICS! pre-1900 coins
Feb 2 - Imagecave died, but now I've added them all to a new site, found here Waitress Hoard - Links to the sub-albums for each German State are at the bottom right of the page
** New photoalbum link: Waitress Hoard
- Links for the sub-albums for each individual German State are at the bottom right of the page
Recently I got into contact with a woman who said she had "a whole bunch of old coins" she was looking to sell. I'm sure many of you have heard this line from non-coin-collecting folk before. Usually it indicates someone with a bunch of semi-modern 1950's and onward coins. Junk silver coinage in a moderate quantity at best.
I talked to the woman for about 10 minutes on the phone and she said that she (about age 60 currently) and her mother had both been waitresses for many years. And they saved/collected EVERY world and odd coin that was left as tips, as well as from the tills. I inquired as to how many coins she has and she sighed, paused, as if she was either totally unsure or it was just taking a long time to compute the number in her mind. I ask "Hundreds?". She replies "oh no, much more!". "Thousands?" "...I think so, I've spent months going through them and there's still more!". I think my jaw actually dropped a little bit. Visions of hoards of junk silver and oddball world coins were probably in my dreams that night- but unfortunately I didn't remember any dreams when I awoke the next day.
I made the hour long drive this evening to her house. We sat down at the kitchen table and she brought me the first box. In the box was a large plastic bag... Filled with hundreds of smaller bags each neatly labelled with a date, country and denomination. Mostly Canadian coins, common pennies and nickels. A few large cents, late 1800s ones in terrible condition, common early 1900's cents in decent condition. Smallish amounts of junk silver. Each small bag contained multiples of most dates.
Next box was full of world coins. Subdivided into country bags, subdivided into individually baggies for each date/denomination combination. Mostly 1920's-1950's, some silver. As I am flipping through the bags like searching a deck of cards for the ace of spades, a worn thin coin catches my eye. 1700s either German or Austrian. I pull it out and take a closer look. She comments, "some of the coins are quite old, there's a bunch that old, even some from the 1600's".
After about an hour and a half, I've pulled out approximately 1/4 of the coins I've searched. I picked out anything silver, most anything pre-WWII and any world coin I didn't recall owning yet. I'm now through all the bagged coins.
"There's more" she tells me. She brings back a jar about the size of a medium coffee tin. I figure there's probably 300 coins in there, estimating about 75 more "salvageable" ones for my collection/reselling. We dump them onto a towel that's laid out on the table. Immediately, I spot about a dozen early milled coins. George III, Queen Anne, a German in a powdered wig. Most are fairly well circulated. Unfortunately, many of them have various amounts of tape residue on them.
Both my hands immediately go to work as I quickly pick out every old, skinny coin and place it in an ever-growing pile off to the side. At first, my eyes are finding interesting coins faster than my hands can pick them up. The pile at the side grows and grows. I search and research the pile painstakingly, like when I was a kid looking for specific lego blocks.
Eventually, the "keepers" pile is nearly equal in size to the original pile. Out of those probably 300 coins, 40 or more were 1600s-1800's. About another 50 were early 1900's.
We reach an agreement on price. Once the deal is done, I comment "I hate to think what most of the coin dealers around here would have paid for these coins, maybe (1/8th) of what I just did!". Turns out she did take a large number of the coins to one dealer many years back. She said that he looked at a jar and without even giving it a second look, let alone dumping it out to see what might be inside, he offered around 1/10th of the price I just paid. She quickly left his shop.
I can't say I hit a total home run. Many of the coins are in pretty rough shape. Quite a few of the older ones have tape residue that I will need to deal with. There might even be a number of fake coins in the lot. I picked out 3 or 4 tourist fakes of "pirate treasure" type coins, they were way too dark in color, very lightweight and had obvious casting seams. Only put one in my pile of "keepers". There might be others though that I missed on the first go around.
Sept 17 - First pics - ugh tape residue! (All the pics work, some of the thumbnails are broken)
Sept 17-25 - Acetone treatment went very well for most of the coins. Many, many hours spent conserving coins. Had a lot of not so valuable 1940s-1950s coins to practice on
Sept 27 - With forum help (thanks again) I have attributed the last of the ~50 pre-1900 coins. Pics soon!
Sept 28 - PICS! pre-1900 coins
Feb 2 - Imagecave died, but now I've added them all to a new site, found here Waitress Hoard - Links to the sub-albums for each German State are at the bottom right of the page
http://stores.ebay.ca/Mattscoin - Canadian coins, World Coins, Silver, Gold, Coin lots, Modern Mint Products & Collections
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<< <i>Next box was full of world coins. Subdivided into country bags, subdivided into individually baggies for each date/denomination combination >>
That's also highly unusual. There must have been a collector or dealer or somebody with a world coin reference book involved at some point?
<< <i>Wow, what an unusual hoard.
<< <i>Next box was full of world coins. Subdivided into country bags, subdivided into individually baggies for each date/denomination combination >>
That's also highly unusual. There must have been a collector or dealer or somebody with a world coin reference book involved at some point? >>
As far as I know, she just used the internet to look up any coins that weren't fairly obvious as to the date/country/denomination. The vast majority of the coins she had cataloged were 1940 and later. I think she gave up pretty fast when it came to the pre-1900 coins and coins in foreign languages. Most of the coins in that last tin were the oldest ones. I think only 3 or 4 pre-1900 coins had been attributed/bagged by her.
She had also written down values on each bag. They were mostly pulled from auction results of high high grade coins. Thankfully she took it well when I politely explained the vast difference in price for a near-perfect uncirculated coin vs the average circulated ones.
I think most of us collectors (be it coins or beanie babies) are a little OCD. I certainly have a touch of it. She and I talked a bit about this fact and she too fits into that generalization. She showed me some parts of her treasured (not for sale) collection. Mostly it was private mint/colored/repackaged stuff. Colourized $2 bills, "Historic wheat cents" in pretty packaging, etc. Seems she liked her coins in nice, presentable, packages. I think her excessive bagging was her way of trying to organize these coins and make them presentable, which didn't really work too well. I have a couple mint products in my collection that I consider "gimmicky", that I will give to her next time I am out in her nick of the woods. She'll enjoy them much more than I will.
Pre-1900
<< <i>Bump for lots of pics!
Pre-1900 >>
Some of the thumbnails are not loading.
<< <i>I think I've fixed it. Looks like on the imagecave hosting site it didn't generate any thumbnails for pictures in albums that I didn't go back and open once. Appears to have generated all the individual coin thumbnails now. Some of the pre-acetone treatment group shot thumbnail pics are showing as broken still though. >>
Thanks for fixing it. Great photos. Amazing how she got that as tips and such.
Nice story. How exactly did this lady come into contact with you? Do you run an ad into a local paper or something?
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I'm kind of a "vest pocket" dealer. I periodically run ads on craigslist and similar sites, get referrals from past clients, etc. Haven't run any newspaper ads, but I might at some point. She contacted me through one of my ads.
<< <i>I love hearing these stories. Makes me wonder how most of these ended up as tips, would have to be pretty generous to give pre 1900 world coins. >>
No doubt, or someone raiding a relative's coin collection. In all the pre-1900 coins I went through (approximately 60) there was only one duplicate.
Also, bump for the link to the new hosting site. The pics are live again!