Grandma's coins?!
Nap
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When non-collecting people think of coin collectors, they think of older men. Grandpa's if you will. It's not a totally erroneous depiction- most collectors are indeed male and many serious ones are older guys.
And if you think about how one might get started in coins, the scene of Grandpa with his rare coins showing some to little you is one that is likely familiar to a great many of us.
Not too many of us talk about Mom and her coin collection or Grandma. But speaking with other collectors, you hear a lot of anecdotal stories about female mentors in coin collection. Typically grandmothers.
I developed an interest in coin collecting from my grandmother. She saved up old coins, especially silver dollars, that passed through circulation and at the bank teller job she had. She was no serious collector, but she knew about mint marks and different designs. She never went to a coin show. She scoffed when I told her about buying old rare coins. But she always asked me about my collection when I started to build it, and was interested in what I had. More so than pretty much anyone else in my family. She encouraged my mom and her sister to collect, and my mom eventually passed her collection to me.
My grandmother has been gone for some time, and there are many bigger things I remember fondly about her aside from my interest in coins, but I do need to give her credit for sparking the interest.
Who else has their collecting interest kindled by grandma, or mom, or auntie, or some other important female mentor? It's a topic worth considering in light of how coin collecting is such a male dominated
Comments
Yep.
Grandma got me started initially as well.
She worked in a drug store for awhile and collected from change.
She gave each of us grandkids a peace dollar from her year of birth. Mine got stolen when I was a teen
Regrettably, when she was older, and really needed the money, after Grandpa died, she was taken advantage of by local coin shops in the Las Vegas area (she lived in Pahrump and was not internet savvy nor did she tell anyone what was going on.....my uncle found out about it after she passed). I would have helped out her as much as I could rather than see her sell what she had spent so much time getting.
I've been told I tolerate fools poorly...that may explain things if I have a problem with you. Current ebay items - Nothing at the moment
My mother, while not a true collector by any means, accumulated unusual coins and currency she found in circulation. I remember specifically going to banks to ask for $2 bills and "rare" Ike dollars. These adventures sparked my interest into doing the same, which eventually led me to coin shops and such as a teenager. My father, in contrast, couldn't have cared any less about any form of collectibles. To this day, it is difficult for him to accept that I am making a living in the numismatic field rather than using my degree (Clinical Psychology). To his credit, he's happy I'm happy. My mother now enjoys hearing the stories, but is more interested in the profits made.
As I've mentioned here many times before, my grandmother gave me coins almost every Christmas including a 1922 no d Lincoln and a 1786 New Jersey Copper. She had a huge impact on my collecting interests and I hope she is smiling down as I write this
My Grandmother (Mamaw) had coins! There was a bag of Indian Cents...couple hundred as well as Buffalo Nickels. She had 1 Silver Dollar! It was here mothers. Nice original G-VG 1889-CC. I begged and begged her for that coin! She finally told me I can have it when she died. I told her then I don't want it. I have the coin.
Both of my grandmothers were instrumental in feeding my interest.
My paternal grandmother came up with some neat coins every once in a while. I remember she gave me a Columbian half and a bust half. My maternal grandmother liked to take the bus downtown to shop. As an incentive to get me to go along, she promised me a coin from a downtown, department store dealer. She would always let me pick out something. They both had WWI European connections and gave me some neat paper money. German hyper inflationary stuff and Austrian stuff.
They were just the greatest women !
I got this one from my grandmother. She had it and some other stuff in an old leather purse that I liked going through repeatedly when I was a kid.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Very interesting . . . and quite applicable in my case.
My grandmother worked for quite a time in the Villisca, IA bank. (Also, my grandfather worked from teller to bank President and signed National Bank notes for Villisca--I have several). She was able to put together 3 COMPLETE circulated Indian Cent collections from change she gleaned over decades from 1930--1950. The idea was to give one each to her grandsons.
Yup . . . although I never saw the sets originally, the family lore is quite clear. 3 full sets . . . 1877, 1909-S, the whole gamut. She got a chance to cull all the change for several decades in Villlisca in the early to mid-Century.
But . . . bummer. My parents moved to SLC. My aunt and her son (the third set) got to the collections when my grandma passed away as she lived on the next farm, right next to grandma. My dad went back for the funeral . . . I was about 8 or 9 years old at the time. He got momentos, including two of the three sets (one for myself, one for my brother), and brought them back from IA.
As he opened the Whitman folders here, he noticed they were only partially full. My brother's set had a few spotty AG coins from 1879-1899, and the 1900-1909, without either mintmarked coins.
My set was the same . . . except I had an 1894. My aunt had cleaned out the other two sets her own son did not get. Said that those were the only coins in the sets. Rather soured the family history from that point, but it DID ignite a fire in me that has never died.
Thanks Grandma . . . hope you can see all the enjoyment those few Indians brought to my life over the years.
Drunner
When I was very young, I had an aunt that let me go through a few coins she kept in a closet. I was stunned to find a 10-S Cent that was in VF. She let me have it. I thought I had found gold! A few years later I sold it to the man at the coin shop for $4. I cannot even remember why I wanted the money. I told her some time later that I sold it, and I could tell she was disappointed. I have regretted it ever since. I have decided that next time I see her I am going to give her a 900-year-old Armenian coin that she can keep in her wallet. I am hoping that makes up for some of it anyway.
I began collecting around age 8. Mostly pennies, since I couldn't afford silver coins.
My great aunt passed away (at age 90+) when I was 10 or so, and she saved silver coinage after they switched to copper/nickel in 65. My parents gave me her silver stack, which was mostly circulated Franklin halves. This was the early 80s (just after the price spike in silver, but before the prolonged drop) They clearly had no idea what the silver was worth, or I doubt they would have done so
I kept them, and most are now in my son's Whitman Franklin folder.
Neither of my grandmothers collected coins, although my Dad did say a couple he had were from his Mom...They were large German silver coins - I still have them. Dad was not a collector, but he did save some Morgans and the German coins in his sock drawer. I am still the only coin collector in the family... of which I am now patriarch. Cheers, RickO
My grandmother was more of coin hoarder than a collector although she did become a collector after I got her interested. I handed down my old Red Books to her when I got a new one, and she purchased several Lincoln cent folders that she filled by going through rolls of cents from the bank. The best coin she ever found was a 1931-D Lincoln in EF. She also had over 30 rolls of Franklin Half Dollars at the time of her death.
The first time she opened her safe I was enthralled. I was about 12 years, and I had never seen so many Barber coins in one place at one time! She had a passion for finding a coin dated 1883 which was her birth year. The only piece she had was an 1883 dime love token. I don't know where she found it, but I still have that piece today.
The most interesting item she had was a set of wooden medals from the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. I never realized that it was part of her collection until after she died. The set turned up in an old desk. Unfortunately I wasn't at the auction of her estate so that I could have possibly bought it. Years later I did buy one of those sets in a Stacks' auction although the box for that set had pretty much disintegrated. As I remember my grandmother's set, that box was pristine.
For those who have never seen this item, here is a photo.
Here is a photo of inside lid of the box.
I've since tried to figure out where that same came from. Did one of the great grand parents attend that celebration. I asked one of the cousins, who is much more into family history that I am, but he didn't think so. My grandmother was always going to second hand stores, and there was one next door to her. The ower often went to Philadelphia to buy up old estates, so perhaps that was the source.
Bill, those medals are made of wood ?
I've never seen one.
Yes, pressed wood. It gained some popularity in the 1870s and '80s.
Here are couple pieces. In 1884 matching wooden medals were issued for Republican James G. Blain and Democrat Grover Cleveland.
Blain and Logan
Cleveland and Hendricks.
My great aunt sent me several Mercury dimes for Xmas at one point in the 60s.
I was young and pretty excited.
I put them in a blue Whitman folder, which I still have.
My grandmother gave me a small jar full of world coins when I was 8 years old. I've been hooked on coins ever since! I sure miss my grandma, but I treasure all my memories of her. The coins I have from her always remind me of the times, thoughts, emotions, and memories that we shared. Wow, this was a hard post to type. . .
My grandmother, born in 1923, and her mom, my great-grandmother, born in 1901, both gave to me, at age 7-11, many silver coins they had collected from circulation. It was all junk silver, and I ended up cashing most of it in during the 1979-80 metals spike, and using the money to buy some better type coins, as well as gasoline, beer, pot, and lift tickets. (was a bit of a ski bum)
I still have a few pieces kept out of sentimental value, including a 1923 dollar and 1901 indian cent.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
After the collecting bug hit in 1987-88, partly from the coins I got from my grandparents' store, my mother was the one who drove me to the B&M, coin and baseball card shows, and provided both the allowances and the coins-for-grades that resulted in a modest type set and a few gold coins by 1989. Not really a collector herself then, she was supportive of my interest and certainly did as much as a mom could do to encourage me, like buying Red Books and other reading materials. And it was my mom, while I was off going to college, chasing girls, and then getting into the workforce who quietly bought some gold coins (Saints and a few others), mostly because they were "pretty" and because she liked gold.
So when I got back into the hobby full force in 2013, it was my mom who was right there with me, joining me at shows and going to a few club meetings. She's also the one that brought me into paper money collecting, since she also found it fascinating. Thanks, Mom!
Gonna get me a $50 Octagonal someday. Some. Day.
My aunt gave me a Sear's coin starter set for Christmas. I remember filling out the 1940 to date blue Whitman Lincoln coin folder with the jar of cents that my aunt let me look thru. I remember it like it was yesterday, enough though it was over 50 years ago. Still till today coin collecting is my passion because of my aunt
It was my mom who gave me my first proof set in 1964, the fuse was lit!
My grammaw had 6 Indian Head cents.
She gave my cousin 3 and me 3
One of mine was this one.
I religiously cleaned it about every 2 months with dry baking soda because Readers Digest said to.
Wonder what it WOULD have looked like.
As it is, it is a 53
My grandmother knew very well how much I loved coins from an early age. My father got me interested in them when I was a cub scout. It never left my bones. When I was 13 years old, just after JFK was assassinated, my grandmother passed away. After she was put to rest my mother, my grandmother's daughter, gave me a buffalo nickel coin album my grandmother was putting together for me from change she would receive. I still have the nickel album. She was the sweetest woman on the face of the earth and the strongest one too.
What a great subject. Thank you for bringing it up. My Oma played a huge roll in my early collecting career. She was not a coin collector in the traditional sense, but she had two different coin collections of a sort. The first collection was composed of three partially filled mason jars. These coins were given to her by a maiden aunt. Oma got them just after she was married. she said they were suppose to be her rainy day fund. I don't know how many coins she started out with, but she still had about two hundred coins when I was given the chance to catalog and grade them for her. This was in the early 1970's.
I can barely remember any of the coins, except for the fact that the jar with the fewest coins
contained the coins she called her "lucky horse shoe coins". all the coins were pre 1900
and none of the rest were sorted in any manner.
Oma's second set of coins were stored in old cottage cheese containers. All of these coins were collected by her personally. she obtained these coins by going through my Opa's change after he would come home from playing cards. This collection contained everything from indian head cents to peace dollars; (however the silver dollars were kept seperate in a crystal jar in one of her kitchen cupboards."
The last time I saw her she gave me a small, !2ln. by 8 in. box with a cottage cheese container inside. The container had about a hundred indian head cents, a few buffalo nickles, an a standing liberty quarter worn smooth. three days later I took the phone call that she had died. she was a great lady, thanks again for remiding me of her.