Melt on a Franklin Half is $6.30....I could have had more fun with the money in 1965!
Bowled in a league with a couple of friends when I was a kid. Cost me a dollar of my $3.00 allowance.
Afterwards my friends would head to the nearby Chinese restaurant and spend a buck on the Pine Float special.
Being a wise and frugal young man, I headed instead to the bank on the same corner and bought a couple of Franklin halves which they usually still had available.
I was not a collector at the time, this was strictly an investment decision.
It was a bust though. Sure the coins trudged along with inflation and had a few spectacular moves over the half century, but today they are worth essentially what they were in 1965.
...and before the wise guys chime in to tell me that I could have bought Apple, Amazon and Tesla back then, well it was way early and I probably would have bought Blue Chip favorites Kresge, GM and Bethlehem steel.
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Well, they ate the food and have nothing to show for it. You still have your coins and I call that a good investment for a young kid
Good point...they were hungry an hour later.
...and before the wise guys chime in to tell me that I could have bought Apple, Amazon and Tesla back then, well it was way early and I probably would have bought Blue Chip favorites Kresge, GM and Bethlehem steel.
...Kresge, GM and Bethlehem steel...would have been a KIQ in your portfolio. ;-)
A franklin half would buy a ton of mint julips or squirrel nuts in 1965.....that was penny candy back in the day
In 1965, a Franklin half would have purchased ten draft beers at a local bar.... I remember when the drafts went to ten cents, my Dad and I went there and had a few of the last nickel beers in town. Cheers, RickO
Probably 3 or 4 Mickey's Banana Flips.
Ahhh the good old days...
1/4 oz Burger & fries for $.49. Today the same would cost you less than $6.00. You'r ahead of the game if you held on to your coin.
Every hoard I’ve purchased was typically guys like us being frugal. Not collecting coins, rather pulling the value out of circulation change, and stacking it up.
A few of them graduated to buying direct from the Mint. Where did that get them ?
A few guys break open those sets to put in albums.
In the end, most of us were having fun our way.
In 1965, I would have likely been using my Franklin half dollar for teething.
See http://www.doubledimes.com for a free online reference for US twenty-cent pieces
While the cost of fun is in the eye of the spender, today your $6.30 silver half dollar can buy much more than it could in 1965.
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey