Another blast from the past - Fall 1980!
ElmerFusterpuck
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I'm not sure how many of you remember this quarterly publication from Krause, "Coin Collecting". I found this hiding under some old Long Beach catalogs, another trip in the time machine. This was after the metals boom and bust and the market still seemed to be in turmoil. It looks like this quarterly was geared more for publishing articles; there are write ups on metal detecting, mail ordering coins (no web!) and of course gold and silver. Below are some pics of that magazine, hope y'all enjoy it! What I would really like to find is my 1972 edition of Coin Prices, I had it for the longest time and now have no idea where it is.
The cover:
This article's message has not aged one iota:
An article about the future! They were worried about the aging baby boomers along with getting new blood. No mention of the internet though, haha.
Someone in my 1977 Coin Prices thread wanted Barber dime prices, so here they are:
Prices for Barber quarters, note the 1909-O prices:
An article Cladking can appreciate. This article was pretty much spot on.
St. Gaudens prices;
The back cover. I remember seeing their ads for a long time. Did anyone here deal with them?
The cover:
This article's message has not aged one iota:
An article about the future! They were worried about the aging baby boomers along with getting new blood. No mention of the internet though, haha.
Someone in my 1977 Coin Prices thread wanted Barber dime prices, so here they are:
Prices for Barber quarters, note the 1909-O prices:
An article Cladking can appreciate. This article was pretty much spot on.
St. Gaudens prices;
The back cover. I remember seeing their ads for a long time. Did anyone here deal with them?
10-4,
Erik
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Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
<< <i>It would seem that the front cover pricing information is indicating "look how ridiculously high these valuations are", since all of them are below that today except for in very top grades that didn't exist weren't in that magazine back then. >>
It seems that prices haven't fared very well since then.
I also noticed that although the cover says "Clad Coins Are Collectibles" there's not a single clad coin pictured on the cover!
10-4,
My Instagram picturesErik
My registry sets
Edited. A friend of my family, John Fallon, worked there and got me started in collecting. I used to ride my bicycle there on occasion. They had a large inventory of coins. Mostly out of my reach at 15 (in 1980).
Thank you for sharing that. It brought back a few pleasant memories. I see that magazine was from 1980. That was about the time I got back into serious coin collecting, but it was not until 1982 that I decided to focus solely on the half dime denomination.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>I find it interesting to see the ad on the back cover, for Crystal Coin Shop, on Main Street in Wakefield, Ma. While I know little of this coin dealer, I cannot help but ponder how many half dimes I might have missed there. My father was born and brought up in Melrose, Ma, on the Wakefield town line, only a few blocks from the Main Street address of Crystal Coin Shop. As a kid in the 50's I visited my grandparents many times, and must have passed near that coin shop on numerous occasions. Of course, I was not a serious coin collector at the time; I began collecting, like many kids of that era, when I had a paper route in the late 50's. The local paper was 49 cents a week at that time, so my collections were almost all in change. And while that was a long time ago, there were precious few half dimes to be found in change even then.
Thank you for sharing that. It brought back a few pleasant memories. I see that magazine was from 1980. That was about the time I got back into serious coin collecting, but it was not until 1982 that I decided to focus solely on the half dime denomination. >>
What a small world! I was born in Melrose, Ma (though quite a few years later!), Melrose-Wakefield Hospital (now corporate owned by Hallmark Health). My grandparents still live in Melrose. Melrose is only 3 sq. miles, pop MAYBE 35,000 or so, and considered 'upper middle class'. The area of Wakefield near Melrose, just over the Melrose line, before Wakefield center, is called Greenwood (stretches from Stoneham to Saugus, a big area).....the first McDonalds in the area was built in Greenwood. It's about 10 miles NE of Boston.
As far as coin shops, there is one coin shop on Main St, in Wakefield, Ma... 358 Main St. Goes by the name North Shore Numismatics. They frequently take out ads in the Boston Herald, stating, to the effect, 'Like a coin show every day'. I've gone there once to check it out. It's anything BUT 'a coin show every day'. Lots of modern mint/proof sets, ASE's, AGE's, foreign raw gold, mint crap, year sets in Capitol holders, maybe a few common date Morgans...I recall only modern stuff in PCGS/NGC slabs. It's NOT a place anyone here would go to more than once, and it'd be like going into McDonalds...in and out quickly. The guys working there are anything but friendly, and it looks a giant hallway with cases on both sides. Not much of anything a real collector would want.....I'll never go back (it's where I first saw the 'standard garb' for coin dealers....complete with mustard stains on their shirts.
Trust me, MrHalfDime, these guys wouldn't have ANYTHING you'd be interested in (now at least, not sure about their offerings in '80...the ad is SO far removed from what it actually is now. With that said, they (or one of them) appear to be the original owners now, as the ad from '80, names Peter Pienta as owner, and you can see here, that Peter Pienta is still the owner, 'serving for over 30 years' (though, reading the ONE review, it was referred to, in 2010, as a 'coin shop/cash for gold place', which fits my description/experience there, though the one time I was there was prior to 2010....one review in 4 years, and obviously to sell gold (though, I may have to check it out to see if the 'girl behind the counter' is still there
If they WERE selling 'good stuff' in '80, they no longer do, IMO, and I doubt they currently like JJ Teaparty was, with a store front for buying/selling PM's, with some 'ok' stuff to buy, with the real good stuff/collector stuff in a different location from those premises (for those that have been to Teaparty's store front, before it closed, Teaparty's store front items for sale looked like the ANA Money Show, compared to North Shore Numismatic's offerings). Here's where North Shore Numismatics is, a stone's throw from Lake Quannapowitt (officially called a 'shallow pond', it had two swimming beaches, which I, and most kids, swam in, especially readying for the July 4th fireworks...those beaches closed in, I think, 2000, due to pollution) but it constantly hosts lots of family outings, and a very popular place for joggers to 'run the lake', very popular with walkers, joggers, bikers, 'skaters', hosts 5K races, etc, and it's where the 4th of July fireworks are held, as I mentioned...Wakefield is a nice little city, as Melrose is)...anyway, back to the subject of the ad in the mag.......this is where North Shore Numismatics is...
My first coin shop I visited as a kid (with my 'pa'), was in Melrose on Main St (probably 5 miles from that shop in Wakefield). They had a bunch of stuff, all raw (TPG's were up and running by the time I went in there, but I wasn't aware of them). Started out primarily as a hobby store (originally called Melrose Coin and Stamp), sold model planes and trains, also (commonly called 'Melrose Hobby Shop', and now called Middlesex Coin and Stamp, but I haven't gone there in a loooooong time, but the same location). Dingy little place, hubby and wife owned it, they were both a day older than dirt and TRIED to be friendly, until you asked questions (my 'pa' said it seemed like they hated kids...lol). Made my first purchase there (well, my 'pa' got it for me)...a raw '09 VBD for my Whitman, bright, shiny red, boy was I on top of the world....only to find out, many years later, that, as many have gone through when first starting out as a kid, it was a cleaned POS. I know, because, being 'my' first purchase, I submitted it (held a special place, due to my 'pa' getting it for me), and it body bagged for cleaning, at our host. Funny that Andrew Seminerio is based in Melrose, but does not have a B&M, just a P.O. box.
Back to reality, and time to put the thread back on track, but damn, MrHalfDime, thanks for giving me directions to 'memory lane'!!! I REALLY do apologize for the length of this post, but man, MrHalfDime really put me in the driver's seat of Doc Brown's DeLorean.....I know so much about the area, I could go on and on and on...and this is the Reader's Digest version of where I could have gone, due to my knowledge of the area.
<< <i>I went there quite often since I lived in Reading.
Edited. A friend of my family, John Fallon, worked there and got me started in collecting. I used to ride my bicycle there on occasion. They had a large inventory of coins. Mostly out of my reach at 15 (in 1980). >>
Oney....seems like times have changed since you were last there.
The battle scars of all the good times
<< <i>I like how they printed the year 2000 as 2,000, LOL.. >>
Good point.
I wish I'd bought a boatload of AU 95-O barber dimes in 1980 for $500 a pop.
I'm glad I didn't buy a whole bunch of 1901-s Barber dimes in MS65 for $10k a pop. The '95-O was only $11k in that grade. My, how things have changed.
By the way, the 1901-s dime in MS63 or better is probably a sleeper at current levels, along with 1903-s and 1904-S.
This "Blast from the Past" is very instructive.
The price guides in later 1980 were still putting up a good front on what your coin's were "worth" but you couldn't get these kinds of prices for most of them. By end of summer 1980 most dealers knew the market was cooked.
I remember looking for a gem 1899-s Barber Quarter as my #1 Barber want list item in 1977-1979 and couldn't find one. When I finally ran across one at the Bay State coin show in the first half of 1980, the dealer
wanted $6,000 for it. And I think he was already losing money on it. Forget that. The Dec 1980 price guide shows it at $4,700. By summer 1982 it was probably down to under $2,000. Looking at those 1980
prices today for gem Barbers, most of them aren't even that high today. April 1980 was a high water mark for many sectors of the coin market....especially for MS63 coins being sold for gem MS65 money...lol. Fun times.
I didn't buy a single rare coin from April 1980 to February 1982. It was nice to see coins that I thought I was buried in only a few years earlier being worth a profit by late 1979 to early 1980. I took full advantage of that to bail
out of them.
<< <i>i used to go up into springfield, ma to the stores in that area. most if not all are gone now. still theres some good memories
The Springfield of today is probably most definitely not the Springfield you remember (no offense intended to those who may live there).
I was good friends with Harold Flartey when I lived in NJ, back in 1980. I am a member of his "Serendipity Coin Club".