Coin and Christmas Memories
BillJones
Posts: 34,879 ✭✭✭✭✭
This was the first $20 gold piece I ever owned. I received it for Christmas in 1965.
The price paid was $75, which was quite high for that time. They were advertised in the coin magazines at $49.95. I have seen some of the pieces that people received through the mail at that price, and most of them were badly hacked up. This piece made it into an NGC MS-64 holder.
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
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Gee, I'd go at least $150 on that one.
. I remember those coin collecting days like it was yesterday.
Merry Christmas Bill.
I remember my folks getting me a "yesterday set" out of the Sears catalog approx 1974. This was worn and polished Indian cent, buffalo, merc, standing quarter and walker. I was able to recover some of the cost when silver was $50 in 1980.
Bill -- that's a very pretty double eagle! I remember a few years after that the going price for a fairly nice double eagle at Stack's was $ 75, when (usually beat up) generics were selling through Coin World for about $65.
My earliest Christmas coin memories go back to 1962/1963, when my grandfather gave me about ten well worn Barber halves. I've been collecting ever since.
Cool memory Bill. You must have been very good. Quite a gift then (or now for that matter
Wow Bill! In 1965, $75 was more than a weeks pay for the typical individual!
What a pleasant memory.
As for me, despite my enthusiasm for coins, I have Never received a coin for Christmas!
I did get one for my birthday but..............I gave it to myself.
The name is LEE!
graded coins for sale
https://photos.app.goo.gl/SgQaHavtxqMq1uEM9
Around 1970 give or take a year I got onna those coin collector starter kits from the Sears catalogue! Might still have the huge battery powered magnifier in a box somewhere that had a mm scale and took 2 C batteries around here somewhere!
I was very much afraid of buying a counterfeit at that time so I bought gold coins only from the Gimbels coin Department. The coin counter buyers there were very sharp. The prices were high, but the gold coins were generally very nice in the Choice Unc. grade.
I have always disliked coins with a lot of scratches. Therefore buying a "clean piece" always came natural to me. Back in the 1960s the price difference between Unc. and Choice Unc. was only a few dollars for "generic" gold coins. Therefore I always bought the better coin if it was available.
I have never received (or purchased) a coin for Christmas.... I guess that is because no one else in the family collected....I have received a few firearms though...
Cheers, RickO
When I was 10 or 11 my grandmother gave me a small box with some coins from her family's coin accumulation. It included an 1851 gold dollar (my first gold!) and an 1846 Seated Liberty silver dollar. I still have them, of course.
The family did not buy the coins for me. They gave me money, and I picked them myself. Everything was raw in those days, and were plenty of traps. I fell into some of those traps, which was the way I learned, but I did goof up too many times on the grades.
I was about 14 at the time and was working seriously on a type set. I had just put a 1794 half cent on layaway at the local shop. My aunt and uncle went there and picked it up for my present. Of course, they had this little 2X2 holder and decided to put it in a LARGE box full of styrofoam peanuts. I went through the damn packaging twice before noticing the coin taped to the bottom of the box.
A good time was had by all!
I hope all your Christmas memories are as good as mine is of this time.
Happy holidays to all and hope to see you at FUN!
A: The year they spend more on their library than their coin collection.
A numismatist is judged more on the content of their library than the content of their cabinet.
I do not recall ever getting a coin for Christmas, but I have given out several SAE's and proof sets to my nephew and daughter when they were younger trying to get them interested. That stopped when I could tell they really wanted something else.
My aunty gave me a Sears coin starter set for Christmas over 50 years ago and that started my love of the hobby
I recall my dad coming home with a Saint sometime in the 1960's, I think he paid $60 for it. He probably sold it as soon as the price of gold went up, his motto was "You won't go broke making a profit."
I can't remember receiving anything coin related for Christmas but do remember giving plenty of one ounce silver art bars to nieces and nephews in the 1970s
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
Christmas 1954. My grandmother gave me a 1954 proof set. I was on my way!
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
Christmas 1959 my Uncle John gave me the 13th edition of the "Red Book" and the two Whitman Lincoln Cent folders, and I was on my way!
Two events which I remember.
1. I do not remember if I received the coin as a gift of Christmas day or on some other day [it matters not because to me receiving the coin as a YN was like received a Christmas present] but my parents purchased for me a Mint State 1950D Jefferson Nickel from Dan Brown's Coin Shop in Denver in the 1960's and gave it to me as a gift. Still have that coin in a 7070 Album.
2. A Christmas gift to me -12-20-2011 saw me stopping by a local B&M and purchasing three 1961 proof sets in OGP because one set contained a possible DCAM dime and two sets contained possible CAM half dollars. After buying the sets and looking more closely at them, one of the half dollars is the Big DDR.