Did your family have any gold coins?
topstuf
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When you were young, did your family have ...any....gold coins? 
Did your family have any gold coins?
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No. Neither do I.
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Nope. Granny had a hoard of silver though.
No....they were more into putting food on the table for us.
My dad has a 1908 Quarter Eagle that he got from his grandmother. He said he is going to pass it down to his granddaughter. I always found it pretty neat.
A government accident left me a former man, a potato. That photo on my profile is a low resolution selfie. I like coins.
No not a one, Not even silver. But I'm going to change that every week I try to put back a piece or two.
Hoard the keys.
Got some from my grandfather !!!
No. They were told that they were illegal to own so they dutifully turned them in to the government.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Inherited a single 1900 double eagle. Not sure of the backstory and whether we held it illegally or acquired it after the ban was lifted...
Jim
I asked my father (born 1928) if he had ever seen circulating gold coins in the Milwaukee area or stashed away. The answer was no.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
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My great grandmother came over from Australia in the early 1900's with 2 gold pieces. I still have them.
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My grandparents told how they turned in a $20 gold piece they had gotten as a wedding present.
Tragic, as gold was not illegal own if your held it as a collectable.
Just this one when my father was working for Danbury mint as director of special projects: https://www.collectors.com/stamp/1977-danbury-mint-charles-a-lindbergh-10kt-gold-piece-50th/-5280873337392543564
He worked with Eric Sloane and Roger Tory Peterson on some commems..
No, my parents didn't have any gold coins. My mother was sure that it was illegal to have them. When she went with my father to Gimbels in New York to buy a few coins for me for Christmas **, circa 1962,, she marveled, “That they had gold coins right out the showcase for sale!” She remembered something about a collector who had lost a case in court over his gold coins. That was probably a vague recollection of one of those who had had one of the 1933 double eagles that she had seen in a newspaper.
One of my parents’ friends had an Indian $5 gold piece. He asked what it was worth, but I never saw it. Everything about it was very hush hush because he thought he had it illegally.
When my grandmother died, there was a Type I gold dollar with a hole in it among her holdings. I didn’t take it since it had the hole, and it went to one of my cousins. My grand mother did have over $300 in silver. She had become interested in coins again because of me. She had also searched rolls of Lincoln cents from the bank and had actually found some better pieces. The best was a 1931-D in AU. I sold those coins on behalf of the estate. I did keep some “wheat penny rolls” because they were not worth anything over face value at that time in the mid 1970s.
** They bought me a "starter set" of Liberty Nickels. All of them were common dates in Good except for an 1883 No Cents in VF that had traces of gold wash on it. That was a close as I ever got to a gold coin. LOL
I am the youngest in a family of 3 brothers and 3 sisters. Before I was born, apparently my mother had an 1899 $10 Gold piece that was passed down from her mother(her birth year). But it was stolen by some boys in the neighborhood that were breakin into houses. circa 1968. A local detective that lived behind us was hot on the trail of the boys, but apparently, they flushed it down the sewer along with some other stuff before they were apprehended. So I never got to see it. My mother would have liked me or my older brother to get it since we were the only ones interested in coins.
My Mom and Dad both had to work to feed us four kids, especially me, the only boy and the youngest of the bunch. I guess like most kids that age I ate like there was no tomorrow. I rode my bike dozens of miles every day and then probably took in 6,000 calories a day.
So no, we never had gold coins. I remember one winter when I was maybe 10 it seems like we ate waffles most of the winter. Times were tough. Daddy painted and wallpapered to make a living. I remember when he joined the union he doubled his hourly pay even though he had objected to them in principle for a long time.
Mother had to go to work when i was in second grade. That was traumatic for me, getting out of school an hour earlier than my sisters and coming home to an empty house. Today that would be considered child neglect, maybe, but it was what they had to do.
Kind regards,
George
No... no gold coins in our house. Coins were for buying food and clothes. My Dad had a couple of silver German coins and a couple of Morgans...these were stashed away in a drawer - he was not a coin collector - just thought they 'would be worth something some day'... I have tried to make up for my gold deprived youth...
Doing well so far 
Cheers, RickO
Mom showed me a stack of old $10 eagles her mom had left her. I looked them over years ago, nothing feal rare. Turns out my sister was a much better butt kisser than me so I guess she got them. There was also a thick stack of CSA notes.
When I started collecting as a kid in the 60s my dad told me of how he got a $20 gold piece one year as a birthday present.
Growing up in Kentucky in the 20s and 30s with 6 kids they were probably not too well to do, so I'm sure it was something that someone had to really stretch for.
He said it was used for clothes and food.
All I could ever do as a child was dream about what date thay may have been.
Long story short, no family gold.
I'll start the tradition with passing down the small bottle of gold dust that I panned for at Knotts Berry farm. Gotta be at least 75 cents worth of gold in there!
My grandmother found a 1908 quarter eagle in the yard about 1920 and
gave it to my father as that was his birth year. I now have it.
This coin was NEVER illegal for the typical American citizen to own.
You have some basic misunderstanding of "the Gold Order of 1933".
When Stan Pierce was operating his shop in Oakland, CA, he had a lady he could NOT convince that her gold was legal and she could sell it to him.
She continued ...depositing....them (WAY plural) into her account at the bank on the same block.
I assume none of the tellers ever told her to check with a coin dealer.
???
???
@BillJones When she went with my father to Gimbels in New York to buy a few coins for me for Christmas **
Those were the good old days. I also remember buying coins at Woolworths and Abraham & Strauss (A & S).
You’ll get no argument from me, as I’ve never had the need or desire to read up on it. The post immediately before mine referenced gold coins being turned in because they thought they were illegal. I was riffing on the flow of the thread, simple as that. Sincere apologies for my mistaken statement.
Jim
Back in the mid-1960's, I bought a $1 Type one that a cousin had. She was born 1899. My dad had an uncle that gave each niece and nephew a $5 gold piece when they graduated from high school. My dad's oldest sister used her $5 to take an airplane ride around the countryside around 1924. The uncle passed away before my dad graduated in 1933.
My father graduated as the valedictorian of his class in 1932 from the Westly Colligate Institute in Dover, Delaware. It was a high school back then, but today it is called Westly College. He won $75 in gold as prizes. Unfortunately he deposited it in a local bank back home, and lost it all when the bank went broke during the Great Depression. It would have been fun to have seen the coins were in that group.
Grandma and grandpa hoarded silver since they were kids. Small family silver and gold hoards got both sides of my family over to America in the late 1890s. I don't know if metals were the only way to emigrate or what. With 9 children on one side and 11 on the other, both sets of great-grandparents became farmers, and scurried away gold and silver for my grandfathers, who became collectors.
Born into the depression, she and her husband were both mattress-stuffing cash and coin hoarders, as in, buckets. We had no idea until she passed the extent of her silver hoarding. I had already helped her eliminate 50k (probably more) when silver was $22.5/face.
I have no idea how grandpa/grandma had enough money raising 3 kids to put away that freakin much money away. But, at all the odd jobs my grandmother had, she was always the "coin collector", so people had been helping her out since, well, her entire working life, in cash-handling positions. She got mad if someone said "grandpa's coins" since it was their collection.
Grandma left a few gold coins to their 3 children. I got a lot of small ones like an original fanam, fantasy pieces, fantasy fanams etc. and bezeled gold pandas. The small gold you could pay cash for when it was "illegal to own gold". Slicker fractionals and random things that would contain a lot of gold; e.g. watch casings and necklaces, and a small hoard of white gold chains and bracelets mixed in with polished silver ones, bracelet charms, etc.
I'm sure there was a lot more gold. When metals spiked and I advised her that she wouldn't see anything like this again, and even I might be lucky to see something like this again, she went from money problems and 5 years later had over six figures when she passed.
I have no idea how much gold my parents have. My parents were always quiet about the gold my dad's father had. But, we went from broke to renovating the house in 1980 and my parents having wealth.
I won't know until they pass so I'd really rather not know what they have any time soon.
I traded/sold my gold for capital to start my own business and am looking at 50k/yr this year alone with no debt so I am pretty sure they would both be happy and proud the money was used for such a great cause. Things need to just keep going how they're going to meet that figure, but I expect extremely solid 4th quarter earnings which is when I can get free things off the forest floor and make $25-55 dollars, with my only expenses being tax deductible. I still have some samples from last fall, but I need to increase production by 300%.
I am glad all my family members had the foresight to take care of families down the line. I've got something for the nephew tucked away but ultimately it's all my wife's. If I pass then I hope it helps here even if it's not a 100k collection. That's if metals become a store of wealth outside bank manipulation.
Some great stories of parents and grandparents.
Where my parents came from you would be lucky to see regular currency never mind gold, so they had none when coming over from Italy and never bought any in the USA. I remember how impressed my parents were when I showed them the first gold pieces that I bought in the late 1980's. They had never seen anything like it.
Donato
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My grandfathers and great-grandfathers were miners and laborers. I wonder if any of them ever even saw a gold coin prior to 1933.
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/gold/liberty-head-2-1-gold-major-sets/liberty-head-2-1-gold-basic-set-circulation-strikes-1840-1907-cac/alltimeset/268163
The only gold in our home was the golden rule
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
My family never had any. I was given a small Ziploc bag of silver coins when my grandparents died that they had set aside. That got me interested in coins.
I am very fortunate to have two 20 Franc gold roosters that was much of the wealth that my grandfather brought to the new world, The United States of America. He left the Ukraine, spent five years in France and came to the U.S right around the start of WW1. I believe that he boarded the ship in Europe with $16 and arrived at Ellis Island with $20.
I think that these gold coins were valued at about $4 each at the time, so I wonder why he never needed to spend these. My family was quite poor from his arrival until my dad, the second generation here, achieved middle class status during the 1970s. But he never sold these two French gold coins and my dad passed them onto me.
My dad passed away eleven years ago and I found among his belongings a 1927 Double eagle, that I, his coin collecting son, never knew about. It had a Sam Sloat invoice for about $129 with it, dated from the early 1970s. I suspect that he rationalized this purchase because gold prices were on the rise and he wanted to participate in some small way.
So, I'm lucky enough to have a little gold from my grandfather as well as my father. My grandfather had very little for all of his life but managed to save these two little golden treasures. And the 1927 $20 represents over half a century of hard work to bring my family it's first disposable income, which, of course, was invested for the future, in gold.
Nope, not even a flake.
my father introdued me to coins thru wheat cents.....no gold or silver
My dad had 2 $5 gold coins that were given to him as a baby in 1928, when he was born, and now I have one, and my brother have one.
His father had $500 +/- in gold coins that he amassed during the 1930's and 1940's that people spent and he picked them up. Yes, gold coins still circulated outside of the banks. He finally got frustrated holding them, and sold them around 1960 for the gold content.
I got a gold $5 coin circa 1965, at Kresge (??) the forerunner of KMART. The kid in front of me was buying a record and had the $5 gold coin, and the cashier would not take it. Although I was not very old, I knew what it was an offered up a $5 bill in it's place. Cashier was happy, kid was happy, and so was I, but I can't remember if I had any money left to buy what I was going to buy.
None.
That is not true, Collectables were allowed to be kept.
My wife's aunt had a small group of $2.50 gold coins that her husband's father had gotten from serving on jury duty. As the family history goes, he was a Maine fisherman who netted pogies for a living. Somehow, he had served on a jury and had been paid this group of gold pieces for his trouble, which must have been for a long term of service.
There were supposedly three or four coins in the group and this was the last one. One had been given to one of the daughters, and she had lost it. Another went to who knows where? This last one was offered to my wife and I because I was a collector. I paid the market for it at the time and sent in to NGC to be graded. They graded is MS-63.
My grandpa died from a car wreck in the 1930's. Heart of the depression. My grandma was a widow with 9 children. My dad was the youngest.
I remember my dad telling me that for a quarter you could get a hamburger and a shake and then go to a movie with a coke and popcorn. Trouble was, no one he knew had a quarter.
No gold.
Just my late Aunt. She had a gold piece given to her by her employer back in the late 40's. She also had a smattering of Walkers. All long gone.
The first coin I ever bought (my dad actually paid for it) was a 1909 vdb in Good, for $0.25 at a Woolworths store, in late 1961 I think.
Nobody I knew owned any gold coins when I was a kid, although I did see them in Blueook and Redbook. When I became a young collector, I remember asking why there weren't any gold coins around and all I got was some BS answer because I don't think anybody really knew why. Something like, "only governments use gold as money". I never could figure that one out.
My first gold purchase was in about 1964, when I bought the gold-plated 1959 Alaska Statehood "dollar" from an ad in Coin World, for I think, $4.00. Like many others referenced in this thread, I thought that "it might be worth something, someday".
I don't know what I ever did with it.
I knew it would happen.
(12) Twelve double eagles all pre 1910 Liberty coins. Grandma and Grandpa had a bar in NYC
Many many Gold coins but with each child the pile dwindled. By kid 6 they had just a couple remaining.
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Not only did we not have any gold coins we barley had two nickels to rub together many a time
mark
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
My father's parents had at least 50 ca. 1 oz gold coins (French 100 Fr, Austrian 100 Corona). Plus a bunch of Krugerrands. Only one US piece, a common $5 Liberty.
RMR: 'Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?'
CJ: 'No one!' [Ain't no angels in the coin biz]
One circulated 1927 quarter eagle in a box with some silver in the dresser drawer from grandma.
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.
none here.
Lots of silver but no gold.
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My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
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Grandmother had a single 1 ounce krugerrand placed into a holder on a necklace, but alas. My sister has placed dibs on it....
My heirs, should see more than a few pieces of old US gold
No. I vaguely remembering we flushed a gold fish down the toilet once. We had a eulogy and everything.
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