What's the dumbest coin question you ever heard?
TheNumish
Posts: 1,628 ✭✭
Didn't happen to me but one time a guy on the teletype had a customer with a bunch of pennies that were flattened by a train. The customer wanted to know if they were worth extra because President McKinley was on the train. 
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-dealer, "Well, what kind? we have morgans, uncirculated ones are always popular... blah blah blah"
20 minutes go by... as the lady looks through some bills...
walks out with a $20 note...
I'm left thinking... she did say expensive, right???
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Why are dimes smaller than nickels?
Dave
Just like why are nickels bigger than a half dime.
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
From a cashier after I laid a Kennedy half on her:
"These are dollars, right?"
http://www.shieldnickels.net
Why does it take 3 pounds of cents to buy 1 pound of hamburger?
I've heard this one quite often recently, "Is this a doubled die?"😁😬
Are these real gold? (Pres. Dollars)
A friend asked me, “why would you spend $1500 on a penny?”
My response, “would you feel better if I spent $1500 on a silver dollar?”
I can't say that I've heard a dumb question. More often, I've seen people on coin forums (not this forum) display a photo and declare that the coin is rare in some way for looking deformed, when it was just post-Mint damage. It's when people are convinced that their coin is rare without any numismatic knowledge to back it up. Aggressive ignorance, I call it.
When individual know nothing about a subject, yet are curious, questions they ask will always seem 'dumb', to the knowledgeable. This is how people learn and the process should be encouraged. Now, if the same individual then argues when presented with the facts, it becomes ignorance. Cheers, RickO
Don't remember but I probably asked it.
Does that coin grade "proof"? I've actually heard this more than once.
How much is it worth with a CAC sticker ?
When I've told people, either on the phone,
or at a coin show, that their rare error coin
was run over by a train, plated, or otherwise
damaged, you'd be surprised how many times
the response to that is:
When someone asks over the phone what a coin is worth.
As you try to pull information out of them, they think it's a dollar, they think it's from the 1940's, they don't remember exactly what it looks like, except it might have a lady on it. It's in the safe deposit box at the bank right now, so they can't tell you for sure. They got it from so and so who had it for a long time, and it's old. They looked it up on the internet once and saw that it was very valuable.
They then get upset when you can't tell them what it is.
"Is this real?"
(Yes it's real. Now we can discuss its authenticity and grade).
Woman to little boy holding coin: "Which side is 'up' ?"
(Overheard at a coin show.)
I love those story's. Thank you all for sharing !!!
I'm still trying to figure out what was so stupid about this question...
Coins run over by McKinley's funeral train were popular collectables for witnesses to the "procession", and they are worth something today provided they have believable documentation. The provenance of these sorts of things is usually lost over time, but if they were documented at the time of crushing then yes, they are worth "extra".
Same goes for coins crushed by Lincoln's funeral train, and that of any other dignitary.
I have a Canadian coin that was flattened by the train that was carrying the Royal couple during a visit to Canada in the 1930s. Luckily the owner counterstamped the details onto the coin to preserve the story.
"Do you buy coins?" heard in every coin shop every day.
Have I found a new error? (Special thanks to YouTube for that one.)
Yes, folks often placed coins on the tracks to create souvenirs. I wonder when this was done last.
How about the lady with the circ 1922 Peace dollar who asks of she has a unique very valuable rarity because the mint misspelled the word 'trust' on her coin using a V inatead of a U?
Your hobby is supposed to be your therapy, not the reason you need it.
My reply was: We have to because we can’t get people to give them to us.
Got quoins?
I have used that line myself!
The dumbest general question I ever got was "Do you know what bank your checks are drawn on?"
I said "Yes."
On the back of my desk. Ive seen similar at other shops, the dealer also had theirs in back. Might be off putting to some customers.
How much would you pay for this. I looked it up on the internet and it’s worth (fill in your own ridiculous amount here).
Today it was a 1964-D Lincoln at $8600!
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.
Will I ever be able to sell this for a profit? lol
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Three U.S. college girls standing in the checkout line at the souvenir shop on the Canadian side of Niagra Falls.
"Do you accept** real money** here?
Canadian cashier: Yes we do. And, we also accept U.S. money, too.""
"What is the lowest (amount of money) you'll take for this coin?"
The response I wanted to give, but kept to myself: "What is the most you're willing to pay?"
I always wear a 1922-S Peace dollar on a chain necklace. I often get a reaction from the non-collecting masses. They never seen such a large and old coin before.
One of my co-workers ask me why I wear a "bigass quarter" around my neck. My fellow millennials are so ignorant.
In another instance, a lady asked me why I'm wearing a "thousand bucks" around my neck. Many people fail to realize that just because a coin is old, it doesn't mean it's valuable. People inherit circulated, common date Morgan/Peace dollars thinking they have a small fortune. Sure, old dollars always have an intrinsic value based on their silver content. But most inherited coins are unlikely to be rare or numismatically valuable.
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That's a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I don't like it when non-collectors ask if their coin is valuable. If they're given an answer they don't like, they try to refute it. Why do these people bother asking for help in the first place?
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When they do that, I encourage them to buy a PCGS membership and submit under one of the more expensive tiers to accommodate the high value of their precious "rarities."
Most of these smart alecks don't even know what PCGS is lol. It seems the ignorant public either undervalue or overvalue their coins. The millennials spend their Morgan/Peace dollars at face value, disregarding the silver content. The older folks think they hit the jackpot with their inheritance.
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got a 1944 mercury dime in change about 25 years ago. the young cashier at the counter asked me if it was foreign and if I wanted American for it. I passed
I actually HAVE used this line when selling a rifle.
...when I was a freshman in high school, during a sex-ed class, a girl asked the teacher “umm, like if you have aids and you sleep with somebody else who has aids; like, can you get double aids?”
I sure hope she found a good man.
I worked briefly at a coin shop MANY years ago.
One day a person called on the phone and asked:
"How much can you pay me for a miniature Krugerrand ?".
My answer:
"I can pay you a miniature dollar bill for it.".
Then a little while later he actually showed up at the shop with it.
It came in a big velvet box and it was so thin I almost bent it in half prying it out of the holder.
I held it about a foot above the digital scale and dropped it.
When it hit the scale, for the briefest of moments, it registered 0.01 grams.
But then it settled out at 0.00 grams.
I said:
"I'm sorry sir, but your miniature Kruggerand does not register any mass at all".
He said:
"I bought it out of a newspaper ad for $19.95. It has to be worth at least that much, right ?".
.
" i am in business and I know how things work."
"Why should I pay you more than ONE dollar for this metal 1 dollar? you probably buy it from the mint at a 40% discount or better.
I once bought in a nice collection of circ. capped bust halves and wrote them up on cardboard inserts with the date, denomination as “50 (cent sign)” and grade across the top, and the price in the lower right corner. Put a display of 75 of them out in my NEW TOYS window and had some guy try to buy 20 of them with a $10 bill.
A question I asked many people unsuccessfully when I was eight years old:
Why is there a big "P" on the 'tails'? (Obverse and reverse were concepts beyond me at the time.)
Eventually I found the answer in a Red Book at the library.
That 1943-P nickel got me started collecting coins.