Does Anyone Else Remember...?
RichR
Posts: 3,930 ✭✭✭✭✭
I'll show my age now...
Does anyone else remember going into a B&M shop and asking for Unc. Lincoln cents all the way back to the late teens or twenties...and the owner goes to a safe and pulls out clear rolls for every year/mintmark and letting you look though them to fill in your album?
Ditto for Jefferson nickels and Roosevelt dimes...just name a date and out came the rolls.
I still have those pre-slab albums...and those coins are still pretty solid.
This was back in the mid-1970s.
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I remember the rolls from the safe.
Got my (circulated) 1798 cent that way. She went through several to find me a good one without verdigris.
I never collected Lincoln cents like that. The dealer sounds like one from era of Catherine Bullowa. She had a safe in her shop, which was on the 16th floor of an office building on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. I don’t know about rolls of Lincoln Cents, but she had many stunning early U.S. coins.
The old time dealers used to get rolls of new coins in the year they were issued and sell them one at a time as the market dictated. That’s where a lot of the 20th century BU coins we have today got their start.
Not me!
Into the 1960's it was still possible to get unc. rolls of some common date Indian Cents. The number of dealers who had such things was, however, very limited.
I was certainly around during that period...but no coin shops then - or now, in this area. At that time, I collected from change mainly... Cheers, RickO
I remember that as well one dealer I knew had drawers full of them
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BINGO! You got a 1931 P?...and out would come the roll and you could look over several specimens! A much simpler time.
I remember those days. I once had an original Unc. roll of 1899 Indian Cents and 1909 VDB Lincolns.
Still have some partial rolls of LIncolns from the 1930's, too common to slab. Maybe the great-great-great grandchildren will get something out of them. Was always exciting to look at and go through old rolls, even common dates.
Might have been an UNC roll, but I don't think it could have been "original". They weren't rolling coins in 1899, were they?
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
Yep ... I remember something like that ... not quite the same.
Hey, looking for some 30's Merc's for an Album.
What grades?
Looking for Choice pieces.
Out comes three boxes of 2x2's with Choice and Gem coins starting in the 30's with a few earlier.
mmmm ... yeah, and just like today, time to check the wallet before buying as many as I could see that were pristine.
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
I find it interesting that some are acting like it was so different to have your choice of uncirculated coins that are 40-50 years old. How is that different than today? If I want to get uncirculated, raw coins from the '70s and '80s I will have a large selection to choose from. Perhaps you can't in many B&Ms in part because fewer collect 50 year old coins by date and mint mark, but you can easily find a broad selection.
Mintages in the '70's and '80's were a wee bit higher than in the '20's and '30s and earlier. However, you make a good point in terms of collector perspective based on age. I'm one of the older guys that doesn't even look at anything minted after 1964/65.
Roll collecting was a big thing back in the 50's and 60's.
Pete
The 1909 VDB Cents were in 2 tattered 25 cent wrappers with a bank name on them. The bank went out of business in 1912..
Yes it sure was. My uncle was one of them. Some good memories there
Worked in a shop in Maryland in the mid 70's. We had boxes of made up rolls, not Unc coins, but we also had plenty of unk rolls of common date stuff. We also had date/mm rolls of buffalo, again circ and not unc. When common date unc rolls came in we often would pay back of face if there was a lot of other stuff and a little over face if we had open slots in the rolls box.
Yes, I remember the good ole days.
Before my time. I wonder how much those Unc wheat cents out of the rolls sold for back then.
LIBERTY SEATED DIMES WITH MAJOR VARIETIES CIRCULATION STRIKES (1837-1891) digital album
In the early 60s I had a dealer give me rolls of BU 1909 VDB cents to sell for him on consignment. I seem to remember he wanted $100.00 a roll. Did I keep any for myself? I was about 18 years old at the time, what do you think I did?
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
Yes, that's very early but possible. 1899? Isn't that too early?
IDK. We need Roger back.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
I began collecting around 1974 and they stopped doing that not long afterwards. Man I miss those days. Thanks for taking me back!
I began collecting at around age 8 or 9 so that would have been 68 or 69. Our local bank would actually let me go behind where the tellers were and the bank president (Who my Dad knew) had a spot where I got to go thru rolls and pull out wheatbacks and silver. I remember he had got in a big bunch or Canadian pennies someone cashed in and I almost filled 2 blue Whitman Canadian books. Still have them to this day!
They sure don't let kids do anything like that now days but it was certainly another time. Still going thru rolls and my wife thinks I've lost my marbles. She won't say that if i find a nice 89-D bronze worth about $20K would she?? Probably, lol!
A patent for a machine to put coins in paper wrappers was applied for in October 1901. I found an opinion that paper wrappers were used for about 50 years before that. I seem to remember that a large coin company had bought several rolls of 1863 cents a few years ago and they were in the original wrappers.
I remember my local coin dealer had a very large double door safe, quite a bit larger than my two door gun safe and it sat open every day and you could see it at an angle through the doorway into her office. What all she had in it was a mystery to me.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
I remember getting rolls of red Wheaties to put into Whitman albums from Littleton Coin. I wonder how many had the same experience?
They are still around here https://www.littletoncoin.com/ .
As a "kid" looking through those rolls...the question wasn't if things were Unc...they were...it was if they were spotted or "clean"...or red or brown? And they were all pretty cheap. I think $10 was an expensive "penny" for me back then. Most were $4 or $5...give or take.
I still have that Dansco album too...I think the last pre-printed hole was for the far in the future year of 1980!...and there are still some pretty red cents in there...with ring toning...after 40+ years.
B&M really were the place to go for looking through rolls...as most dealers generally take all their lower price merchandise to coin shows back then.
Does anyone else remember going into a B&M shop and asking for Unc. Lincoln cents all the way back to the late teens or twenties...and the owner goes to a safe and pulls out clear rolls for every year/mintmark and letting you look though them to fill in your album?
Well now that you got me thinking about it...weren't those all the overgraded, whizzed, recolored "unc" cents we now see on eBay???? That you thought where unc back then??? Just saying.
WS
In the early '70s I remember dealer rolls of any date/mint mark Lincolns but teens and 20's were always circulated with a lots of low grade crap. My coin collecting world was limited to a few shops in about a 10 mile radius in S. Florida.