Naaaaaaawwwwwwww!!!! That really HAPPENED ???
I don't go back to teaching until the 4th, so I have too much time on my hands. It dawned on me I had a couple of numismatic events happen in my collector-schmuck-dreck-lover career that would be found interesting to those stuck in a basement during a Covid pandemic, and if I had a couple, some of the luminaries here should be able to knock our sox off (well, let's leave out the $250k coins thrown in the trash). No real rules. Make them true. Entertain us.
My first . . .
An introverted collecting buddy of mine who also assisted me in coaching track (shot/discus) ventured into a local shop (which has since closed due to a nationally-known Ponzi-scheme of silver bullion) and purchased some simple AG-G Walkers and hole-fillers as he was just getting started in the collecting game. He dropped 20 or 30 bucks and headed out into the street to his car.
He was intercepted by a vagabond/homeless/down on his luck guy who said "Hey . . . do you buy coins?" My introvert screwed up the courage to answer, "Uh, yeah . . . sometimes." Vagabond produces 4 silver quarters and says, "They won't let me sell in the shop there. I just want to double my money . . they are yours for $2.00." Just wanting out of the situation, he buys.
2 semi-slick Standing Libs . . . 2 lower end Barbers. He does the transaction and nervously heads to his car. He gets home, and is punching his AG Walkers into a blue Whitman and dumps the quarters onto his desk. He looks at them, and evaluates with a Redbook (his only real resource of pricing). I get a call . . .
"Hey . . . I bought 4 quarters from a guy for $2.00 (silver was obviously higher at the time) . . . and two are Liberty Quarters."
"Wow, good for you. Melt is like 12x face!"
"Yeah . . . but the two Liberty Quarters have good dates on them. The better one is a 1912, with no mintmark. The one that isn't so good is a 1901, and the mintmark is an "S". The Redbook says it is a cool coin." Is it ???
Yup . . . it was. PCGS G-6. Bought for 50 cents.
He still has it . . . . . . .
Drunner
Comments
'They won't let me sell them in the store' would make me think they were stolen. Pass....
**Second . . . **
A disaster . . . still nearly brings a tear to my eye.
Junior English student realizes through some infrequent class conversation that I enjoy coins. He says, "Hey, my grampa has collected for years and years. He has them in those books. I should bring one in to show you!"
I say OK, but make sure Mom and Dad know about it and be careful. I expected the typical Whitman.
Days pass . . . we are thumping through Scarlet Letter, and the kid shows up at the start of 2nd period with a Dansco 7070. I opened it up and nearly soiled myself in front of 36 students. Keeping a calm face so as not to alert my class, I asked the kid to tell me about his grandpa. Professional guy, had some income he could devote to collecting, family guy, etc.
The first copper page was all a uniform bright neon orange, evidence of a serious EZ-Est dip. BUT . . . the highest-grade, hardest planchet early copper I have ever seen. The half-cents went 58-64-64 (my opinion). The coin I will never forget was of course . . .the Classic Cent. An 1814 (Crosslet) with a planchet so hard and clear it looked like glass. The rest of the early cents were dynamite. Averaging low BU . . . a few 58s and a few 63-64. The 2-center was a proof. Nickels had an odd lack of luster, but I had never seen a drilled-strike 1866 Rays that had 65 detail. It went on and on . . . 20-Center was a CC, probably a 58, and the halves were ridiculous. All BU to my eye, but dull. The Seated Dollars were not BU, but solid 55-58s . . . again dull and flat. Don't remember the Commems except the Hudson.
First . . . I told the kid to call mom at home and meet him immediately at my room. We got the book out of the school and safe. Secondly, I asked the kid what grampa had done to the coins. "He liked to keep them clean and matched." was the answer.
A $100k 7070 . . . reduced to about (I dunno) $20k ?????
Don't clean your coins.
Drunner
Matt . . . agreed fully.
I tried to point out carefully that this guy is (still) an introvert, caught a bit off guard by being surprised in the street . . .and the seller was precluded from the shop (probably by his appearance) and . . . also not having any amount or series of coins that would initially attract a lot of attention, my friend did not suspect anything. Just 4 low-grade quarters . . not real evidence of a theft or anything untoward. The guy might have gotten them from the tray at a CoinStar.
I agree though. I would have walked briskly, jumped in my truck, and gotten out of there.
Drunner
That is pure speculation. Homelessness doesn't mean theft, it could simply be the dealer was in an abundance of caution not purchasing from individuals who don't possess some type of identification.
peacockcoins
Third . . . . .
(As this thread is falling flatter than any of my school humor.)
Same shop as #1 above. Looking for graded Indian Cents that I can crack for my Dansco. I had a nice little AU/BU set going, and you could get a 63-64 RB 1900-1909 for about $40. They had a PCGS box that I could look through, and I had pulled one or two out when I got to the back of the box.
Hmmmmmm . . . not an Indian. Morgie. Back of a cheapie box. 1884-S, MS64 PCGS. Sure looked PL to me, but what do I know?
I called the older brother of the two workers over . . . pretty sure I was shaking. The comment?
"Oh . . . there that is!"
Drunner
I think the lesson here is to always buy suspect coins from vagrants loitering outside of coin shops.
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
These are great stories! Thanks for sharing them.
Did he go back and hand the homeless guy some money?
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
Perhaps they judged him by his homelessness/appearance and wouldn't let him in the store?
Successful transactions with : MICHAELDIXON, Manorcourtman, Bochiman, bolivarshagnasty, AUandAG, onlyroosies, chumley, Weiss, jdimmick, BAJJERFAN, gene1978, TJM965, Smittys, GRANDAM, JTHawaii, mainejoe, softparade, derryb
Bad transactions with : nobody to date
Keep the stories coming! They have certainly been interesting!
Unfortunately I don't have any of my own to add.
I once knew a guy many years ago, that bought a lot of large cents and half cents at local auctions. He cleaned them to where the bare copper made them look awful and pretty much worthless. I asked him why he cleaned them like that. Do you know what he said? "They're My Coins". This guy totally ruined some very good coins for future generations and cost his estate a lot of money when they sold them. Ruin your coins just because you own them?
So, back in '08-09 a vagrant walks into a 7-11 to buy a pack of smokes. Down on his luck, wife just left, his business is failing miserably due to the "housing crisis" and ensuing economy, 3 months late on rent, and just can't seem to catch a break.
Later that night at home the vagrant notices that in his change from the store there is a '65 silver dime. He knows what silver is and the fact that dimes of that year are not silver. Perplexed and unaware he throws it into a jar with a few other silvers and eventually spends them and probably on another pack of smokes.
Fast forward to 2016 and said vagrant reads an article about the sell of a 1965 silver dime for 9,000 and becomes very sick to his stomach for the next couple of years... By this time, business is back on track, remarried, and is buying his own home.
But still suffers a lingering pain over the loss that he was once bestowed during the worst time of his life.
The vagrant then decided the only way to cure his pain was to beat it back so, he joined PCGS and this place to make it so.
Vagrant
I bought a partial set of Washington quarters in a new Dansco album for just a little over melt with the intention of flipping them. There were a lot of holes so I thought I would go through a bag of bullion quarters that I had to see if I might fill in a couple of holes in the 40's or 50's. To my surprise, I filled in all of the holes from the 40's to 64. And then I found all of the remaining holes in the 30's except for the 32 D & S. I was even able to upgrade some of the ones that were in the set when I bought it.
I quickly sold the nearly complete set for a small but nice profit.
I also found one other coin in the bullion bag. A 1932-D in a nice AU condition. A bullion coin that I paid about $3 for sold for over $200. I never would have searched the bag this coin and the other's that went into the set if I hadn't bought the partial set to begin with. It was just dumb luck on my part.
It looks like someone sent a full or nearly full set of Washington quarters to the bullion dealer and they ended up in the bag that I bought.
Don't know if this qualifies but here is my story. Halloween night 2019 I was CRH looking through a bank box of mixed quarter rolls hunting for W quarters. I was ecstatic when I found a bunch of San Antonio, then an American Memorial. Then I found a W with a strange reverse. I initially thought I hit the mega jackpot and found an error W quarter because the reverse was not Lowell, American Memorial, Guam WIP or San Antonio. Then I found a second one so I googled W quarters and realized I had found 2 RONR but was confused because they weren't scheduled for Mint release until early November! Anyway, since they didn't come from a new coin box of all RONR I put them in cardboard 2x2 and finished the box. Sat and watched TV for a couple of hours and then I thought to check Ebay to see if any were for sale. Nope! Checked PCGS Quarter Quest website and no one had claimed the prize so I joined PCGS that night then called Customer Service the next day. They told me to mail them and I was one of four lucky winners of the RONR First Discovery contest and have been a member ever since that night! 🤣😂
When I was just a kid, buying Baseball Cards, on my way home and opening the packs, I was not thrilled of the booty.
Snow was on the ground as I was waiting for the light to change. Something caught my eye under the icy water.
A whole hand full of coins, submerged under the icy water. Yup, Turned my frown upside down, as I turned around for another go at it.
Happy thoughts every time I pass that light.
Was that light in a parking lot?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
I bought a deal that had over 60,000 wheat pennies in it from 1909-58 which was heavy in teens-twenties. Many were rolled and separated by date. I had absolutely no intention of going through all those wheats. The only dates missing were the 4 more expensive dates. I started spot checking the better dates, 1st 1910-S(there was a roll) and find a nice AU! Hmmmm, I check the 11-S and find the same. Off we go....there was a complete AU-Unc set scattered through those 60,000 wheats!
I have no stories of great discoveries..... I guess my best have been mint sets at gun shows with AH Kennedy halves... found three of those....and got the full set, each time, for a bargain price... $12-$15.... Cheers, RickO
With lots of time on my hands these days, I was going through some rolls of silver quarters looking for anything noteworthy. As I was piling them up on the side I suddenly realized that I had not checked for varieties. Going back and grabbing the first handful, I found a 1937 DDO! I was shocked!!! There was nothing else in the whole batch but that ‘37 just came back from PCGS as an AU58. There are something like 116 certified in all grades and only 17 finer. Woo hoo!
Found this in a bank coin counter attached to one of the magnets.
Yes, one of them as I was helping a friend take many of these machines apart.
Long story..
But look at this 10 cent Canadian 2001.
Only the letters are showing a strange marking and only on the obverse.
Back in the late 50's and early 60's my parents kept an eye out for coins, knowing that I was crazy about them. My mother was "antiqueing" in San Francisco and called me to tell me that an antique dealer had a partial roll of dimes he could sell her. The price was modest, something like $25. He had looked them up in "a book" and thought the price was fair. I asked her for some dates, figuring circulated mercs. The dates were all Barbers. Told her to go ahead, couldn't be much downside. The roll contained a bunch of nice coins, many EF, but the stars were two 1901-s dimes in Unc (to my eyes) condition. I ended up trading them to a dealer in San Mateo for type, including an eight piece gold set and several other unc types that I had dreamed of. To this day I wonder what reference the antique dealer used, but it must have been an old one and he probably only looked at a few coins out of the roll. Got me started with high-end type. I have two VF coins left from the roll which I need to send in as keepsakes.
In the 70's, my friend and neighbor Hal (not his real name, but back then we thought 2000 was infinitely far away) and I collected coins. We started with taking our allowance and birthday money (remember that?), riding our bikes to the local B&M, and thought 50c quantity was better than $5 quality. Time passes, we get older, drive and pursue other interests. I get my first job, a paper route, it gives me a little extra money. Hal inherits a large coin collection from his Grandpa. More time passes, and for reasons I'm sure were important at the time, we negotiated a deal. I gave Hal $20 and a plastic bag half full of herbal seasonings for his entire Mercury dime collection. Nothing fantastic, just a couple hundred G-BU Mercs that I still have nearly 50 years later.
When the kids were still young, Saturday morning at Doug's Coin Shop in Birmingham was one of the get-away pleasures this young parent enjoyed. Sometimes I would take one or both of the kids. One morning, my daughter and I were the only patrons in Doug's when he received a phone call. After a quick exchange, he hung up and turned around. "James Earl Jones is on his way over." The Alabama Theatre had been recently restored and evidently he was in town for its new opening. Sure enough, 15 minutes later James Earl Jones and a young publicist/assistant arrived. He came to Doug's not for coins though - he came for baseball memorabilia. Doug had a decent supply, and Mr. Jones honed in on an old black and white, crumpled picture of Ty Cobb sliding into home plate. I recall it had some level of authentication.
"How much?"
"$1,200."
"I'll take it." Mr. Jones reached into his back pocket and pulled out one of those old, folding checkbooks (the kind that had a snap to fold it in half to look like a wallet).
Doug looks him straight in the eye and says, "you don't happen to have cash do you?"
Brief pause. "No, I don't."
The check was accepted, but I'll always remember being shocked by both the price of the picture and Doug's request for cash.
It turned out Mr. James Earl Jones was a very nice fellow. We all chatted a little about putting baseball cards in our bicycle spokes when we were kids and his publicist/assistant even took a picture of James Earl Jones and my daughter. Several weeks later, the picture arrived in the mail. My daughter still has it. Doug still had his too - last time I was in the shop 10 years ago or so, he had the picture with him, his son and James Earl Jones front in center on a shelf right behind the front glass cases.
If we were all the same, the world would be an incredibly boring place.
Tommy
Very cool stories, the only story I can say is I bought a Flying Eagle cent from a dealer for $20 and later found out that it was in fact XF (not f as the label said) and it was a DDO. Sold it for 65.
JeffersonFrog: Cool story about James Earl Jones! Did that meeting take place before "Field of Dreams"? Maybe he intended to use that pic of Ty Cobb in the movie - -maybe he even DID! I'll have to watch closer next time.
In the meantime, it might be fun to write him & reminisce about that meeting & his pic with your daughter. You might even be able to convince him to come back again for a reunion.
ould be he's also a currency collector (even though he had no cash on him the last time). Remember..........._ "If you BILL it, He will come!" _
@DBSTrader2
FOD was 1989, my story is from the 1997-98 time frame. Might of been the other way around - maybe FOD and The Sandlot inspired James Earl Jones to become the Buddy Ebsen of baseball collectors.
If we were all the same, the world would be an incredibly boring place.
Tommy
I've told this story before but during my last year of college I went to a local coin auction and thumbed through a small stack of partially filled Whitman cent folders. In one of the folders, in the spot for the 1922 No-D, was an honest to goodness 1922 No-D. I won the pile for something like $25, sent the '22 to ANACS where it graded Good-4. I flipped it to a local dealer for $200, and used the money to buy a nice interview suit.
Sean Reynolds
"Keep in mind that most of what passes as numismatic information is no more than tested opinion at best, and marketing blather at worst. However, I try to choose my words carefully, since I know that you guys are always watching." - Joe O'Connor
Back in the raw coin days, Steve Ivy (pre-Heritage) was holding an auction in Dallas. During the preview I noticed a very nice VDB cent being auctioned as MS. I put the loupe on it and WOW, saw that it was actually a PR. There I sat at the auction nervous as hell. Up comes the lot and I wait, not wanting to tip my hand. Sadly, up go the bids. When it got over $500 the auctioneer stops wide eyed: " ...aha this is a proof?" Everyone laughs, I go home with my moment of glory dashed, but still felt the clever fellow.
1999, I had just graduated undergrad and was taking some time off before heading to grad school. I had no money and was invited by a good friend to spend some time fishing at their place in Cape Cod. House was build in the 1700s and has the largest privately help strip of beach in the town, amazing house and these people are very well off. We got to talking history and turned to coins. Cleaning out the house they had located a box of coins in a closet. We spent 2 nights and several bottles of wine going through the collection. Looked like much of it had been put away from before the civil was until early 20th century. colonial coppers through gold. Hundreds of worn out early copper coins, spanish silver, tokens etc- basically a time capsule of the random stuff that people used for money in the early 1800s before us coin production caught up to demand.
They offered the entire collection to me, I didn't have that kind of money at the time and still had a few months of traveling before I would be home. Told them to hold them for me until I was out the following year for our annual fishing trip.
They told me I had to take at least something for my time helping them, no charge, I picked out 2 1907 10 dollar indians and a fugio cent. The ten dollar indians graded out as MS64.
Well a few months later my friends call to tell me that a family member got hooked on heroine and had cleaned out a lot of valuable stuff, including the coin collection. I have always wondered where this box of really cool coins ended up.
When I was 19 or 20 in college, I started putting ads on Craigslist for coins. One man responded he had a bunch of old wheat backs, so I drove the hour drive and went down in his creepy basement to look at them. They were separated in rolls by date, including 22-D and early S and D-mint. He threw in a bunch of canvas mint bags for free and then said I have one more coin. It was an S-VDB he said he had taken to a couple dealers who thought it was fake so they wouldn't buy it. He said I could have it for $100. It was the first coin I ever sent to PCGS and graded VF30. There was also a 16-D that graded AU58 that I still have - it's what started me on Unc Lincoln cents.
Check out my iPhone app SlabReader!
Sat in library reading Coin World, and the 1995 Lincoln cent DDO was discovered. Prices climbed up over $200.
Walked across street to a coin shop, and asked if he had any for sale.
"Nah... but it is too soon. They will fall in price. How about a Morgan Dollar?"
"No thanks..."
Walk back to the library and buy not one... but three examples from a print ad.
My first ever coin purchase.
Somewhere around $700 and a week later I have my coins.
Sold them 20 years later for $15 each...
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A second story... my wife is an esthetician. One of her clients gave her a 1999s proof set as a tip.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked me.
It gets tossed into a drawer for about a decade.
Circa 2009, I am cleaning out the drawer and find the set. Double check my CPG... hmmm
A quick glance at the Lincoln cent and I have a 1999s Close AM... flipped the set on here for a nice profit. Put the 1995 DDO debacle in the rear view mirror a bit.
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Okay... my last story.
Was bored one night and pulled out the CPG to look for a pick.
Chose the 1886 Vam 20 to seek out. About as rare as a major 8TF 14 something monster.
On about the 5th coin observed, fuzzy pic, and about a hour or two of hemming and hawing... buy the coin for about $60.
Slabbed PCGS MS63 or MS64, unattributed, it arrives and is what I thought it was. Sent into our host for correct labeling...
Went on a six month obsession looking at every raw and slabbed 1886 Ebay auction. Somewhere around 250,000 auctions viewed day and night.
Found two more unattributed and three raw. They would hit about once a month.
No competition except for one. A raw AU example that blew up over $100. Dealer wised up and sent me a different coin and kept the cleaned AU example.
Oh well... the five coins I would flip cost less than $400 and with about $500 in attribution/grading fees turned into +/- $2000, $1250, $800 (bad toning, touch of verdigris), and for the unattributed and $500, and $400 respectively for the AU Details examples.
Before our host changed the TV's, at one point had all but one of the images. Found a decent portion of the MS state coins.
Counting the one I never got, and starting with the original coin (5th coin viewed) and adding 250K additional auctions and the hours spent looking. Best guestimate 1 in 40,000 to find any example... or 1 in 80,000 for the money coins.
Figured my net $4k came out to about $4 per hour... lol
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