Tell us your coin tales from when you were a kid.
SanctionII
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I'll go first and I have some good ones.
#1, I was a wee lad of maybe 2-3 years old. Next to where my family and I lived was a gravel parking lot. I remember walking on the parking lot, looking down and seeing a Frankie. I picked it up and showed it to my folks. I thought it was great, finding money, though I do not remember what happened to it (whether my folks took it for them or whether they let me keep it to spend on something). Wish I still had it.
#2, I was still a wee lad, though (4-5) and was with my parents in a Woolworth or Walgreens. Looking at the glass display case I saw a gap between the glass and the metal frame. In the gap was a half dollar (a Frankie). I told my folks about it and found something to pry the coin out with. I retrieved it and it was mine. However I do not know what I did with it.
#3, I was still a wee lad (under 10). My mom's sister had visited us in the 1950's and while in town found on the street a circulated 1890 CC Morgan. She kept it but told my mother that when she died, she wanted my mom to get the coin so that my mom could give it to me (since my aunt knew I was a YN). After she died my mom got the coin and gave it to me. I still have it.
#4, I was a sophmore in high school in 1971. I finished hoops practice and went to the school lobby to call my mom from a pay phone to come pick my up on a cold dark November or December night. No one else was around. When I finished the call the pay phone malfunctioned and started spewing nickels and dimes all over the floor. Just like a Vegas slot machine paying off on triple 7's. Between $10.00 and $15.00 in change was rolling all over the lobby after shooting out from the phone like a waterfall. I scooped them all up and went home with a big pocket full of change.
#5, I was a kid (10-12) and was on a quest for nickels. I had some Walkers and decided that I would prefer nickles. I went to a local Dairy Queen and convinced the clerk to take the Walkers and trade me nickles for them. I do not even remember what dates the Walkers were. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
#6, I was working a summer job during college as a grunt for a landscaper. We worked at an older house putting in a sprinkler system. Another worker (an obnoxious jerk) found a Standing Liberty Quarter in the dirt. I saw it and tried to trade with him. He saw that I wanted the coin and just to goon me refused to trade. He probably bought a beer with it. Idiot and jerk.
#7. I was a kid and in the alley behind my parents house found an 1887 cent, corroded but still a cool find.
#8. I was a kid and my folks opened a checking account at a bank. The bank was handing out MS Morgans to new customers. My folks got an 1882-S and they gave it to me. But for a reverse scratch, the coin would be a solid 65. No nicks or dings on Miss Liberty's cheek or the obverse fields. I still have it.
#9. I was a kid and my mom was gardening in the back yard vegable garden. She turned some dirt and saw something round. She picked it up and was about to throw it in the alley when she realized it was a cent. She wiped the dirt off and gave it to me. 1913-S in fine condition. I still have it.
#10 I was in grad school and during the summer of 1979 went to a mall where a large coin store was. Saw an 1830 Bust half and bought it for I think $30-35. Bought it as a very fine, I think. Passed on a $75.00 MS Bust half that was all white (dipped probably). The coin I bought has nice toning and a nice look to it. Still have it over 25 years later and some dealers I have showed it to opine it is XF.
These events took place from 1959 to 1979. When I think about them I still smile or get angry.
Looking forward to reading your own kid, coin tales.
#1, I was a wee lad of maybe 2-3 years old. Next to where my family and I lived was a gravel parking lot. I remember walking on the parking lot, looking down and seeing a Frankie. I picked it up and showed it to my folks. I thought it was great, finding money, though I do not remember what happened to it (whether my folks took it for them or whether they let me keep it to spend on something). Wish I still had it.
#2, I was still a wee lad, though (4-5) and was with my parents in a Woolworth or Walgreens. Looking at the glass display case I saw a gap between the glass and the metal frame. In the gap was a half dollar (a Frankie). I told my folks about it and found something to pry the coin out with. I retrieved it and it was mine. However I do not know what I did with it.
#3, I was still a wee lad (under 10). My mom's sister had visited us in the 1950's and while in town found on the street a circulated 1890 CC Morgan. She kept it but told my mother that when she died, she wanted my mom to get the coin so that my mom could give it to me (since my aunt knew I was a YN). After she died my mom got the coin and gave it to me. I still have it.
#4, I was a sophmore in high school in 1971. I finished hoops practice and went to the school lobby to call my mom from a pay phone to come pick my up on a cold dark November or December night. No one else was around. When I finished the call the pay phone malfunctioned and started spewing nickels and dimes all over the floor. Just like a Vegas slot machine paying off on triple 7's. Between $10.00 and $15.00 in change was rolling all over the lobby after shooting out from the phone like a waterfall. I scooped them all up and went home with a big pocket full of change.
#5, I was a kid (10-12) and was on a quest for nickels. I had some Walkers and decided that I would prefer nickles. I went to a local Dairy Queen and convinced the clerk to take the Walkers and trade me nickles for them. I do not even remember what dates the Walkers were. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
#6, I was working a summer job during college as a grunt for a landscaper. We worked at an older house putting in a sprinkler system. Another worker (an obnoxious jerk) found a Standing Liberty Quarter in the dirt. I saw it and tried to trade with him. He saw that I wanted the coin and just to goon me refused to trade. He probably bought a beer with it. Idiot and jerk.
#7. I was a kid and in the alley behind my parents house found an 1887 cent, corroded but still a cool find.
#8. I was a kid and my folks opened a checking account at a bank. The bank was handing out MS Morgans to new customers. My folks got an 1882-S and they gave it to me. But for a reverse scratch, the coin would be a solid 65. No nicks or dings on Miss Liberty's cheek or the obverse fields. I still have it.
#9. I was a kid and my mom was gardening in the back yard vegable garden. She turned some dirt and saw something round. She picked it up and was about to throw it in the alley when she realized it was a cent. She wiped the dirt off and gave it to me. 1913-S in fine condition. I still have it.
#10 I was in grad school and during the summer of 1979 went to a mall where a large coin store was. Saw an 1830 Bust half and bought it for I think $30-35. Bought it as a very fine, I think. Passed on a $75.00 MS Bust half that was all white (dipped probably). The coin I bought has nice toning and a nice look to it. Still have it over 25 years later and some dealers I have showed it to opine it is XF.
These events took place from 1959 to 1979. When I think about them I still smile or get angry.
Looking forward to reading your own kid, coin tales.
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In that safe were:
1821 bust half AU sharp and lustrous
1877-cc dime AU
1883 1c XF
+many other silver coins and Indian cents.
That's my fondest recollection. PS. I ruined both of the silver coins by constant cleaing. I still have the 77cc dime but the bust half went about 15 years ago. I had cleaned it to about XF value.
To this day I'm still looking for a nice choice UNC bust half to stash away as a permanent reminder of those days.
roadrunner
I'm still a kid so I'll have to get back to you in a few years.
<< <i>PS. I ruined both of the silver coins by constant cleaing >>
In a hojo during vacation my family sat across from some loud mouthed business men at breakfast. After the got up and left I looked over and saw an envelope on the floor just under the edge of the booth. I excused myself and slipped under the table and retrieved the envelope. In was a pack of twenties! I was probably about eight.
First Place Winner of the 2005 Rampage design contest!
rainbowroosie April 1, 2003
Always had the numismatic bug . . . even before I knew what it was.
OK . . . Family history is from Iowa . . . small towns . . . moved West in 1960 and left the majority of the relatives there. Grandma had worked in the Nodaway Valley National Bank in Villisca, Iowa . . . pulling out Indian cents from circulation and building three circ sets from all the decades of change that came through that area of the midwest. Put together three date sets . . . complete. She didn't know a variety from a helicopter, but did 1859-1909 up right. One set for me, one for my brother, and one for a cousin. After we left Iowa, the cousin's mom (my aunt) raided the three sets when my Grandma passed away . . . before Dad could get out there. When Dad came back with the momentos and sets, the best date left was an 1894 in one of the two sets that came to my bro and I. All the dates were gone, but you could see in the folder where they had been punched out from the back. She just insisted that what was left was all Grandma ever put together. I was about 5-6 years old.
But . . . it ignited a passion that never left. It also fueled a desire to put together a bulletproof set . . .the first full set I ever finished up correctly.
Gee . . I'll probably think of more stuff that happened . . .
Drunner
Here's one goody...I'm in 5th grade, in a catholic school yet..TeeHee. A kid by the name of Mike knew I collected coins. He asks me b-4 lunch (we used to walk home from scool in those days to have lunch) if I knew what type of coin he had at home. So, he goes on to describe to me a $2-1/2 dollar gold piece (Indian head), i play stupid and tell him to bring it in when he returns from lunch break. Sure enough he brings a 1915 $2-1/2 Dol. gold piece in. He says to me, "I think it's bronze or something." My heart starts beating and I say "Could be, I really don't know." He says "I have 5 of them that my dad left me when he died." He went on to say "Tom, if you want it you can have it." I, of course said..."OKAY." After 1 week of my mom breaking my nutz, calling his mom to confirm that she didn't care what Micheal did with his coins, the $2-1/2 Dollar gold was mine.
Tom
Alas, my aunts and uncles wanted to sell the coins and currency and split the money. So off to the coin store we went. I don't recall how much they got for the lot, as that was my first trip to a coin shop and I was wandering around the store amazed at the coins I saw. They sold ALL of the coins and currency though.
I specifically recall seeing an Indian Head Cent marked at 75 cents. I don't know what date or mint mark it was, as it was the first IHC I had seen. I wanted the coin, but didn't have any money, and my penny-pinching father wouldn't buy it for me...I didn't start collecting coins until seven or eight years later.
RJ
It got out that I collected coins. One day, he told me "I used to put away any shiney and newer coin that I found in my pocket back in the 1930's. I have a whole jar of them in the house. Now, I can pay you in regular money, or in old coins. If I pay you in old coins, it will be double face. If you want a dime, it will cost you 20 cents."
..................I guess you know what I chose.
I still have them........AU/UNC Mercuries from the 30's High-grade Walkers, one of them a 39-D UNC. An AU 37-S quarter, also an AU 40-D quarter.......
That's just some of them.
The best one, however, cost me a whole days pay......$2.00.
It was a nice AU 1921 Peace Dollar.
Pete
Thank you, and God rest your soul, Mr. Levan. You made a young kid appreciate the value of things, and the work ethic that goes with getting them.
A kid who lived across the street from me got me started with coins by giving me some cull Mercs and Walkers that he received for 'tips' on his paper route. The history and look of those coins hooked me, t....hen I took a break for about 25 years.
Don
2) My only real collecting memory was my brother. I was a stamp guy, so just to be different, he went with coins. In order to fill his Whitman cent folders, and find those ellusive "S" mints, I allowed him to search my piggybank....but only if he paid me 2-cents for every cent he found and kept.
Back in the 1960's, I used to ride my bike to the Bank and buy rolls of Nickels.
Well, I was so in a hurry to open up the roll that I did it in front of the bank, and the roll split........
all the coins cascaded to the ground. Now, I'm in a frenzy trying to pick them all up. I was short one coin after 15 minutes of searching, but I wasn't gonna give up till I found it.
Where the heck is it? I looked and looked.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the local HOBO who lived under the bridge...MARTIN!!!
He casually walked past me, made a 45 degree turn, and picked up my last nickel off the pavement!
He put it in his pocket and walked away. DAMN!!! what eyesight!
Maybe I should have became a HOBO..........
Pete
Wait, that was last week
Seriously, 30+ years ago - my first rip! But he left happy; full, at least.
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When I grew up I realized silver, platinum and gold is worth a lot more than paper
Oh wait. That is me right now
<< <i>I had to go back to the store and pay for the bread. My first big find, and my first felony
It's probably stale by now.
<< <i>I was about 7, and my mom sent me off to the store to buy a loaf of bread, she gave me 75 cent. As I was standing in line, I noticed that one of the quarters was a 1936. I quickly ran home to exchange the quarter, but when I got home my mom wanted to know how I payed for the bread
The FELONY? Heck, the statute of limitations shoulda run out on that YEARS ago. You need a new lawyer
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I got started collecting by antique dealer name Zitta Lindsey (yeah, she was as weird as her name) She would pay me for cleaning dirt and grim and shining brass lamps. I could either get coins for my cent collection or regular cash. I tried to balance it so I got a little of each. She wanted me to work until I could afford $100 for my 1909 s VDB. But as a 13 year old that seemed like working an eternity. What a dump ass I was for not doing it !
My other coin collecting friends would each borrow a 5, 10 or 20 and we would head to the area banks searching rolls. Often we would find cents in the teens. The real fights would occur when a mangled Indian head would appear. We sure pissed off a lot of bank tellers. In fact, there are still a few banks in Virginia that will never get my money today.
My best find was 1924 D in AG. Still occupies a seat I my raw collection.
My mother worked at Union Train station in DC at a newsstand and would keep any Indian head cents. Low and behold, when I started collecting, she gave those 7 cents she found to me. When we moved to Virginia she got a job as a custodian at a high school. Everyday she sweep halls and cafeteria floors, and everyday she would put the cents she found in a jar. And when school was done for the summer, she would give me the jars to search and roll and take to the bank and then she would start all over again.
We also had a lottery machine starting in the mid '80's. About 15 years ago a lady came in to buy $2 worth of daily # tickets and paid for them using some Standing Liberty Quarters. Common dates in VG-F but as soon as she walked out, I put my $2 in the drawer and added the quarters to my collection. I felt bad because I knew she had raided a relatives collection to pay for her tickets, but obviously could not prove it. I felt bad for the true owner but figured I better keep them-at least they were in a collection where they would be appriciated.
for about $5, a few years later unfortunatly he was blindfolded at home during a robbery and shot in the head, nothing was taken?
Second story, same campground. "Ray" always liked to show off his coins. We were in the game room and he pulls out a SLQ. He tells me he's gonna play pinball with it and I'm like "no way, you wouldn't do that". So he says he was just kidding, but steps up to the pinball machine anyway. He says he is going to put the quarter in but I needed to hold the coin return button in so the quarter would come back out. Don't remember the sense in it, must of been thrilling or something. Anyway, my finger has the coin return button pressed in, Ray drops the quarter in, my finger "slips" off the coin return, Rays now playing a miserable game of pinball. I guess it was thrilling in the end. I'm sure he got the quarter back, his parents could have been there when the game vending guy came around to collect. Sorry Ray.
LAst story, same campground. You know the drill, as a kid you are always sticking your fingers in the coin return of just about everything. Tried it on the payphone one day and noticed a bit of tissue stuck up in there. I worked at the tissue a bit and cha ching! A load of change comes out. Mostly dimes if I remember. Time for ice cream. I hope it was Rays tissue, hoping he could make a couple of bucks.
About that same time I begged my father to take me to a local coin show I had seen advertised. I had never been to one. One thing that caught my eye was a huge box of Nationals at Art Kagin's table. I knew nothing about such notes but found two from my hometown bank, a large $5 and a small $5. They were so cool I had to have them and he sold me the pair for about $25.
I scoured my paper route money every week for silver, better Lincolns, etc. Eventually filled Whitman volume 1 except for the 09-S, 09-S VDB, 14-D, 22, 24-D and 31-S. Found a 1914-D, got all excited, then the local coin shop dealer showed me that it was an altered 1944-D.
A few years later, I worked part-time in a local coin shop. Silver was in freakout mode and all I did was take silver coins that people brought in to sell through the counting machine. So many nice looking coins! I wanted to at least set aside some of the BU rolls and nicer stuff to look through later, but there was no time. Every night right after closing, a truck would come and pick up the day's purchases.
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
that was the end of stamp collecting for me.
Young...innocent....and yeah....I drooled a lot.
I loved the hunt. Just loved it. I salivated at the sight of an unopened roll of coins I just got from the bank.
Used to sit there....coin book open, and just hope that I could fill another slot.
Really, I think those memories have carried me to where I am today.
To a kid...It was FUN.....just plain FUN.....I loved it.
..........and I still do.
Pete
Just read all of the posts to this thread and enjoyed them so much that I think a TTT is in order. Thus............TTT in the hopes that others will regale us with their own coin stories from when they were kids (or are kids now).
I was 8 years old and will never forget the thrill of having coins arrive in the mail.
Here is mine. Not strictly a story from my childhood, as the punchline happened in my 40s.
When I was in grade school in the mid 1970s my Dad and I set out to fill Whitman books of cents and nickels from circulation. He would hit the bank on his lunch and come home with $5 in cents or $10 in nickels rolled from the bank, and we would sift through them for dates to fill the albums. I remember the thrill of finding a dateless Buffalo nickel and an 1898 Indian cent. One afternoon after school, my friend's father dumped his change in an ashtray when he came home from work. I looked in and found a 1939-S nickel, which he let me take. I also found a nice XF 1932 cent in my grandfather's change jar. When I was 10 or 11 I used to ride my bike down to the center of town, where I would hit up the local banks for $20 in cent rolls. I had a cigar box strapped to the back of my bike, and I'd ride home and search them for wheat cents and BU singles. I'd refill the rolls from my Dad's change jar and bring them back for more.
Once when I was 12 or 13 I was at a friend's house when he brought out his Dad's collection of silver. He had a big mason jar filled with SLQs, Mercury Dimes, Frankies, and some Peace and Morgan dollars, all stuff he'd pulled from circulation at the family bakery.
My step-mom's family also owned a bakery, and my uncle inadvertently got me started in variety collecting. He asked me to roll up a gigantic Mint bag of cents, with my reward being that I could keep any good coins I found in the process. This was 1987 or 1988. I went out and picked up a new Red Book and learned of the 1983 and 1984 doubled dies, up until then I had only looked for the 1972s. The Red Book picture of the 1983 DDR cent was really lousy then, so after a while I found a heavily strike doubled coin that I was sure was the real thing. I ended up driving an hour to a coin store who had an example I could compare it to, and he broke the bad news to me as he showed me his certified coin. He also sold books, and he took the time to show me the coin in John Wexler's 'The Lincoln Cent Doubled Die'. About two weeks later, I won a small group of UNC wheat cents from the local bid board, and in the group I found a 1941 cent with strong doubling on the date and mottoes. I knew from my lessons the week before that this was real die doubling. Another hour later, and I was back in the shop with the owner, thumbing through Wexler's book again, where I identified my coin as Die #1. This time I bought the book, and I was hooked. That coin was eventually graded by ANACS as a 64RB, and sold to Kevin Flynn who pictured it in his 'Authoritative Reference on Lincoln Cents'. So while I don't own the coin, at least I can grab the book and visit it once in a while.
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