The Good Old Days (early sixties)

I'm sure I'm not alone in still having my "kid" coin collection. Never anything fancy, just circulation finds from back in the early to mid sixties. But goodness those brilliant uncirculated 65 66 and 67 cents that I saved back then, well they are finally wonderous things to behold. The good old Whitman folders kept them in fine shape, though a few have finger smudges from being pushed into the book. And the memories....the dark chocolate 1919, at least MS63BN, well that was found bottle digging out in the woods. The 1917D, dad showed me how to find coins by ripping along the back of old furniture in the dump and finding coins lodged deep down. One old green chair yeilded a beautiful 17D lincoln with a lot of red still there. The 31 D I found on my uncles desk...and convinced he was a closet coin collector, and KNEW I lifted it from the hundreds on the desk, I hid out from him for a year. The 1908 Barber Half my mother got in change from Thailackers Florists, and the 1910D Quarter that the Mr. Softee man gave me in change. A 1796 Liberty cap large cent bought by mowing lawns, my first trip to a 'real' coin shop...set me back $45. The 1968 mint set....bought new, cost over $3 and I waited months for it....it is now worth $5!! The 1934S walking lib half that I got in change at sears, at least an AU and the 3 cent nickel that I found on a class trip to a local historic site....I wandered away from the group and was looking behind the building where the rains fell in a trough from the roof.

Coin collecting back in the day for me was sitting on the cold linoleum floor by the cellar door looking through moms coat pocket. You know, back then, coins circulated much longer. Cents in the teens, common, dated and undated Buffalos, common. Standing Lib. Quarters, most worn beyond dating...still circulating.

I never found an indian, never found a 1909 cent, but always looked. Ahhh, the good old days. It trade everything I own to be back in 1968 again, just for a day. To see mom and dad, to see Snoopy my Beagle, Id savor those moments like fine wine. But, like Fanny Kemble said " O Tempo Passato. The absent may return, the distant be brought near,the dead be raised an in another world rejoin us, but a day that is gone, is gone. And all eternity can us back no single moment of the past " (1832)

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Cant say I know how you feel, as I was a kid in 1997 (10 years old) lol.
but Im sure it would have been fun!

maybe slightly off the topic, but Ive asked my grandpa about coins when he was a kid (10 years old in 1943) - he says he remembers how buffalo nickels, standing liberties, and such were common. and he remembers when that crazy steel cent came out, my grandma too, and how alot of people didnt like them, because it wasnt a "real" penny.

anyways, at least you have a few things you saved

 

The good old day's for me in coin collecting were 1947-1961

 

I started serious collecting in 1956, and those next 10 years were wonderful. I collected U.S. and Canadian, and still have the coins in my Whitman folders and albums.

 

Yup, after forty years those 'shiny pennies' from the early to mid sixties are now decent ms67rd candidates, I just sent some to pcgs for slabbing. Only had to wait forty years for them to finally be worth something! Found some near perfect 1963 to 1970 lincolns in there! Gotta hand it to Whitman, those folders done their job protecting the coins!

 

great post ambro ... i love reading it and reminising (sp?) right along with you! Yes I remember clearly roll searching in 1967 and finding SLQs, Mercs, and Buffs ... many of the buffs and SLQs with no dates ... do you remember the acid drops sold by coin stores that you could drop on a dateless buffs and make the date appear (sort of makes me shudder now!)

i wish i was older so i could have been there to get a bag of uncirculated Morgans for face value from the Treasury Dept or some banks in 1962 ,,, ahh the good old days indeed

i was born in 1957, so I barely knew what money was in 1962

 

1962 wasn't a very good year for me, diaper was FULL don't cha know...

 

My golden years started about 1980...
I remember buying my first ounce of silver around that time for almost 20 bux!
It was a fortune to me at the time, but I just had to see what all the hub-bub was about.

I kept pennies in a jar, then a jug, and later it became a bucket.
About 2 years ago I started going through them and seeing all the red from the 70s, and the great toning the have attained.

I had a hodge podge of stuff when I was a kid. My grandfather started me, and pushed me to classic US coins.
However, I had the urge to bring home all sorts of 'crazy' stuff. He would cringe when I added currency to my little hoard.
He thought that old silver certificate was only good for spending. He didn't understand why I didn't use it to buy more coins.

 

Well, that's mainly what us old folks do... sit around and talk about the "good old days".... back when coin collecting was fun, before it became big business. There was something special about filling those Whitmans from circulation. Unfortunately, by the time the 1960's came around, I decided marriage was more important than coins, so the collection was sold for a few thousand (and today would be worth many times that). But thankfully I got my priorities straight and got back into collecting.

 

Hello Ambro;

Thanks for sharing about the good old days. I love hearing stories like that. I remember back in the seventies I was a major big time stamp collector, but I dabbled in coins just a little. I remember buying several mint state Morgans dollars back in 1977 or 1978 and remember them being being really primo. I know that some of them were Carson City Morgans. In 1979 I was living in my first apartment and I was short on rent, so I sold all of the Morgans to a antique dealer. I was able to pay my rent, but when I think that if I had those pristine dollars today, I'd be sitting pretty.

 

I was 10 when I first got started in 1957 getting Morgan dollars at face value from the bank with money I won gambling at pool. I sold them all for a 400% profit in the mid-60's because pool was taking up too much of my time.

Chris

 

I actually found a couple of Indians in change. It does bring back wonderful memories. I always had luck using quarters the dime vending machines. They seemed to have a higher ratio of older coins.

 

Ah, yes, the good old days..For me, started in the 1950s and put off from the teens to the late 60s, but the good old days are right now. The amount and availability of knowledge has never been better, from how to build a nuke, make candy spark in your mouth, to almost all there is to know about a coin. I am a knowledge junkie first, before coins and the rest of my interests. There is so much available, it is easy to become saturated. Coins lead to chemistry, metallurgy, history, politics, financial theory,...etc, etc. So for me , this is the best of times for information ( and coins). I would love to see my deceased ones, especially my one brother who was also a coin collector, he was much older than me, and out on his own before I knew about coins. But do not long for the days past, celebrate the days of knowledge and wisdom to come.
Jim ( old guy) in body, not mind.

 

lol Yep, that's what it's all about.

I'm starting to feel old because I didn't have the internet available when I was a kid! I grew up in the 80s. Even the difference between then and now is like two completely different worlds. All I'd have for info was an old Coin World that was the size of a standard newspaper. I was mostly on my own to try to figure out the terminology. It was a simpler time. Some stuff has gotten way better. Some stuff has gotten a lot worse.

 

I never got an Indian Head cent in change, but back around 1966 or 67, a guy who worked at the local supermarket gave me 2 of them-- an 1898, and a 1903 with a hole in it. I thought Indian Head cents were so cool after that, and started buying them from a neighborhood collector-turned-dealer for about 15 cents each for common dates. Once I splurged and bought a VG-F 1859 for a dollar. Then I became interested in other coins, and traded my small IHC collection to a mail order dealer for 3 silver dollars. In those days, common, average circulated Morgan and Peace dollars were going for $2.50 to $3.00 each.

 

Getting Proof sets from the US mint for $ 2.10 :hail:

 

My good old days were the mid 80's. I got interested in coins in the early 70's when me and my older brother collected what we referred to as "Whole Wheat Pennies". Dad would give us anywhere from a quarter to a dollar to spend at the flea market, that wasn't much but we bought what we could. It wasn't until the mid 80's that I could afford nicer stuff. That's when I bought my first 3 legged buffalo, an 1876 proof seated quarter and a 42/41 merc. Sadly back then money got tight and I had to sell my coins. BUT... I WILL REPLACE all 3 of them.

 

You guys realize that the "good ol' days" o' this thread was three years ago? Not that it's relevent. Just pointing out something..........

 

Maybe so, but 2/3 of the replies have been made in the last 2 or 3 days. No point in starting a new thread when a slightly used one will do

 

Oh it was kind of around. Back then they were "Bulletin Boards" (BBS) I've been online since 1980. Started with Compuserve back then and I was on some of the BBS's before that.