Went through an old foreign coin tin last night . . . . . look what I found!

There has been a "tin" in our family for decades. It probably started with my wife's father when he came back from WWI. Spent some time in Tunisia, other places. Maybe some of the coins came from garage sales where someone picke dup a box of old random coins. I know when my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Jamaica, loose change from that trip got deposited in this box.

When I was younger, my work took me to many countries in South America. Change from those trips are in the "tin."

I found yet to be attributed coins with oriental looking markings - I can't read the characters. Not old, they appear to be mostly aluminum. Not sure how they made their way into the "tin." I think when both sets of our parents passes, any non-US loose change seemed to make it's way into the "tin."

There wasn't a HUGE amount of coins in there, but it did take the better part of the night to go through it. First pass, I separated them out by country. There were about three dozen contries that I could identify. Of course, I was looking for anything that appeared to be silver, or anything with really cool designs. MOST of the coins ranged in dates from about the mid 1930's forward.

I say MOST, because I did find a few "oddities" . . . .

This WAS supposed to be a stash of "foreign" coins, right? Well, I found a LOT of Lincoln wheaties in that tin for it being a "foreign" coin tin . . . I found 18 in all, the oldest being a 1917, a couple from 1944 or so, the rest being from the 1950's - lots of 1954-S cents in the mix.

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I kept digging and found some more interesting items. Here is what appears to be an old silver dollar gaming token from the Gold Rush casino in Cripple Creek, CO.

As coincidence (or irony) would have it, my wife and I visited Cripple Creek this past June on our summer driving vacation. My first real vacation in about 20 years.

Had I known this little token was in there, I might have taken it and tried my luck . . .
Fortunately, I still have it. I doubt that it contains any silver, but if they issued these as souvenirs, one never knows. I'll have to do some research.

The other two objects in the following photo should be obvious. One is a fairly common, but OLD cat's eye marble. The other is a very unusual hand painted ceramic marble.

I remember my parents talking about finding an old hand painted marble in a stoneware jug when we lived in northern Wisconsin back in the 60's when I was a kid, but I never knew what happened to that marble until last night.

Here they are. If anyone knows anything about the casino token or the marbles, any words of knowledge would be eternally appreciated.

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Now for the "piece(s) de resistance."

In this tin of old foreign coins, I found not one, but FOUR US Large Cents . . . . . !

All four exhibit some form of damage, but just how often do you find a US Large Cent in a junk tin?

Dates range from 1835 to 1851. The 1835 is counterstamped with a capital "E". I thought the 1849 has a "strikethrough" error, but after learning a LOT from you guys in the Error Forum, I am thinking the abnormality to the 1849 is not a minting error, but what you guys call "PMD."

Anyway, enjoy my finds.

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I plan on going back through the foreign coins later tonight to see if any of them contain silver. What would be a good place to find out which foreign mintages contain silver or not?

Thanks in advance for all your comments and advice.

Zoid

 

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If you have a smart phone, put the coinscope App on your phone. It is free. Take a picture of the coin on the app, if loaded in their system, all information about the coin is displayed.

 

My "smart phone" tends to be an idiot, but thanks, I'll give it a shot . . . . .

Z

(of course, the phone operator could be the ID10T as well) . . . . . .

 

Those large cents are great. Damaged but still valuable!

 

I'd love to see what foreign coins you found in there as well.

 

I was under the impression that any kind of damage renders a coin fairly worthless, save its face value . . .

Z

 

I lot of old foreign coins have silver. The patina is pretty obvious.
Then just look up the year, denomination and country on the net and the
composition will be shown.

 

Numista.com is a good place to get info about any coin. It’s like the Wikipedia of coins.

 

Nope. It lowers the coin's value, but how far depends on the coin.

Rotting zinc Lincoln cent? It's not even worth face value, because no machine or sensible human will accept it.

Badly scratched 1964 quarter? It's still worth $4.50 or so for its silver content today, same as an undamaged BU example.

Damaged large cents? I'm not a large-cent collector, but I think they're still worth dollars, not cents, each.

Here's a sad, or not-so-sad, counterexample:



Holed, engraved, and beaten up -- but it started life as a proof, mintage 900, and it still went for quite a few hundred times face value.

 

How valuable?

 

anywhere from $4 to $10 I'd imagine,

 

I got a 10 from my dealer recently for about 5 bucks a piece. They were same condition as yours

 

that is pretty cool. Look like it may hav been a love token type gift or something

but yes for rare and wanted dates even the most damage coins are still very valuable . Also for counterstuck coin I understand that there is some specialist market for those

 

That's some great finds for foreign money. As for the marbles, the left one is a nice Cats Eye. The one on the right looks very interesting. I would take care of that one.