A Question for the Old Timers

has anyone here ever seen an encased $2.50 gold piece? I never had until the other day.

anyone ever seen one?

 

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Yes but I wasn’t interested. It was over 25 years ago and I felt it was too much.

 

ditto, about the same time period

 

Who ya calling OLD!?

Doug?

Oh, okay

 

I have seen them. 1000 times scarcer than pennies, but they are around.

Quarter eagles were weird animals, not really circulating in commerce, and the main demand yearly being for current dated year issues for Christmas bonus gifts. After they got turned into banks they kind of just sat there. That is why there were gaps in issuance years.

 

First time is today for me, guess I don't get out much!

 

Never. Thanks for the post.

 

I've seen them in rings inserted in to a ring bezel but not a "Christmas coin/token"


Who's an Old Timer ??

 

Not me, that’s for sure!

 

1st time i've seen an encased gold that wasn't "jewelry"...

 

Never seen one, super cool!
That is one denomination I have multiples of, several UNC, and a few southern examples, but nothing incased like that.

 

In the 50's I was in a coin shop when a man brought one in to sell he had gotten as a penny!!!

 

Nah, just one he got in change at a store...

 

As a Christmas gift it was probably appreciated. The average wage in 1900 was 22 cents an hour, $450 a year. I've never seen one personally but that doesn't mean I'm not an old timer.

 

My Dad still occasionally mentions seeing some in a cabinet at his childhood home. I think at one point he said someone gave one to each of the kids as a Christmas present. It's a bit surprising, because he would've been 5 in 1933, and his was not a wealthy family.

 

You reminded me that my grandfather socked away some crisp 1935 $1 silver certificates, and us 6 grandkids each got one some time in the 1970s. It was the height of the Great Depression and he was a railroad worker. I always wondered how he managed that.

 

Mom's parents got off to a good start, with several thousand dollars in the bank -- all lost when the banks closed. Mom's earliest memory was of sitting on her mother's lap on the front stoop, watching her father walk up, while her mother asked "did you find any work today?"

He went on to work for the railroad (office work) until his retirement, and one of my first memories is going to his retirement dinner. I found out only many years later that he was one of the organizers for the railway workers' union -- so he's one of the people we have to thank for the 8-hour workday and the five-day workweek (it was 12/7 when he started). No, I don't believe that the Great Depression was caused by those sorts of extravagant worker demands.

 

I don't think anyone who has studied labor history would think the union movement was unreasonable when it began. Too bad the history was so adversarial, affecting up to present day animosity in labor relations. Japanese unions are a much healthier relationship and mutually beneficial.