Vintage Coin Vets, What was it like?

Hey guys my grandma is visiting and she brought some photo albums with her. I was going to show these to a CT friend of mine who might have known some of my family members, but since this thread kinda ties in I'll just post them here.

 

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The ones above are from my mothers side of the family in the Mojave Dessert. A couple of the brothers started Grocery Stores during the Great Depression. The pictures today is of my grandpa WW2 time frame. I have been taking a liking to geneology. My Grandma just gave me a few albums to research.

 

These are just misalaneous pictures. One is of me and my grandma a while back, and the other is near the mine. They actually filmed a B rate movie there (The apple Dumpling Gang). Not much of a picture, but there is a nice Ore Cart.

 

I wasn't around to hoard coins in the 1960's and barely started in the 1970's. But one thing I will tell you from my roll searching is I find a heck of a lot better stuff nowadays at least in cents and nickels than I did then. Call it the Coinstar phenomenon - coins that used to sit in jars, drawers etc are getting fed into machines and eventually bank rolled and then I buy them at my bank. Oldest cent so far, an 1891 last year. Oldest nickel, an 1890 last week. The oldest dime I have found in roll searches is a 1946 - but I don't find enough silver in dimes or quarters to bother searching them. Oldest halves found in the last year are a couple of 1944s. Once when I was a kid in the late 1970's I did buy an 1897 Morgan from a cashier at an A&W after the customer in front of me spent it on ice cream.

 

That is so cool. I love reading the roll searching threads, but it is even better when they post pictures. The last Roll Search I did was with a box of quarters. Nothing but black fingers that time.

 

Hi ! Jason,

Here is one you may not have. Glen at arrow.

 

Thanks a lot Dave. I'm gonna show Oma in the morning. One day I'll PM you about what is in the time capsul.

 

Awsome !

 

I was so young when I started collecting, I don't remember the year, but it was probably around 1955. At that time my mom was a school teacher and sometimes had to stay late on bus duty (till the last bus left). On those days we would eat supper in a restaurant. The owners knew me and I had the opportunity to go through the cash register. In 1955, mercury dimes were fairly common, buffalo nickels too. Walking Lib halves and standing lib quarters were not plentiful, but there were still lots around. I remember the first time I found a 1916 Mercury Head dime and turned it over and there was a letter there --- unfortunately it was an s, but my heart was really pounding.

 

I enjoyed reading this thread and seeing all the photos and stories. Does anybody have any more?

 

Had almost forgotten this thread, but seeing this response reminded me of when you would empty your pockets of coins onto the table on into a dish, there was the ring of silver and copper which sounded so pretty, now we have the clunk of zinc. Monty Python - What's brown and sounds like a bell






Dung.

 

50 years from now, new collectors will be asking how it was when actual metal coins were used in circulation instead of digital accounting. Cash type cards will alleviate the need of drawing down our natural resources. Collectors will call it conspiracy to take away our copper, zinc and nickel and will hoard any metal coin they find or rescue from Grandpa's change jars from the 2012 era.

 

I wonder if we'll ever have plastic coins...

 

in the late 60s, the corner gas station used to save the silver dimes for me, they sold them to me for $5.10 a roll.

 

It will be a sad day for collectors and their kin when the world switches from physical, metal coins to digital, or whatever else they may do with currency.
These are cool stories! I'm sure mine are much less exciting, since I am a young collector. But maybe someday kids will ask what it was like to find state quarters in your change, although that will be a long way off.....

 

It seems like it at your age, but when your trolley gets close to the end of the line, it seems like it has gone by in a flash, if you have lived an interesting life

 

I started around 1960, loved my Whitmans and Red Book.

I like collecting today much better...I can buy today what I once dreamed of owning back then.

 

too bad, I am poor, so I can still dream. lol.

 

Yeah, but now it costs 10 to 100X as much!

 

I was to young to drive so my dad would deliver and pick me up from the local coin club's monthly meetings. In late 1955 many of the adult members were stockpiling rolls and bags of mint state '55-S Lincolns. It was supposed to be the last year San Francisco minted them and collectors were convinced it would be a sure-fire great investment. My attraction for the Lincoln cent started there even though I could only afford to save a roll of those 55-S. I also remember well the shock and outrage over the demise of the wheat cent after '58. Almost all collectors I knew thought it a travesty to retire the 50 year old design. With a loan from an uncle I would sort through a weekly bag of loose Lincolns. Most of you would be shocked at what you could find in those 5000 cents. Teen and twenties era Philly mints (I lived in Calif.) were so common that I only saved XF and AU examples. With the exception of the S-VDB and '14-D all the others were available with some frequency. I oiften wonder how many collectors today own some of my circulation finds that I sold at the coin club to finance my hobby.
That's enough "I remember when..." stories for today!