Coin collecting before the Internet?

Before the internet I collected mostly from local dealers and the bank. Once in a while I would buy from dealers who would send out coin lists if you requested one. I know it must sound unfathomable to buy via the mail to young collectors today, but thats how it had been done for hundreds of years before. Some of the greatest collections on earth, coins and other art, were done so through mail, sight unseen.
Guy

 

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Hey Doug I thought you were old. Am I the only one who remembers the teletype network? If you want a coin and you couldn't find it at the local dealer, the coin shows, or a trade publication ad you could go to a larger dealer and have them put a request "on the machine". From the late 50's til at least the early 80's there was a dealers network all across the country linked by teletypes. In the early years it was just a few hundred dealers but it eventually grew to thousands. and they would be constanly buying a selling material back and forth to each other. Some one needs a hundred CC dollars he puts a bid on the type and dealers everywhere could see it and sell if the prices was good enough or the could list an asking price etc (The teletype network was where a lot of the information came from for the CDN in the 60's and 70's.) A lot coins, jokes, gossip, and rumors got posted on the type. (I remember once seeing a printout of the teletype and everything being posted the day Kennedy was shot.) Anyway you could get the dealer to search for your desired piece on the network. If you had a serious bid you could now pick the inventory of thousands of dealers and even if a deeal wasn't made it was now known where a customer was if one did turn up.

 

One of the feel good events of the year was the Solomon Brothers index. They listed investing
returns on various things such as farm land, pottery, paintings by old masters and of
course rare coins and stamps. It really made you feel like an investing genius to see that the
rare coin index gained 16% or whatever that year. But then what made up the coin
basket index accidently got disclosed and ended up in someone's book and then in the
publications. I remember they were mostly, if not all, *really rare* coins. When I saw that
list it was: I'm pretty sure I don't have a
1876CC 20c piece, or anything else here.

 

I remember the Boston coin shops (Bromfield St.) sold ridiculous crap at absurdly inflated prices... but there were ALOT of them in the late 1970s. And those vapid, hypster coin magazines - good grief! Had I only bought shares of Microsoft or ANYTHING ELSE instead.

The internet destroyed that grift, LOL

 

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I last visited this forum. Too busy with work and traveling. Anyway, I thought I would throw in my 2-cents worth re: coin collecting before the Internet. And actually it was a 2-cent piece that got me started with coin collecting. It was 1975, and I had just purchased my first metal detector. I went to a local park to give it a try, but was not having much luck. I dug a bunch of bottle caps, pull-tabs, and tinfoil. Undeterred, I went back the next day, with a better understanding of the detector, and I started digging pennies, a few wheat cents, a few more pull-tabs, I was excited about those, my first coins, and then I dug a 1867 2 cent piece. Since then I have been an avid coin collector and have located coins with my detector, throughout the U.S. And I still own that 2 cent piece.

Thanks,
Frank

 

Nope, You're about 7 and a half years older than me. But I get a bit older this week.

 

I had forgotten about the stores that had coin collecting departments & counters. I recall that Kresge 5 & 10 (subsequently called K-Mart I think) had a section for coin collecting supplies. They would stock bread & butter coins on cards that were inventoried on standard peg boards. You could select a high-grade Indian cent much like you would select a high-grade pair of socks in their footwear department.

 

Or perhaps stored in a grandfather clock?