My business partners wife found a nice old cigar box full of coins stuck away in her mothers house. Of course she immediately thought she could now retire when she saw all those silver morgans. I looked over each coin and sadly each one was a 1921 or '21D in circulated condition badly corroded and dark from the cardboard container. The rest of the coins proved to be the same situation except for one. Actually the last coin I checked, wrapped in cellophane and paper turned out to be a nice 1864 "L" Indian Head cent in F/VF condition. It had a couple of small spots of corrosion and was almost black in color from the paper but still a very nice coin. She was amazed that that small cent was worth more than all those large silver coins combined.
Coins it's deffinitely fun to go through stashes of coins. I too was surprised when I got back into collecting how morgans are so cheap compared with some other smaller coins of the era like barbers and the rare date ihc,s. I just got some old bills that were my Granddads and have been having fun trying to research, ( and also found I can't retire yet!!!).
Posts like that always remind me of when I was telling a friend of my neighbor about coin collecting he said he had a bunch of old coins in cans, boxes, jars, etc and if I wanted them I could have them. He would just give them to me, I should count them and give him face value for them all. If I don't want them he will just take to a bank. He brought them all over. As it turned out they weren't old, just very dirty, corroded and messed up. I don't think any were over 20 years old. I spent a lot of time just trying to read what they were. 99.99 % of them were worth face value if a bank would take them and that's where they ended up. I told that guy the truth abouit that garbage but not sure if he believed me.
I hate reading stories like these because I'm that close to to being in one myself. I have this neighbor that was left a coin collection by her later partner and she doesn't collect coins. She asked if I'd like to take a look at them and I said yes. I have now been waiting 6 months to see them and because of the sensitive nature of dealing with the loss of her loved one, I don't feel right about bothering her about them. She has no interest in coins but I think she isn't ready to let go of something that belonged to her partner. So here I sit waiting for her to remember and wondering what she has stashed away. I think that my love of coins is getting the best of me over this situation.
