I just posted " WHAT GOT YOU STARTED" but now to go one step further. It turns out in 1974, I was not the only grandchild who received a morgan from grandma. She sent one to all her grandkids from her deceased husband's collection (or hoard if you prefer). Evidently he had been collecting since childhood. He was born in 1885 and just sorted all his coins in mason jars. He had jars of indian cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, halves and dollars all stored in his private space at their house (the basement). After he died, she sent each grandkid 1 morgan. And then, now for the horror, she deposited them at her local bank. She got face value and I'm sure the teller got a windfall. Does anyone have a similiar nightmare?
I have no dought that some one either working for that bank of that knows some one that works for that back, that just got the mother load.lol or in this case the grandmother load. Had anyone told here they are worth more then face?
To quote Red Fox: "Elizabeth, I'm coming!" However, I had a new client come to me about ten years ago and, long story short, they told me that their father had died last year and left behind a ton of silver (actually about $3,000 face) they called coin dealers in the area and no one was interested. Finally he (the son in law) took it to work (he worked at Fortunoff) and had the employees put it thru the coin counter and give him the cash. I would have gladly have doubled what they got, at the time silver buy was only about 3X to 4x face. Years later he gave me a box of foreign (as a thank you) and thrown into the box was a British soverign! If grandpa had a gold coin tossed into the junk foreign, what else was there?
Some people do the strangest things. I was reminded after reading this story of a time once when i went to my bank as a teen for a few rolls to search and got a whole roll of unc 64 dimes, in a paper roll with a date on it 1966. It made me wounder how in the early 90's did they got there. Im thinking that some one had done the same thing.
When an (old-ex) girlfriend stole virtually all of my collection. The main losses were 21 silver dollars, both Seated and CC-Morgans in BEAUTIFUL condition. I think it was either 15 or 18 Seated Dollars and the rest Morgans. She was staying at my appt when I was in Basic Training (1982) and my poor judgement resulted in the loss. I asked the two shops in the local area about the coins, "Um no, I haven't seen anything like that at all..." I still have my doubts about their honesty in the matter. Water under the bridge and a hard lesson learned. Merry Christmas Ben
The guy at an oriental rug shop mentioned having a lot of old Persian coins, so I offered to ID and value them for him. It took him over a week to get around to bringing them to the shop, and when I went in with my Krause, he had a dozen or more 19th Century silver coins - all highly polished. He told me that since they were tarnished and dirty, he wanted to clean them up before I checked them. What had been worth at least $1K was now worth <$100.
A long time ago, probably in the 70's, my dad heard that this old man in our small town had a massive hoard of morgans, and he wasn't even really a collector. So my dad asked the guy if he was interested in selling any of them. The guy completely denied having any coins at all. About a year later my dad walked into the bank and the bank was selling morgans for barely over melt value. Turns out the old man who denied having coins had deposited them!!! After my dad had offered to buy them, you would think the old man would realize he could get more than face for them. Anyway, my dad bought about 40 of them for melt from the bank, including a couple CC's.
A nightmare for me was that a container of calcium chloride that was supposed to absorb moisture decided to fail on me and leaked. You cannot imagine how much damage was done to various mint set, as well as ruining various other coins.
As most of you know, I finished my IHC collection this past summer. Well, this past week I made it back to my folks home in VA. I brought along an Intercept Shield album for all my IHCs. (Understand that since 1988, my IHCs have been in the same Whitman Blue Album.) Dutifully, I transferred each coin to its new place in their new home. HOWEVER, either the environment my parents live in is bad or that album was seriously anti-coin, because some of the coins look damaged. My 1909-S has verdigris on it. Several of the other BN coins appear to have been touched on the Obverse's high points. They aren't toally BN. It's more like a black on the high points. When I get them back to CA, I'll post pictures for you all to look at. I seriously hope none of them have been damaged by the environment or the album.
Pretty close to where I was at too. Lackland, AFB San Antonio, Texas. Take Care & Merry Hanukkah/Christmas Ben
I don't believe Calcium Chloride is considered a dessicant, it's hydroscopic. It attracts water, so it's pretty much always wet. They spread it on dirt parking lots to keep the dust down by keeping it moist. It's also extremely corrosive, and will eat through concrete and metals that rust or corrode. Nasty salt. I had some coins which I washed when I was younger. They were pretty much all worthless foreign coins, but I had a bunch of iron slugs which got a gray coating (like iron gets before it rusts). Those are worthless too, but they have sentimental value, and I wish I hadn't done that.
