Bank lobby Morgan dollar purchase.

A lady in front of me at the bank had these. The teller told her to take them to a coin shop. I couldn't help but overhear. She had about 18 and I got 3 of them. To bad they had been harshly cleaned. These were the best. I gave $40 for the 3. How did I do? I did suggest a shop for her to take the rest to. I would have tried to get more but had little cash. Not a member of the bank I was at. BTW the whole lot was same year and mm.

 

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Got them for slightly under melt (40.44 at Coinflation) - you did well.

 

Talk about good luck

 

You got them for a reasonable price, and I want to commend you for being fair-minded with the lady. It seems obvious that she had absolutely no idea what they were worth, and there are so, so many people who would have taken advantage of that.

Chris

 

You got them for a great price, if your alternative is buying retail, and you gave her a great price if her alternative is selling to a shop.

I would've tried to make arrangements with her to buy the rest, but only because I could count on selling them at a profit before I needed the cash. It's good not to get so excited that you take imprudent risks.

 

The one on the top left looks bigger than the other two.

This story doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Who takes abut $20 fv of old dollars to a bank? If she did a simple google search she'd know what she has. Perhaps she stole them?

 

Someone who doesn't collect coins.

Maybe she doesn't own a computer.

Chris

 

I suspect she doesn't know what google is....

 

I think the problem is that you are too young for this to make any sense to you. There indeed existed a time before "the internets"

 

This may come as a shock to you, but there are those still walking among us who can remember getting Morgans at face value from banks.

Not all these people use Google, or think twice about taking what they think of as "money" to the bank.

In fact, some of them may be the ones who threw away your father's collectable comics and baseball cards when he moved out of his parents' house. Not everyone sees the same value in the same things.

This is the way it has always been, and will always be.

 

I used to get rolls of silver dollars from the bank to look for good dates - $20 per roll. I would get upset when the roll was all 1921 uncirculated coins.

 

They were from her father. She also had a small amount of other items that I wasn't interested in. Not everyone know the value of older coins. Not everyone is as smart as you. BTW, all are the same size and weight. Situations like this happen all the time.

 

Good point Jeff. Yes I know that people could get Morgans at face value back in the 1960s. My grandfather hoarded a lot of them.

My stance was that in general people have the notion that anything old is worth money. If she saw that the coins were 1889 then I thought that would peak her interest and ask her son to lookup the coins.

 

Yep, I was one of those who got them at the bank for face value. From 1957 to about 1963, I accumulated more than 800 Morgan dollars.

By the way, what is "Google"?

Chris

PS. The correct word is "pique" not "peak".

 

I am *so* jealous. Sometimes I wish I had been born 20 or 30 years sooner.

 

I had a somewhat similar experience about 6 years ago. When getting food for the week, the cashier ask if I would mind taking a half dollar as part of the change. Thinking it could be a 40% half, told her sure. Image my surprise when she hands me a Walker. I ask if she had any more halves and she said she had a lot, as an elderly man had paid part of his purchase with half dollars and she couldn't get rid of them, probably thinking they were clad. I ended up with the following at face value:

Walker - 7
Franklin - 9
Kennedy 90% - 10
Kennedy 40% - 8

I started my collecting of coins when I was 10, when my dad handed me the biggest, brightest coin I had ever seen, a Morgan. To a 10 year old these looked so big. Back then (1956) I would get (if I did my chores) 50 cents allowance a week. I would save as much as I could and every 4 to 8 weeks, I would take my change and go to the bank to get a bright Morgan dollar. After months of doing this, the bank (small town) would let me look through the Morgans and I always would pick the bright ones and as far as I know uncirculated. I remember, some had funny looking colors on some of them, but I wanted the bright ones. If I had only known about toning and also look for the more scare ones.

 

Welcome to Coin Talk.

Did you keep any of the Morgans you got from the bank?

 

My daughter wanted to go to college and I sold them all so she could fulfill her dream.

 

Interesting story. I'm of a different mind-set, where I would rather have one MS graded Morgan in a slab for $40, than 3 cleaned ones.

 

People in banks must get a lot of that. They would have been ripping her off if they had accepted them at face value. Since they were Morgans they didn't look like money to them. I have seen all sorts of silver coins in the coin areas at banks. I saw a standing liberty quarter definitely. I never had the nerve to ask what they were going to do with it. I did find a war nickel in my change last week, so that's not bad.