Featured Building a Twentieth Century Circulation Collection

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...and alive. That was drilled into me so much I permanently shifted into "...don't do that, stupid ...." mode, and still reside there.

 

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When I was 16, my father was stationed in Mannheim, German. We lived in military quarters, which is a three story apartments with a Rec Room on the 4th floor. We lived on the first floor. It was a nice place to live in 1965. Anyway, my mother was a friend of one of our neighbors which had a son that had polio and lived in an Iron Lung. There was a lot of things I could have done then, but I chose to be friends with my friend with the iron lung. I would read comic books and other books to him. He had a friend that was a stamp collector, but after a while, he got bored with stamps. After a few months, he got interested in coin collecting. I don't know where he got his coins, but after a while, I got interested more in helping him than collecting coins. There were so many G.I.'s that would send him coins from all over the world. His father bought him anything he wanted to help him in his coin collection. There were many things that I could do, but, I became good friends with him. I worked part time bagging groceries as the Commissary (Military grocery store). I didn't get an hourly rate. I was paid with tips. Officer's wives were the best and the enlisted men were next. Officers were the worse next to enlisted men's wives. Anyway, I would earn about $10 a day, mostly in coins. When I got off work, I headed over to my friends and I would talk to him about my day and then we started looking at the coins that I got. His father bought us books, were few and far between. He could only see most things through a mirror. When his father was transferred to a new post, I missed him a great deal. We would write for a while and he would tell me about his coin collection. I didn't hear from him for a while, but then I got a letter from his mother, telling me that he passed. She told me that he wanted me to have his coin collection. That was 1966. The coin collection came in a box. I didn't open it for over 10 years. I was in my 70's before I opened it. There wasn't much, but it meant a great deal to me.
Have you thought about contacting nursing homes or assisted leaving homes? There may be a source. Many of them would like something they could do by themselves.

 

@Jim Dale Thanks for the feedback. Great story. I have 23 great grandchildren and 14 grandchildren. Your suggestion is a good idea, but I keep very busy trying to get the grandkids interested and keep them interested in coins.

 

Somehow I missed this thread last year. Nice story and a great job. Well done Inspector.

 

Thanks CN.

 

You’re welcome

but don’t you need about 50 of them for those kids and grandkids? Hehehe

 

Here is an older post where I described how I was distributing to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. Of course, there are many more now. But I have kept it going.
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/what-to-do-with-my-accumulation.341614/

 

Neat story and a neat thread. I got into coins because my parents saved wheat pennies after 1958 and silver after 1964. When they showed me the cigar box full of coins I was hooked.

I still found some good coins in circulation in the '60's and '70's but it must have been a blast before 1960.

 

Yes, just the variety that was available made it very interesting. You weren't getting rare coins every day, but a handful of change might include Indianhead and Wheat cents, Liberty, Buffalo and Jefferson nickels, Barber, Mercury and Roosevelt dimes, etc. Much more exciting with the variations circulating.

 

Wow, Minnesota kids when 10 go out to play in the winter...only 8 return

 

I never found an IHC in change.

 

It would be interesting to find out how many of us are grandfathers and/or great-grandfathers. I have 3 grown and married "children". They are all married and have children. I have 13 grandchildren. Only one is married and only recently. I must have done something right because only 6 have graduated from college, but only because the others are still in high school. I have one granddaughter that is on a Soccer Scholarship at East Carolina University (my Alma Mater). Another granddaughter is on an academic scholarship at Mount Olive University in North Carolina. My son graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina and he has 4 daughters. His oldest daughter graduated from Brigham Young University and got married after she and her husband graduated. She went to college on an academic scholarship His number 2 recently graduated from BYU. His 3 oldest served a 2-year mission for our church. Many people think that doing missionary work is a waste of time. Aside from the theology of missionary work, it taught my granddaughters how to read, study, and work.
Each summer, my children and grandchildren would come to visit for a week or 2. I tried and tried to get them interested in my coin collection. Only 1 of my grandchildren got interested. Luckily, my youngest has started on her coin collection. I gave her a lot of my "extra" coins to begin with and a 2 year old Red Book. She loves to go over her collection by email and Facebook. She loves to show me her latest addition. Another granddaughter is a musician and she sings very well. I gave her my guitar that I bought in Brazil in 1966 when I was a missionary for our church. I also gave her a song book of the Beatles, the Association, and Peter, Paul and Mary. She now plays and signs better than I do. We have gotten very close because of her music and her coin collection.
My recommendation to we parents and grandparents, is to find something that you can get close to your children and grandchildren. It's amazing how close you can get with a coin collection and/or music.

 

Love the trip down memory lane. I can't believe the things in common. I really enjoyed the old pin setting days which brought back a lot of memories for me.

Dave

 

I got more serious as a collector at around 1963. I never saw a bowling alley with human pinsetters. My mother told me of such things, but I never saw it. It was possible to get a lot of coins in circulation, but the best I ever did was get a 1909 Lincoln cent. I never saw an Indian Cent in circulation.

One of my schoolmates came to school with a 1908 Barber half dollar as lunch money. My mother, who was a teacher, bought the piece for me at face value. I still have the coin. It’s in Good condition.

Yes, you could go to the bank an get Morgan and Peace Dollars for a paper dollar, but the bank was small and didn’t have that many silver dollars on hand. Also a dollar was worth a lot more then than it is today. My pay for the week for cutting the grass and school lunch money was $2.50, which left me about $1.50 a week left over.

So, no, when I was young, given that I lived in the country, outside of small town, building a complete set of modern coins was not really viable.

 

Here is what happened. Way back then, early 50's, there were still some old farmers that pushed carts down the neighborhood alleys selling produce. My mother gave me a half dollar and asked me to go out to the vendor and buy something. Mom said it would be 25 cents and I should get 25 cents in change. The old man reached in his change and handed me an 1875-S Twenty Cent piece. My first thought was get it corrected. Then I thought perhaps mom will let me have it. Guess what? I told mom the story the response was - well, put it in your coin collection. Absolute truth.

 

My father was a pin setter in 1929. When the depression got really bad he lost his job to a married man. It didn’t matter that he was supporting his mother, brothers and sister. His father had died years earlier and he was the oldest.
When the pins were placed in the correct position he would jump up onto a seat above them.

 

We had a mechanical device similar to the ones used on the bowling lanes today. But you had to load the pins by hand and then operate a big lever to set them up. We could not use the finger holes to pick up the ball. Yes, jump up on a seat was still part of the process.

 

I worked as a soda jerk during high school, circa 1974-77. Everything was still cash of course then, and we rang up the purchases on old time cash registers (with keys for dollar, 10, and cent quantities). What I recall pulling from change was Eisenhower dollars, Kennedy halves (some silver), a Franklin half, probably a few silver Roosevelt, at least one Mercury dime, a Barber dime, a couple dateless Buffalo nickels, lots of wheat cents and maybe one Indian Head. One guy paid with a crisp uncirculated 1935 $5 silver certificate. I've always thought that last one was odd.

We bowled a lot after work. (Trying to stick with both themes)