This article by our own @Jack D. Young mentions "generational" coins but focuses on his "foundational" coins. It got me thinking about my own coins in both categories. This morning it popped into my head that some of my generational coins have been in my family for 78 years, and in fact have never been on the market since the day they were coined. I thought it might be interesting to see other generational coins and their stories. Got any? My grandfather became head librarian at the Chicago Tribune in the 1940s when his predecessor died (big city newspapers had their own libraries back then!). This late librarian had connections who mailed him coins, and the coins kept coming for several years after he died, so my grandfather got them. They were split up among his grandchildren around 1972. So my Canadian coins from 1948 came directly from someone in Canada who had likely grabbed them straight from a bank. I know my brother has a 1946 $1, so his would be never on the market for 80 years. I'll just post one of these generational coins. Others I can't prove, but I suspect my 1835 25c came via my great-great-grandfather, which would make it "off the market" for 180 years. I'm sure it was never sold as a collectible at least. It was just a raw coin in a box with many others. How long have your generational coins been in your family?
I still have some coins and tokens that I got from my father in 1976, so they've been with me for 50 years. My father probably picked them up in the early 1950s when he was an active buyer of coins, so that would make them about 75 years in the family. There isn't anything special about the examples I have except they were once his. Doesn't get any more special than that. Bruce
I have a leather pocketbook that came from my late grandmothers. It has a few merc dimes and two pristine 64 JFK halves that she lovingly wrapped in wax paper. I can see her coming home from the bank in 64 with her new JFK halves figuring out how she can best protect them for her grandkids and wax paper was her solution. I will leave them in that wax paper in her little leather purse until I depart this spinning rock.
Can't say I have any generational coins, although my paternal grandmother did some collecting. I don't believe I saved any of those coins. I do have a keepsake from my maternal grandmother . . . a large size silver cert (1899, I think) that looks brand new. I put it in a lucite holder when she gave it to me around 1975, and she'd protected it in a book all of her life. Is it truly uncirculated? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. It's a family keepsake.
My grandmother was born in 1883. She had this love token from her stash of coins which she kept in a safe.
My grandmother's gold coin which she had mounted in a bezel and wore as a necklace on occasion.... Before... After...
I have been wanting to do a thread like this for some time, thanks @KBBPLL for starting this - and that is an interesting way that your grandfather became vested with your treasures. My father was working as a vault manager at the Fourth National Bank of Wichita in the early '60s and was a small-time collector, mainly of cent errors. When the federal reserve began purging all of the Morgans from the vaults of the Philadelphia mint, thousands of bags were shipped across the country. At the time, the 1904-O was a minor rarity, BU coins went for as much as $40 or more. So, when he saw a bag of them arrive in his vault he believed he had hit it big. However, he needed $1,000 cash to get them, and with a new wife and a 1-year-old at home, he didn't have two sticks to rub together, let alone a thousand dollars. But he knew someone who did. His parents raised six children in north central Kansas through the "dirty thirties", living in a shack owned by a farmer that my grandfather worked for. Dad told me stories about how his mother would wet rags and stuff them around the windows and doors to keep the dust from blowing in. Grandpa left when the kids were a little older, but grandma pushed on, and not only survived but thrived, eventually purchasing and running a small cafe in the town of Beloit, the Ideal Grill (a few years later she gifted me a Roi Tan cigar box filled with used stamps she had cut off of letters, a couple of pens, and a bunch of change, including a shiny Franklin, and that started my collecting). In 1962, she was doing very well for herself, and she happened to have ready access to some cash. Grandma drove to meet my father in Wichita where she bought the bag of Morgans. She gave some to my dad, who was able to get about $22 a piece for them (I assume they hadn't completely flooded the market yet, so were still sellable) and he then paid her for about 200 of them. I know grandma gave each of my aunts and uncles some but no idea how many. They have all passed now; I believe a few of my cousins still have some of the coins but not sure. Dad needed some help in the mid-nineties, and I "bought" his collection. There were 27 of those 1904-Os remaining. In 2010 I split the majority of my collection up between my daughter and her eight cousins, giving each of them one of these along with a note of where they came from. The rest I still own; have posted them here a couple of times. One of these days I will get individual photos of them.
