Years ago a friend of mine's father had passed. My friend called me because his dad was a coin collector and asked me to help him figure out what he had. I gladly obliged figuring I would be handed a sock drawer of old silver dollars and halves and such. Well, I was stunned when I got there and my buddy led me into a walk in closet that had a human sized safe absolutely stuffed with hundreds of rolls of Walkers, stacks and stacks of mint stuff out on the closet shelves. It was so overwhelming. I did as I was asked and spent four days inventorying for him. I had already called my coin shop buddy who wanted to buy the lot sight unseen, though I had yet to clue him into just how massive this collection was. So the Saturday afternoon came that we had agreed to drive to his shop. My truck was full and my buddy's truck was a third full. My truck looked like one of those "nose up in the air" trucks that you see these days.... We pulled up to my friends coin shop front door and he walked out. His jaw dropped. He immediately walked in, turned on the "Closed" sign and asked me to come around to his back door with those two truckloads of coins. Not all that crazy of a story I suppose, but I always thought it was funny that I was the reason a coin shop closed on a Saturday afternoon.
I was buying Sols of Peru in the 90's. I came across one at a show that was struck from a split die, end to end and about 3/8 inch wide. The dealer didn't have a price on it and I assumed he wanted some crack head money for it. This guy was yakking away with another dealer about his wonderful Bellsouth stock and was actually annoyed that I handed the coin to him for a price. He knew something wasn't right not having a price on it. I could see it on his face. But he just couldn't wait to get back to talking about his stock: "Oh, I don't know. Gimme four bucks." That's what scrap silver was at the time. Darwin has to eat too.
