Just Found a Box of Over 40 Old Red Books At The Dump!!

My dump has, what looks like a garden shed, where you can put stuff that is still good and other people might like. Today I went and found Red Books dating back as early as 1956, and all the way to 2004. Almost all look new, like they were never opened, though some have mild mildew or discoloring of the gold letters on the cover. I think it was from a dealer considering that there is a sealed 3 pack of 1994 Red Books and a sealed 1976 Red Book. Here is the list of books and their conditions. Sorry for not putting them in order by date.



I could have counted wrong from my list, but here is how many from each decade I found:
3 From the 1950's (Including one blue book from 1957)
7 From the 1960's (Including one 1965 blue book)
15 From the 1970's
1 From the 1980's
14 From the 1990's (Including one 1995 blue book)
2 From the 2000's

1976 Sealed
1993 Mint
1974 VF
1974 VF
1971 VF
1972 VF
1981 VF
1974 G
1970 G
1979 VF
1973 VF
1973 VF
1994 Sealed
1994 Sealed
1994 Sealed
2002 Mint
1995 Mint
1992 Mint
1972 VF
1975 VF
1956 VF
1966 VF
1970 Mint
1967 VF
1971 VF
1957 VF
1957 Blue Book VF
1961 VF
1963 VF
1964 VF
1965 Blue Book VF
1962 G
1995 Blue Book G
1998 Mint
1996 Mint
1992 VF
1998 VF
1993 Mint
2004 Mint
1992 Mint
1993 Mint

 

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Cool find! Its also probably intersting to see how coin prices have changed throughout the years.

 

Yup, very cool to look through! The 1957 blue book says $1 for every Morgan dollar, including Carson City mints. $1.50 for a 1840 Seated Dollar. $2000 for an 1804 silver dollar. 75 cents for a nice 1803 cent.

The 1981 red book, after the silver spike, is very cool. I think it said $28 for a worn 1881s Morgan, and around $50 in a nice uncirculated grade! Same as now pretty much!

 

Wow that makes me wish i was alive in the fifties to buy morgans!

 

@Treashunt

 

Me too! Someone who got them in around 1956, then sold them only around 25 years later in 1981 would definitely be very happy! I forget if there was such a big premium on the CC Morgans in 1981 though.

 

Thank you for rescuing them! Take a look at the values for the 1898-O, 1903-O, and 1904-O Morgans pre-1962.

I used to come across old Red Books frequently in used bookstores, but it's been a while. I'd really like to have at least partial coverage of the 1940s and 1950s for pricing-trend information.

 

Ex-wife. Was working on a project once and saw a lady pull up to the construction dumpster on the street and hurl a bunch of boxes over the side, I walked out there to find over 1500 baseball cards. I loaded them up and kept them in the truck hoping that I could find a collector. Walked into a coin shop that also sold baseball cards, traded them for a bunch of silver proof sets and 3 commemorative halves.

 

I've felt the same way, but then I think about 1950s wages and prices. Dropping $20 on a circulated Morgan today is only about the equivalent of $2 in the 1950s.

You should probably be thinking instead about what's in circulation now that will be worth big multiples of face value 50 years down the road. (Good luck with that. )

 

Thanks! My 1956 Redbook says, $15 for an unc 1898o Morgan, and Wow! $300 for an unc 1903o!! $75 for an unc 1904o!! I can't believe they were actually that expensive then!

That would be equal to around $3000 2018 dollars for the 1903o Morgan.

 

Meh. Books are a treasure, but also become a nuisance at some point; heavy, voluminous, and a little fussy about environment

First place I worked out of grad school was run by a couple of academics, and they had a reference library to die for in our common area. They managed to go bust in the middle of the dotcom boom, which was quite an achievement. They got locked out of the building about a month after my group was laid off. Apparently all those books went into a dumpster.

 

And then you leaf through them and an old silver certificate pops out.

 

I was hoping that when I grabbed them lol!

Found a horse race bet ticket from the 1930's in a book a couple weeks ago lol.

 

And there's a very good reason for this that very well may not be what you would expect. Do consider looking more into this; it's an interesting story and a good example of how the market can change over time.

 

one man gathers what another man spills! - Grateful Dead

 

Yup. The bags of MS examples didn't turn up until the early 60s.

Nobody's yet found a bag of MS 1895-O Morgans. Or if they have, they aren't saying. The 1893-O, with two-thirds the mintage, goes for $8K in MS63 (PCGS pop 330); the 1895-O goes for $57K (PCGS pop 19). What do you suppose would happen to that ratio if one mint bag of 1895-O's were to show up on the market -- or even a solid rumor of such a bag?

Here's the product I really want the Red Book folks to release: a "4D" version of the deluxe Red Book, where you can pick an item, then see its entire history from the 1947 edition through the present day. Prices and notes that got added or taken away. This business of digging through 60-odd print editions to find full info for one item is so twentieth-century.

Edit: and I've gone and spoiled @BooksB4Coins' worthwhile challenge. Sorry about that...

 

Research the race track and date - if it's a 'souvenir' winning ticket on a famous racehorse in a big race, it's worth $$ to racing memorabilia collectors

 

A great find. I use my set of Red Books every now and then. Once I traced the addition of and listing changes for two cent SM and LM data and the two varieties of 1873.

 

Back then, aand into the 60's, you could still get silver Morgan and Peace dollars at the bank, for a dollar each. That's why the Redbook lists them for a dollar