DH approached someone at the Coin Star machine after several silver coins were bouncing back. Unfortunately, the owner realized that they might be worth something and opted not to sell and to research them instead. If someone shows up in the forums today with a 40% half dollar, silver quarter, 2 silver dimes and some misc items looking for help, please be sure to give them the stink eye. Just teasing. I hope a new collector has just come on board and wish him well in his research. 90% of the fun for me comes from the research stage vs the actual collection part. So, my question for the rest of you... Do you have any stories about the one(s) that got away?
A teller at a local bank showed me a capped-bust half dollar that a convenience store operator cashed in (at face value). She wasn't interested in letting it go. A teller at another bank was talking about a dozen or so silver dollars cashed in by a little old lady who "didn't trust coin shops". The teller bought them and gave them to her grandchildren -- after shining them up with toothpaste. (It's possible she was just trolling me.)
Funny story, but unfortunately very possible at the same time. You should've seen me cringe today when the guy started banging all the silver coins together. Every "ding" had me subtracting the resell value in my head.
Not trusting coin shops to pay more than face value for silver dollars? What did she think they were going to do, steal a few and then lie about the number she had? I could walk into the slimiest pawn shop in town, or even a fly-by-night "we buy gold" traveling grifter show, and do better than that.
For years and years I had a $20 Saint Gaudens on my wish list. Was at a Vegas coin show and at the time gold was around $600 spot. I had enough cash to buy six common dates and opted to only buy one. Soon the price of gold was about four times that amount and I was kicking myself. Still have the one I bought though and probably always will!
My first real collecting "accomplishment" was putting together a first class Franklin half collection back in the early 1980's. It had three superb coins that at the time I called frosted proofs. These days I believe they are referred to as cameo proofs. They were pretty spectacular.... That book was stolen from me many years ago and I am sure those halves reside in slabs today with a cameo label and are valued at far more than the twenty bucks each I paid for them back then.
I'm really sorry that your book was stolen Randy. If it's any consolation, most likely the thief didn't even know what they had. A long time ago, when I was @ 15, I was working as a cashier in VA Beach and had an individual that came by several times that week for fast food. He was paying with very unusual looking old coins, including a gold $1 coin. I didn't know anything about coins at that time, so he looked surprised that he only got a few pennies back in change for his large sweet tea. I'm not sure how many he used that week for other purchases, but I know that I saw at least a 1/2 dozen and one of my regular customers must've received one (or more) in their change because they were really excited and gifted me with a pack of gum and a special "rare" penny later that same week which likely got used shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about coins back then or even that they were likely stolen. The only consolation is that the thief seemed to know just as little about them as I did and I doubt they stayed in circulation for very long. Hopefully they were at least insured.
