What dumb things have you done with/to your coins? (Or someone else's?)

I thought this thread would be fun, I recently thought of a story my granddad told me about two of my uncles.

Uncle Tim and Uncle Bud, growing up were the most mischievous children of all the land, and got in the most trouble out of the four children my grandparents had together. My uncles were children of the late 50's and early 60's, my mom being older than my other three uncles (Hope she never reads this)
My granddad, started a plumbing business to support his family when he was in his younger years, and now his plumbing business is big in San Antonio, but only big to those who are old enough to remember it. He would get paid in almost everything, and to this day he still gets paid in silver coinage (from time to time)
Back in the day, my granddad could tell if something was silver a lot better than he could today. He would save all the silver in a jar, a big jar. He had Walkers, Mercs, and older coinage, and I would imagine he probably had some key dates in that jar as well. One day, when my uncles were broke and had nothing to do, they decided to steal the jar of silver coinage (not knowing it was silver, or any of it was rare) they counted it up, and spent it all on candy.

Well that is my story, so what dumb things have you done with/to your coins or someone else's?

 

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This didn't happen to me. Where I worked, years before, a shipment of buckets of hand soap came in. In each bucket they had put a silver dollar in each bucket as a promotional gimmick. The janitor went to the head of the company, and the boss said he could have the silver dollars. The janitor spent a whole day digging through buckets and buckets of hand soap looking for all those coins.

That was pre-1964, so a dollar was only a dollar, but from what I hear, he had at least 100 of them.

Smart for the janitor, dumb for the boss.

 

My fathers childhood coin collection was abducted by his younger brother and was spent at the local arcade back in the 70's.

 

I cleaned coins.. I will leave it at that. I didn't know any better at the time.

 

I used to throw wheats into the road because I thought they were worthless. Also ripped off a cutting error on a note because it was different.

 

Lost the much more valuable half of my collection.

Amongst it were numerous decent condition and better large cents, several silver quarters including a few nice+ Barbers, a few key date wheats, and a whole ton of IHC's. It's somewhere around my house, or buried... not sure. Don't think I buried it, it has to be somewhere in the house...

 

I ran away from home when I was 14 (1969) and wound up in Toronto. I took my small coin collection to live off of. To make them more salable, I cleaned the large cents with Brasso and the silver coins with Silvo. What I thought was a $500 collection was purchased by a dealer for about $30. I needed the money and thirty bucks was enough to pay for a week at a hostel.

 

On a Saturday in 1999, my Mom and I were preparing to leave for two weeks in Las Vegas the next day. All of my collections had been put into safe deposit boxes at the bank. When the mail arrived Saturday afternoon, I received the 1999 Silver Proof Sets from the Mint. It was too late to take them to the bank, so I hid them in the house. Bear in mind that this house is 9,000 square feet, and there are all kinds of places where you can hide things.

Anyway, after returning from the two weeks in Las Vegas, I had forgotten where I hid the proof sets. I searched the house for 10 years and never did find them. I hope the new owners are happy!

Chris

 

I cracked several thousands of dollars worth of slabbed coins for my type set album before I even really knew what I was doing.

http://www.cointalk.com/t70588/#post692967

Luckily, most eventually found their way back into holders

 

back in 73 I bought 4 st gaudens to carry around in my pocket and impress people with.

Lesson learned? Carrying around soft gold coins with hard clad coinage tends to leave lots of little marks on the gold coins.

 

Just finished a modern lincoln set with Grandpa from circulation and roll searching. I was so excited and really wanted this folder to shine! So, I convinced Mom to buy some coin/jewlery cleaner. As any good 9 or 10 year old I promised her I would be very careful...not drinking it, spilling it, using it responsibly, etc. And in all honesty, I was. We bought the cleaner. I took great care of emptying all the pennies from the album and then I dipped the first one. Took it out of the cleaner (bare fingers of course) and dried it off and boy was it gleaming!! Then I remember my hand feeling really funny....evidently the cleaner was either toxic or I was allergic, but either case that hand of mine blew up and looked more like a water balloon in seconds after my first dipped coin. Today I see this as a lesson from the coin god as he states in fury at me, "Thou shalt not clean my coin brethern!" After very quick hospital visit I vowed to never use cleaner on a coin ever again, no matter how crappy a coin looked.

 

In the 50's

In the 50's~

We used to dip coins in mercury.

Explains a lot, don't ya think?:rolling:

 

lol...more please...you guys are cracking me up...

 

When I was a kid I washed my hands and took a BU silver Washington Quarter and ran up to my brother. I grabbed his hand with my wet dripping hands, put the quarter in his hand, and screamed "look what I found in the toilet."

My brother proceeded to chuck my BU Washie into the woods and called me what you are supposed to find in the toilet.

 

In 1968 my little brother took a handful of silver quarters and Franklin halves from my Mom's dresser and bought fireworks. That really blew up when Mom found out.

 

When I was around 6-7 years old, my older brother had a lincoln cent collection with some nice coins in it. My friends had a club and the club "currency" were pennies we flattened by putting on the railroad tracks and waiting for a train to come by. I didn't have any pennies...so guess where my brother's coin collection ended up! He still brings that up from time to time.

 

Letting the ex get away with the large size band-aid box of coins that my aunt gave me. Not worth a lot, but I sure wish I had them now.

 

I'm gonna bite...what happened to the coins?

 

taking the coins my dad saved from his dad and selling them when silver cost almost nothing for money to blow elsewhere when i was a teenager.

 

My story is not about what I did, but what I inadvertently caused to happen.

One day I stopped at a carpet store - real Persian rug merchants - that had a sign outside with something about "estate sales". In response to my inquiry they said they had quite a few old silver coins at home, and would bring them in for my inspection the next day.

Sure enough, next day I showed up with my Krause volumes, a gram scale, a set of calipers, and a loupe. With a great deal of pride the rug merchant presented me with a box holding several dozen coins, some from the early 20th century, but mostly from the 19th Century.

He proudly explained that he had spent a couple of hours the previous night - polishing them up to look good for my inspection.