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

During the San Diego fire season a few years ago, we had to evacuate. I had just bought an 1854 $3 gold piece. To make a long story short, it got lost during the evacuation.

 

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Back in the mid 1990s, around 1995 or 1996, I would have been 11 or 12 years old at the max. I had built up a collection of $1 bills and I was building one of each different district, although I didn't know what a district was at the time, I just knew they were all different letters.

I ended up spending them I am sure, as they are nowhere to be found.

Sure wish I had them now! I will always wonder if there were any web notes or star notes in there. I seem to recall getting frustrated in the fact that I could not find examples of all the districts. And I can't guarentee that I didn't get annoyed because I couldn't find any of the districts from M to Z! I was really clueless. (I don't have any examples of notes that they would likely have been in my collection currently...most likely series 1988 and 1993)

Luckily I didn't spend the coins and when I really started collecting in May of 2008, I pulled out the binder that I hadn't opened for more than a decade and there they all were, a little dusty but otherwise fine. (I had put them in 2x2s I got from somewhere)

Also, I took white out to a few of them. I painted a white out X on a 1965 quarter, and I made white out circles on a 1980s dime. I really enjoyed playing with white out at the time, something I still am not sure why I did that. LOL. I also have Hot Wheels cars that I painted with white out and other stuff too. Luckily none of the things I did with white out were particularly special...even back then I wouldn't mess with something if I didn't have multiple copies of it.

I still have both white out coins and the Hot Wheels car, as well as other stuff, too.

My greatest regret in the hobby is not really truly starting to collect until 2008 when I was 23 years old. If I had started in the past, who knows what I would have been able to have had in my collection right now? Even if it would have been stuff I wouldn't buy now, I still wish I had the experience to buy it. If nothing else, I missed out on 20+ years of collecting!

 

letting my girlfriend spend around $1000 dollars of silver franklin halves, on cigarettes....but she just took them to the store and got face value for them! lucky person, who got a hold of them for face! and i didn't really let her, her mom gave her a bunch of old coins to give to me and she thought because they were not "that old" they were not worth anything. she wasn't to happy with herself, when i told her how much we could have had!

my worst was selling one of my 1899 gold $10 eagles, for $475. the coin was in at the very least au condition! it makes it worse because i had the 1899 $5 and $20, and selling the $10 split the triplets up. my girls mom ended up finding another one in an old jewelry box that was in better shape and was an S mm, that the other two were. so it made the hurt go down a little, other then getting rolled on the deal.

 

As 1 of 7 kids in our family growing up , pocket money was scarce. So when it was time for the tooth fairy to deliver , I had a bad habit of storing the coins in my mouth so my brothers wouldn't swipe them while I slept.
I guess I swallowed the coins before I woke up. At least that was done out of ignorance instead of shear stupidity like what I did 2 weeks ago.

I didn't like the odd two-tone toning on this otherwise really nice wheat cent .. so I .. I .. cleaned it
It used to be an XF 1931-S.

 

In the late 1980's I used to cash my paycheck and buy a pack of $1 notes at the bank every Friday after I got paid. I would then search for stars, errors, radars, etc. over the weekend when I wasn't taking care of our new baby. Kind of like buying lottery tickets but if you lost the ticket was still worth a dollar.

Usually I found nothing special but as much as I hate the smell of new paper money I love the look and feel of it.

One day I received an entire pack of 1988A New York FRB web press notes. They were so ugly (they looked like bad photocopies) that I used them to buy my lunch like I did with all the other "reject" dollar bills.

Had I put that pack into a safety deposit box I would have turned $100 into at least $4000.

Live and learn. :crying:

 

My dad used to clean coins with mercury in the '50's, too. He was a "Crazy Coiner"!

I casually, very casually, collected lincoln cents when I was very young. I recently, as in this year, became more seriously interested in being a collector/investor. I found my old whitman folder and looked in side. I took all of the coins out of their 2 x 2's, put them in the folder and then covered them with saran wrap and tape. I'm guessing, given how soft it is, that saran wrap, particularily in the '70's had PVC in it. However, most of the coins have beautiful rainbow toning on them. Go figure.

 

when I was young I was too cheap to buy holders so I cleaned up my wheat pennies real well with brasso and "slabbed" them between two pieces of heavy clear packing tape.

 

hummm the most recent thing i have done that was kinda stupid cause i didnt realized till i actually looked at the coin towards the eng of the blogg was clean a bunch of coins ith tarnex pls take a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmYpA_7LArc

 

I forget

Back then we were so busy learning to "Duck & Cover" by diving under our desks in drills to survive the immanent nuclear attack that they were most likely spent on candy on a good day.

Or tossed into the radio active, polio infested creek down the hill.

Poisoning oneself was the least of my worries and at least I got to play with some coins while doing it.

 

Buying a 1854 1/2 California gold token at an auction for $90 and finding out later that it was a fake. I should have known better. I don't buy gold and got caught up in the bidding. Lesson learned: Don't bid on things that you don't know about.

 

Bust Them Slabs

I until very recently was also a slab cutter. I would carefully take bolt cutters and cut them bad boys open. I was lucky and didnt harm the coins, but I am still tempted to perform this manuver just so they will be consistant with the 2x2 snap close plastic holders I like to use. The coins at the seen of the crime were all morgans.

 

impulsively bought a 1981s SBA proof for $22 and then dropped it and got a small scratch on the neck and the eagles chest.

 

Did it look like this?

By the way, I didn't buy this. When I informed the gentleman that it was a fake, he gave it to me.

Chris

 

Two thing. First my mom decided I needed some new clothes and used my dad's Walker Half collection.

Next, I hid a 1917 Standing Liberty Type II in XF+ so thieves wouldn't steal it. That was more than 40 years ago and I still haven't found it.

 

My Uncle who owned a pawn shop was always rumored to have an extensive amount of gold. When both he and my Aunt died, we found about 100 of those with the redbook equivalent for authentic coins priced on them in a safety deposit box. A lot of my cousins were very disappointed when I told them they were souvenir pieces and not legitimate.

 

i got one of those on ebay. i know its not real, but i still wanted it. on the flip i wrote "not authentic", in case i kick the bucket. this way my girl won't try and sell it as a real one. it was only $2.50 shipped, and the seller was honest.

 

when I was young I spent a silver certificate and a proof set my mother had saved, i knew nothing of collecting coins then but look at me know. Its all i do. Oh and for mothers day I did buy a silver certificate for her.

 

i forgot about one other thing i did..

i spent a 193? i think 6... 20 dollar silver certificate on a video game. i know nothing else about it, but wish i still had.

 

Wow, didn't know this thread would get so many responses. Some of these are quite funny actually.

What kind of a promotion is that exactly? And what type of silver dollars were they? Anything older than Morgans?
I agree, very smart janitor.

Big ouchie. Bet your jaw must have dropped and your heart skipped a beat didn't it?

I always wondered what it would be to buy an old house and find something in it. Of course it wouldn't be a 1999 proof set But to find something in the basement of an old home under a floorboard.
Only in the movies...or HGTV...or Antiques Roadshow.

That is crazy! I know some people like their coins to be raw...but wow.
At least you learned your lesson Mike.

 

Here's another one.

Back in the mid 1990s, I would guess 1996, I had grown tired of the few coins I had. I am sure it was nothing special, but what appeared special to me then was most like 1970s coins and 1980s that were older than I was (1984!). I had been looking for the 1995 cent with the doubled die. (The thread in the US coins section reminded me about this).

Well anyway I decided to make my own fountain. I took a jar of some sort, I don't remember where it came from, but it was pretty big. Or at least I remember it being pretty big. It's all relative to a then 11 year old and a 15 year old memory. I filled the jar with water. Then, I dropped in the coins...and watched them float down to the bottom. I did that a few times but eventually it lost my interest...so I left the coins there in the water, with the lid on the jar. For a long time. I distinctly recall the water turned green. I also distinctly remember telling my mom several times that I would take them out.

I never did.

Eventually the jar and the coins dissapeared. By then I no longer wanted them. I remember you could not see in the jar anymore. I think this took place in about 2 weeks time.

My guess is that my dad dumped out the jar and when the coins dried (or maybe even before they dried, I have no idea) they went into the family spending jar. We still use the exact same jar to this day.

Luckily I didn't put my world stuff or the really nice examples of US stuff in there, that was in a binder of 2x2s...which I never closed...and was waiting for me in 2008 when I really became a collector. BUT...there were probably some Canadians in there. I know I got a lot of them when I was younger, but when I started collecting in 2008 there were only about 1/3rd of what I figured there would have been. Or maybe they are in some box somewhere waiting to be rediscovered. Or maybe I thought I had gotten more than I really did.