Featured Building a Twentieth Century Circulation Collection

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by Inspector43, Sep 6, 2021.

  1. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    This is rather long but it describes how I was able to build my collection of 20th Century and earlier. It is not as impossible as many think. Of course, it is out of the range of possibility now. Several of these comments have been posted before. This is kind of a consolidation - the rest of the story.

    Building a collection of circulated coins in “the good old days” was not all that difficult. All you needed was determination and dedication. If you think about it the total face value of 20th circulation coins is about $275. There were a max 5 different coins produced by each mint: Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter and Half. That is 91 cents. Given that most years there were three mints operating, that makes it $2.73 per year for a complete set for one year. Of course, some years there were 4 mints operating and some years only one or two. So, let’s just say that the face value of a complete Twentieth Century Circulation Set is $300. You now have determination and dedication but need resources (funding and adequate sources of coins).

    There was a more than adequate source of coins at the time. Virtually any coin ever put in circulation was available. I even got a Twenty Cent piece in change one time. Looking at enough coins you would see Indian Head Cents, Liberty Nickels, Buffalo Nickels, Barber Dimes Quarters and Halves, Standing Liberty Quarters, Walking Liberty Halves, and the occasionally earlier stuff.

    When I was very young my family and relatives helped with resources. Dad would get home from work very late sometimes. He was an Engineer on the RR. Every morning there would be some coins on the table from his pocket change. Relatives would hold anything that looked interesting and ask if I needed it. The other resource was your feet and a bicycle. The town was about 30,000 and most all kids walked or road a bike. Predators didn’t exist then as they do now.

    Another resource was the informal coin club. There were a few other youngsters that were as interested as me. And, they had other sources in their own neighborhoods. We would get together from time to time and have a “swap meet”. We never were interested in making money, but we were quite aware of scarcity. We might have to trade several coins for one that is more difficult.

    There were three Mom & Pop grocery stores very close to our home. I helped them around the store a lot, stocking shelves and coolers, cleaning, etc. I got paid a little and complete access to the cash register. As I got older, I would be a clerk in one of the stores. I am very serious when I say that the owners of these stores allowed me to walk in, open the register and search it anytime I wanted. The brother of the owner of one store saved Indian Head Pennies. He had coffee cans full of them hidden all around the basement. He and his wife were very old at the time. Sometimes as I walked by his house, I would see he and his wife working and would stop and help. I never asked for pay, that is just the way things were back then. However, occasionally he would open a can full of IHC’s and offer me a few. Yes, he would let me dump it out and look through them. When I was 13, I began working as a pin setter at the local bowling alley. That usually paid about $6 a night during league times. A good source of income to feed my hobby.

    The searching became routine for me. After school I would walk home and pass the shop that serviced juke boxes and pinball machines. Sometimes I would help with chores and roll coins for him. People using juke boxes and pinball machines were not critical about the coins they dropped in. Very good hunting ground. I would stop at the “Mom & Pops” to visit and search. If they needed help with anything I would always offer. A couple of nights a week the local amusement park was open. If I was available, I would ride my bike out there and help with minor chores. The rides were like 10 cents, 25 cents, etc. They always needed help rolling change. Then there was the bank on Saturday morning. I would sit in the vault and roll coins for the tellers.

    Plus, on most days, if you had a dollar, you could trade it for a Morgan or Peace.

    So, you see, getting all the coins up to the middle of the Twentieth Century (1964 when it all dried up) was more a matter of tenacity than money – not much more than a couple hundred dollars.
     
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  3. charley

    charley Well-Known Member

    Et tu, Brute?
     
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  4. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    Is this the way you did it also?
     
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  5. Mountain Man

    Mountain Man Supporter! Supporter

    Ah, if I had it to do over again, I too would have spend my time, energy and money on such a venture, but alas, I only managed to keep some of my collection from my early years. My source was from my two newspaper routes. I rode my bike all over the place and collected coins from my customers, but only kept some of the more interesting ones. Oh for a time machine. LOL
     
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  6. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    But, we did it our way.
     
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  7. charley

    charley Well-Known Member

    Absolutely!! My two older half brothers were little thieves, and I would hide my coins behind the heat registers and screw them back on. I was about 8-9. One day my father asked what the hell I was dong, and from there, he got all his military acquaintances involved. That went on for years.. When I was 13, I lied and got a job as a carpenter's laborer, and the universe quickly expanded, and then I started working part time as a register clerk at a Highs, and then a register clerk at a Peoples Drug Store at the cigar cigarette counter (that was a gold mine!!). By the time I enlisted I was almost complete. I have 90% of the pieces.

    "...and that's all I have to say about that...".
    Edit changed to, to two.
     
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  8. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    Amen, it could be done. My sets are missing the absolute toughest coins. Some of my friends found them. Not me.
     
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  9. ewomack

    ewomack 魚の下着

    Wow! That's a completely different world from when I was growing up in an only somewhat larger city. "Wheat pennies," as everyone called them, were a regular but infrequent surprise and silver was almost unheard of. I had to go to the bank and specifically ask for half dollars to even see one (I remember the teller looking down at me with a strange look). All of the older coin types I had were purchased from a small coin shop located in the back of a vacuum cleaner store in the next city. I never saw a buffalo nickel, a mercury dime or an IHC in change. Not once. And I used money a lot back then to buy candy, magazines, trading cards, etc.

    The SBA dollar, though it didn't last long, provided the only real novelty in pocket change throughout my entire upbringing. I was mesmerized by it and carried a "pocket piece" with me everywhere. Otherwise, I pretty much saw the same coins over and over again for years upon years, excepting the 1976 quarters, which remained pretty easy to find. Even back then, which wasn't yesterday, there was absolutely no way I could have put together a 20th century set as described.

    A post 1965 set would have worked, but it would have provided very little excitement, especially compared to the set described above. Still, I saved cents and nickels in Whitman albums, but I could go back only so far and it didn't provide enough of a distraction for when (really) early video and electronic hand-held games came along. Not to mention music, available in the form of 45s.

    Saddest of all, I never found anyone else who had any interest in coins apart from spending them. I remember a friend being very confused when I tried to save a 1976 type set. He didn't get why I would do that. When I showed him my completed set, in one of those clear plastic year type holders, he scoffed and said "good for you." That memory stuck with me and probably helped turn me into a closet coin collector. I had absolutely no problem finding people who wanted to trade baseball, hockey or football cards. Coins from pocket change were probably too boring for most kids by then. They became merely a means to obtain cardboard.

    Unable to compete, coins drifted into the background for a few decades. I still looked through all of my pocket change for silver, though. I can remember only one or two lucky finds throughout all of those years. I can't imagine having access to such a treasure trove as described above. I can't even conceive of what that must have been like.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2021
  10. JeffC

    JeffC Go explore something and think a happy thought!

    Wow. I'm curious about this. You would physically be positioned behind where all the pins were? Can you be seen when you're resetting the pins?
     
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  11. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    Many young men were taken to the hospital. The bowlers could see you when you were standing in the pit. You would sit on a bench and raise your legs to prevent the pins or ball from hitting you. Technically, you had plenty of time to put the ball in the return, load the pins and get on the bench before the next ball. Bowlers were taught to use one ball. Some of them with a few beers in them would throw one ball right after another. Then people got hurt.
     
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  12. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    I wish you could have been around then. It was really neat to have a network of kids with similar interests. I do remember those that thought were crazy to do that. The network was necessary for other reasons. We didn't have access to coin news. Early on most of us didn't even have TV. There was very little news about coins. The paper would mention something from time to time. We got our news through the grapevine.
    Thanks for the feedback.
     
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  13. JeffC

    JeffC Go explore something and think a happy thought!

    So you'd have to remember which pins were still standing, in case you knock one over by mistake while clearing those that were knocked down, assuming it wasn't a strike.
     
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  14. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    We had a rack with a position for each pin in the pattern. If several pins were left the ones you picked up would only be put in slots other than those standing. To reset all you did was pull the rack down. If there was a pin standing and an empty position for it, the rack would go over that pin and set the others. The kids at school sometimes call me Popeye because my forearms were so large and strong. That job was squats and wrists. You might be able to find a video on line.
     
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  15. ksparrow

    ksparrow Coin Hoarder Supporter

    Great story, thanks for posting
     
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  16. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    I'll tell you how hard of work it was. On a typical league night most pin boys would set 2 lanes. There was an early league where 10 bowlers would bowl 3 games each. That's 30 games. Then there was a late league where 10 bowlers would bowl 3 games each. That's a total of 60 games.

    Given that some bowlers would not knock down 100 pins while others would knock down more, I would say that each bowler would average 100 pins per game. That would be 6000 pins to pick up. They weigh 3 pounds each. 18,000 pounds.

    Now the balls weigh 16 pounds each and each bowler throws 2 per frame. 2 times 16 equals 32 pounds. 10 plus frames per game. That's 320 pounds per game per bowler. 320 times 60 equals 19,200 pounds. Additionally, the pin boys could not use the finger holes of the ball. We had to pick it up without using the holes. Strong hand, quick wrist.

    18,000 plus 19,200 equals 37,200 pounds. 37,200 divided by 2000 equals a little over 18.6 tons. Let's just call it 18 Tons. That's more than Tennessee Ernie Ford pick up in his 16 Tons song. That song was popular back then and we razed the coal miners about it.

    There were times when we had to set three lanes because someone got hurt. 9 tons per lane just became 27 tons for the night. A lot of work for a 13 year old.
     
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  17. JeffC

    JeffC Go explore something and think a happy thought!

    Thanks very much for sharing. It's amazing how much things have changed. I'm reminded of something I heard once: These days, we complain so much because we have so much.
     
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  18. Conder101

    Conder101 Numismatist

    Manual pin setting, this is probably still a little more advanced than what Inspector43 used.

     
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  19. green18

    green18 Unknown member Sweet on Commemorative Coins Supporter

    How the devil did I miss this thread? :)

    Gotta stop stayin' up late at nite. devil.gif
     
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  20. imrich

    imrich Supporter! Supporter

    I'm curious if you ever even paid any attention to pain, which was just a normal part of life for a 13 year old who did what we did?

    I had 3 paper routes, set pins, shoveled and pitched manure for mushroom caves, and ran everywhere, where your body was just a fine tuned muscle.

    I was always an insomniac, that after efforts could just "drop" and sleep soundly for an hour before the next opportunity/challenge.

    Although small in stature, I could outrun, outbox, and disable my average opponent by always "countering", letting them be on offense.

    You sound like my desired opponent, especially if tall.

    When young, if time allowed, I was on-call for Judo matches, and Police boxing exhibitions.

    We never had conveniences as a phone, TV, vehicle.

    I always wear loose clothing, naturally exercise, eat healthy fare and vitamins most would abhore, where my daughter had never seen me without upper covering.

    When leaving the lavatory at her house recently without my upper covering on yet, she is a beautiful slim petite 48 YO blond who looked at me and said "Dad, you don't even have a "roll". I had never thought about her vision of me.

    I hope you're enjoying your "senior years", as I.
     

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    Last edited: Jul 20, 2022
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  21. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    I still don't pay attention to pain. Unless it is extreme, pain is nothing but a message that said something went wrong. If you got hit in the leg with a bowling pin you just kept working. There were boys sitting in the lobby waiting to take your job.

    I'm enjoying retirement. I got within one stroke of my age the other day in golf. I'll get there real soon.
     
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