Going through a box at the LCS and picked up 3 coins I didn't yet have, albeit in circulated state. Cost me 1.50 Euros and tried not to smile as the Norwegian alone has nearly 2 Euros silver content. And as for the Italian 100 Lira, it is the first coin in my collection made of stainless steel. The other is a Belgian 1 Franc of the Dutch language variety
Nice group. The last one, 1918 Norway 50 Ore, is 60% silver and has a silver content value of about 1.91 Euro itself. So, perhaps you actually 'made' money on this buy.
It is about a 50 minute drive away but I try to find time to visit when I am there. He generally deals with Spanish coinage and doesn.t pay much attention to other countries coins.
I love finding people with "Old Boxes" and purchasing them, have found some very strange coins, some valuable others just interesting, as I am not a collector of foreign coins, I usually allow a friend to buy them from me since that is his area of collection and on ocassion he will return the favor. I enjoy the hunt. Semper Fi
I love junk boxes. A large percent of my coin purchases (by number, not value) have been 5 cents to $1.00 from junk boxes. Sometimes it is just adding a new country to my collection, with the coin's 10 cent price several multiples of the coin's value. But I collect more for interest than value. Some of my more interesting junk buys include these (a couple of which I posted long ago): The "damage" on this well-worn coin (plus the seller not reading French) helped put it in a dollar box. It is a Year 5 (1797/1798) Paris mint 5 centime. The "damage" is what remains of the original overstruck decime (10 centimes), which can faintly be seen around L'AN 5. My very old Krause (1984) lists this as "reported but not confirmed." I enjoy buying junk box coins that I have to research to ID. I really had to search to identify this from a 50 cent box. It's Tannu Tuva, 1934, the only year that country issued its own coins. It's also probably the priciest coin I ever got from a junk box. This beat-up 1 pfennig from Saxony probably isn't worth the dime I paid for it, but it is the only overdate I own, 1801/179: Nor is this worth more than the 8 cents I paid, but the Costa Rica 1947 10 centimos doubled die reverse is the best doubled die example I own: There are lots more, but I won't bore you with pictures, such as a 1797 cartwheel penny, lots of German states, a 1722 British farthing, some F to AU 1800s George IIII and Victorian copper, (I am old enough to have found a few Victorian pennies in circulation while I was on a trip to London as a teenager--what teens do you know who go to London for three days and go roll searching?) a lot of British colonials, and so on. I love junk boxes.
Nice finds. I think the Swiss 2 Francs is worth US $2.16 face, and should still be legal tender... I've never seen one of those in a junk box.
Yep. Like the reason I grab 500 yen (Japan) of Canada loonies/twonies coins every time they're in a $1/8 bin more similar.
