Featured Meaningful Coins

Here's 25 francs from when I was living in Senegal when I was 3 years old.

I wanted to write my name on the coin (David), one letter on each side. I got D and A and ran out of sides after that.

This is a low grade, common coin with zero redeeming qualities. However, the personal story makes it very valuable to me.

 

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For me it is a 1921 Morgan. My dad wasn't a collector but when he passed it was one coin that we found among his things. I have collected a lot of coins over the years but that is the one that I would not sell although knowing him he would say if you can get 20 bucks for it take it! He was not sentimental at all I guess I got that from Mom.

 

While it is not a single coin, it has sentimental value to me. My grandfather saved every single "lead" penny he could get, paying us children for ones we would bring him. He died 58 years ago and left me his tobacco can full of them, all of which I still have. He got me into coin collecting and I've collected ever since.

 

Jesus mother of god!!! Those are some sweeeet coins you got there

 

This coin attracted me to the hobby. I would never sell it:

 

What is that obverse clashed with?

 

Obverse of the 1857 $20 gold piece. You can also find the FE clashed with the quarter and the half dollar.

 

Here's a meaningful one to me, just because I remember the time when I bought it. I was studying in Japan for a summer (Kanazawa) and the local department store had a few coins, but they were all vastly marked up and not very interesting. While traveling for a week at the end of the trip I went up to Hokkaido and found a coin shop run by an older guy next to the train station in Asahikawa. It's fun to see what coin shops are like in different countries, though they are easier to find now with smart phones and the internet. Cost about $8 at 1994 exchange rates. 20 sen, Mejii year 41 (1908)

 

I have a couple of Morgans that my great-grandfather always kept when we has a kid, immigrant from Lithuania.

 

No photo, but I have a 1912 quarter eagle that was in my great grandfather's change purse when he died. It went to my mom, and she passed it to me when I was working on my Coin Collecting Merit Badge, back in the early '60s.

 

Coins that are gifted to me

 

Yeah, I can say the same. My girlfriend gave me a bicentennial Kennedy half dollar and it has made a solid place in my collection, even though she stole it from her mother haha

 

I've got one piece that is the star of my collection. I had just gotten married and my wife was out shopping. I saw a beautiful half-shekel in an online auction on eBay. No one had bid on it yet and I figured people would jump on such a beautiful piece. I started bidding and a few others joined in. I bid around $400 with a little more time to go. I was sure someone would outbid me. No one did. Now I had to explain to my new wife why I spent $400 on a coin! Luckily she understood. I still have the coin and it's one of my favorites. My wife and I still laugh about it.

 

There is one coin in my collection that I will never part with. Coincidentally it was my first ever coin I put aside to save and is what started my collection.

Why a common ordinary Turkish Lira you ask? Well sit back and let me tell ya.

It was Aug 22 1982 my eighth birthday. My sister and I, after having been tossed around by the California foster system for the last 4 years, had just finalized our adoption. Meaning we got finally new parents. Yes we were one of the lucky ones to be adopted together and at such a late age. Anyways back to the coin. The local community our new parents were from decided to throw us a "welcome" party that doubled as my bday party. After opening gifts and having the usual cake and ice cream one of the guests pulled me aside and gave me this coin saying he got it in his travels. I call him a guest because I had no idea who he was at the time. Later I learned his name was Brad and that he passed away shortly after giving me this in a horrific car crash.

This coin reminds me of him, but mostly it reminds me of how lucky my biological sister and I were to be adopted by such wonderful parents and in a loving safe community. Even though it was a culture shock to move from LA to extreme rural northern CA in just a couple days. I remember my sister asking if there was alligators in the creeks that ran through our property.

Well that's my story and now you all know it. This is the first time I have ever publicly shared it so please be gentle.

 

Everything about my collection holds stories from my family from the 1809 large cent (found under a base moulding in the house my grandparents bought in Brooklyn in 1950) to the late 19th & early 20 century large Canadian cents, many found by my Grandfather ( he worked washing rugs for all the major hotels in Manhattan). When I was about 9 or 10 years old my Uncle Ed gave me his Whitman books with some coins in each(Lincoln cents; Buffalo nickels; Jefferson nickels; mercury dimes). I added to it for a time (it was so hard to push the coins into their places!) then lost interest after I earned my coin collecting merit badge (I needed a 1957 half dollar which my Dad got for me - I never knew how) and put those coins and Coin albums away for 45 years!! After having boxes of coins passed down to me from my family and from my in-laws it rekindled my interest as I had a decent assortment of halves from Walking Liberty to Franklins and Kennedys as well as a handful of Morgan’s and a peace dollar along with envelopes of wheat cents and some buffalo nickels. I know, remembering stories my grandparents would tell, that it wasn’t easy to set those coins aside as they never made a lot of money. I bought some Whitman albums and filled in what I could from my inheritance and then added where I could from coin roll hunting, adding to the albums my Uncle had started so many years before. I’m 5 Jefferson nickels away from having a complete set. I now have an almost complete Kennedy collection and filled all the spaces in the Franklin though some dates don’t match with the spaces - same for the Buffalo nickels- many dates don’t match (but who cares! I know where they came from!). Monetarily it’s not worth much, I don’t own even one graded coin, but there’s nothing that I have that I could sell and I will make sure that my son knows the history of what he will be getting.