Our Favorite Coins On TV Shows/Movies We Grew Up With

Was watching an old episode of BONANZA today and I was thinking.....can any of you ever recall one of our coins being mentioned (or even visibly seen, if not mentioned) on an old TV show ?

I'm thinking TV shows of the 1960's which took place in the 1800's were the most likely: BONANZA, GUNSMOKE, etc. Maybe a reference to a Morgan Silver Dollar....or a Gold Dollar or Indian Head...or a Liberty Double Eagle ?

Some of you might recall that on the original "Hawaii 5-0" TV show there was an epsiode entitled "The $100,000 Nickel" about the 1913 Buffalo Head Nickel (I think one actually sold for that amount a few months earlier).

 

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I was about to say "I've got at least one 1913 Buffalo nickel that I'd be happy to let go for half that price", but then I realized that I don't actually have any Buffalo-Head nickels...

 

Interestingly, my wife was watching one of her "cop" shows (Magnum PI she said) last night and I overheard (over my coin surfing of course) a guy ask for "them to bring him a 1932 Denver Washington quarter to buy them some time"... I thought that was interesting... I jumped up and ran in there ....She rolled her eyes.... Funny coincidence anyway....

 

Mr.Wilson on the old Dennis the Menace show was
a coin collector. I believe he mentioned some in his collection.

 

The twilight zone was huge on the matter of having old coins in it. If you watch "The Fever", there is a point of the episode where a woman is brought out with a basket of BU morgan and peace dollars. It shows morgan dollars multiple times throughout the episode.

 

https://www.coinworld.com/voices/gerald-tebben/as_seen_on_tv_denn.html

 

Steven Kings A good Marriage, (on Amazon, I think). '55 doubled die.

 

"Say, Mister. Will you stake a fellow American to a meal?"



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There are more Coins in Movies and Coins on Television including the "Twilight Zone" episode above on my website.

 

LIBERTY Head Nickel.

OK, I admit I'm not an expert on Liberty or Buffalo coins.

Or "Hawaii 5-O".

At least the original show. I watch the new one.

 

Somewhere in Time

Christopher Reeves use hypnosis to time travel back to 1912, from 1980, to meet an actress he's infatuated with. Everything is going "happily ever after" until he finds a 1979 cent in his jacket pocket. He then remembers it was all hypnosis and loses the mojo.

Start at 6:40 if you want to skip the nauseating parts.

 

The newest show was the February 2020 NCIS episode featuring the 1870-S Seated Dollar. It was a central feature in the episode and not merely a one off comment. I just got through watching it on demand. I believe it's first airing was Tuesday.

 

The only one that sticks in my memory is the "lucky silver dollar" episode of Superman. Clark Kent gets surprised by a bad guy who shoots him right in the chest but it doesn't hurt him (duh). Turns out the bullet hit a silver dollar in his breast pocket...I don't recall if you could ID the type.

 

I remember that...he bent the silver dollar so Lois won't know he's Superman.

 

Got a new one from a movie I'm watching now....."Cowboys & Aliens" (2011) with Daniel Craig (007) and Harrison Ford (Star Wars, Raiders, etc.).

The aliens in the movie value gold. There's a flashback scene in the first half-hour where Craig's character has stolen loot on the table and it is 1866 Liberty Double Eagles.

The aliens stole them by sucking them up through the ceiling. A precursor of FDR's 1933 Gold Executive Order, no doubt !

 

I snapped these three photos from the TV screen from the "Wild, Wild West" series. I have the DVD set so that was how I was able to do it.

 

Of course, this showed what I collect and what I don't....I meant LIBERTY HEAD Nickel.

I'll have to catch that episode of Hawaii 5-O sometime.....funny, I watched the remake every week but never saw the original.

 

That was before my time in prime-time and I never saw it on reruns in the 1970's or 1980's.

But it's a good show. I have the Dr. Loveless episodes on my DVR and plan on watching them soon.

 

Frankly I got kind of tired of Dr. Loveless. My favorites were some of the bizarre characters who appeared less frequently. The show was basically “James Bond goes back to the 1870s.” President Grant appeared in a number of episodes.

Their biggest technical boo-boo was when they introduced the Mint at Carson City where they were printing money. That was in one of the early episodes.

 

Yes his collection was mentioned and slightly shown. The best was Dennis took a very rare nickel and put it into a gunball machine. It was hilarious.