Earlier this week I was talking to a customer here at work with whom I have a good rapport. His father passed away several years ago and he is in the process of cleaning out the house to sell it. He told me that under the basement stairs he found several boxes of old coins. His father owned a store back in the 30's and 40's and aparently saved quite a bit of coinage, all silver. He asked if I would be willing to help him sort and and value the coins, and I naturally agreed. I told him to just leave the coins as he found them, and not to clean any. When I arrived at his home last evening I found him standing over the sink with a bottle of silver polish scrubbing away!!!! He hadn't cleaned too many of them before I stopped him, but one of the coins he had gotten to was a....... 1916-D MERCURY DIME!!!!!! He showed it to me and was very proud of how he made it shine. I then told him that he took a coin worth nearly $1000.00 and chopped the value by more than half. Needless to say, he didn't polish any more of them. I am still working my way through the hoard (I'm guessing around $4000.00 face), but it's pretty clear that this guy has hit the jackpot. Most of the coins date between the late 20's and the mid 1940's. The newest that I have encountered is a 1946 Walker and the oldest a 1907 Barber Quarter. Most are simply junk silver, but I have found a few gems: A second 1916-D Merc VG8 2 1921 Mercs 1942/1 Merc 1932-D Washington 1921 Walker 3 1938-D Walkers Once I finish sorting everything, I will be submitting all of the keys for slabbing. So, at least the story has a happy ending! Tom
Some nice coins!!!....wish you could just buy them all ! There is a guy in town that I know that hoards coins....I am thinking that he has tons of keys too but he has only let me see/buy a few....and he didn't think I paid enough so I might not get the chance to buy any more. Maybe when his kids get them I can buy them before they clean them like the guy did to you......still sounds like some great coins were left uncleaned!!! Speedy
I would tell him to just hang onto the 1916-D and let it retone over the years. Put it into an album and let nature take its course. Perhaps in the future there won't be a stigma against cleaned coins, or it will retone sufficiently to recover most of the value, or will be so rare by then that nobody would care that it was cleaned "way back" in 2006. Nobody knows what the future will bring so maybe you can make him feel better by telling him that the damage he did isn't necessarily irreversable. He'll just have to wait a long time but by then it will probably be more valuable than now anyway. No sense making him feel bad over the mistake.
Hey, with the coins that were left uncleaned and such-those keys aren't making me cry they are making me jealous. best of luck with the rest of the coins.
Maybe that 1916D is a fake anyways? I hear there are more fakes than real ones of those out there. He deserves to feel as bad as possible. Afterall, he was told not to clean them and has damaged history.
