|
I have a neat story about a coin. When I was a young kid, I thought I remembered an anecdote about someone in my dad's family having a collection of Confederate money. This was a childhood legend to me, from the era when even small stories could have an aura of magic about them (i.e. before I became a goony cynic). I asked my mom about this years later, and she corrected me: "no, you have a Confederate coin. It was given to you when you were born, by Ms. Baugh". My dad is from Virginia, and Ms. Baugh was my aunt's mother-in-law. She was every bit the prototypical Southern matron, rather proper but at the same time very warm and almost another grandma to me. So upon hearing this I smiled and felt lots of warm fuzzies, as she had passed by then. Another few years later, my parents broke up, and as they split up all their stuff my mom gave me a bunch of my "baby things" that were still in their house. I was in college at the time, and was mostly interested in raiding the savings bonds that I forgot had been bought for me when I was born. But there were also a bunch of letters and cards that were written to me, i.e. "Dear Lutha", when I was an infant. One was from Ms. Baugh. It made me smile again, but as I tossed its envelope toward the pile of paper I was going to throw, I realized there was something inside its flap. Sure enough, there was a coin that had been sitting there for 22 years, held by a piece of cellophane tape. But it wasn't a Confederate coin: Ron Don Volante posted:[One of my favorite coins is] the silver three-cent piece (1851-1873), the tiniest U.S. coin ever made    (these were cropped and resized to 33% in MS Paint. Original cropped size: obverse, reverse.) I know it's the 1851-53 Type 1 design, which is the most common. But it's also the least common variant of that type, the 1851 "O", which was the lowest "print run" of Type 1 and the only three-cent piece made by the New Orleans mint. My amateur Googling has turned up that few coins of this variant exist in good shape, so I'm certainly glad I didn't toss it in the trash. About the quality, my cell phone has made the coin look both better and worse than what I see wearing reading glasses. The obverse's letters/numbers look a fair bit better without pixelization. The same goes for the reverse's little stars, as well as the raised inner ball and diamond areas inside the "C", which in person are still rounded-looking even without perfect lighting. The obverse shield actually looks somewhat worse in person: the photo shows the top half of the shield at its best. I can only see that amount of shield detail if I angle it juuust right. Also, the reverse doesn't appear to be grimy, just pretty...oxidized? When it was taped to the envelope, the obverse was in contact with the tape, and it was darker-looking. when I pulled it off the tape, a bunch of the dark stuff stayed on the tape and it was really quite "clean" looking. I think it's started to get crudded-up again, though. I was storing it in an unsealed Ziploc-style bag for the past few years. I've been curious about this coin for a few years now, so thanks for this thread! Lutha Mahtin fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 8, 2013 |
#
¿
Jul 8, 2013 18:13
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 09:03 |
|
|
One thing about living near the US-Canada border is that you get coins from the other side once in a while. It's common enough that we just kinda roll with it; at least, we do here in Minnesota. Today I realized I had a 1957 dime. Looks to be silver. It's very thin, maybe thinner than the one '60s US silver dime I have.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2013 21:29
|
|
|
Bob Loblaw posted:Does paper money ever gain in value? I have had for a few years now, obtained as change quite by happenstance, a 1963 $5 bill. [...] I cannot imagine it is worth more than $5, but I've held onto it since it is just kind of neat. Darn right old paper bills are neat. I worked in a rural gas station growing up, and one day some old guy paid for his stuff with a $1 "silver certificate". Old guys were the best source of weird money, since this was when there were still a fair number of people who remembered the Depression (and who stored their money in cash, under their mattresses). I saw a lot of old bills that were probably as crisp as when they rolled off the press. The $1 certificate is a cool bill because the face-side design is a bit different, like the little borders and furls around the sides and edges. I also think it's cool to have a bill that says  payable in silver, even if you can't actually get paid silver for it any more.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2013 01:14
|
|
|
Jimmy James posted:I feel like being a buzz kill, so here's something worth considering. If you net >3000 dollars off of coin sales, then you are obligated to claim it as income in your annual tax return as a capital gain. Maybe it's just me not being fully awake yet, but I find it really amusing that currency itself is subject to capital gains tax.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2013 13:54
|
|
|
Please post all the cool obscure paper money you got. I had no idea there were such different eras of bank notes in the US, and that some were only worth the paper they were printed on.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2013 23:55
|
|
|
Meydey posted:I now officially have dibs on them, along with his table saw, lathe, and 50-year woodworker tool collection. This is a top tier set of Old Man Inheritance Items.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 00:21
|
|
|
MrBling posted:How hard is it to make your own coins? I'm curious because there was a story recently about "Satanic" coins being found in various churches and museums here in Denmark. Well, people have been making coins for thousands of years. And in my experience, the type of people who would think "heh I'm gonna hide devil coins in some churches  " are often the same ones who take an entire month off each year to go sell or show off their hand-crafted wares at the Renaissance festival...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 24, 2013 18:14
|
|
|
Is there a consensus in the coin community on whether proof sets from, say, the 1980s will be worth anything? I used to get these as gifts when I was a kid. I've always figured, since so many thousands (millions?) of them were sold each year, that it will be a really long time before my stack of coins encased in cheap plastic rectangles are worth anything over face value.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2013 07:42
|
|
|
Super Aggro Crag posted:I went to the local coin shop today for the first time. American Silver Eagles were selling for $25. That's pretty much what you can get for one shipped on eBay. Silver is $20/oz this minute. Is $5 too high of a markup for a brick & mortar store? It's a better deal than going into Best Buy and seeing a $2 USB car charger for $35...
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2013 02:22
|
|
|
Ev posted:My grandfather passed away recently and before he died, he handed off his collection of coins and paper money to me. I gave it to my dad because that was his wish, but I don't think he thinks it's worth figuring if there's anything valuable there. Not that we want to sell it, but I'm curious. Hey man, you can send them to me if it's too much of a bother 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2013 03:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 09:03 |
|
|
Super Aggro Crag posted:BUMP: Anybody else notice it's a "Morgue Anne" coin? If you don't get it, try saying it out loud 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 21:16
|
|
