Not all gold glitters!: Numismatics, paper money, bullion, and exonumia

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Not all gold glitters!: Numismatics, paper money, bullion, and exonumia

super nailgun: Jan 1, 2014

Found some fun tokens at a flea market today. Look at that chonker on the upper left one!

I'm a little surprised by how often I find tokens from American arcades in Germany.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 00:52

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 23:25

super nailgun: Jan 1, 2014

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Just remembered a dude trying to sell Hilti washers on Facebook Marketplace as antique or vintage tokens.

Nice. I wonder how much use slugs are anymore these days. I remember finding punch outs from conduit boxes in the coin returns of newspaper boxes as a kid. But any modern vending machine is going to have electronic comparitors, if it accepts coins at all...

# ¿ Mar 11, 2024 12:47

super nailgun: Jan 1, 2014

Picayune posted:

Holy crap, a Showbiz Pizza token. I would love to know where that guy got that, because Showbiz Pizza got its lunch eaten by its identical rival Chuck E. Cheese in the early nineties and vanished without a trace. Until now.

I collect arcade and pinball machines so I branched out into tokens too... Finding the genuine 80s stuff is always cool. It's a shame big mixed lots on eBay are usually 95% car wash and casino tokens. I did pick up an actually solid mixed lot a couple years ago though, found lots of old CEC and Showbiz ones, but also a few Major Magic and Aladdin's Castle, along with a bunch of other local/regional arcades.

Turbinosamente posted:

My theory is some G.I.'s kid brought it with him. Didn't we used to have an army base or two to keep an eye on the commies over the Berlin Wall back then? I'm just young enough to have missed the Cold War.

The phone token and the one on the far right is kinda neat, I've never gotten ones with the deeply recessed line through them here.

Yeah, I think American GI's kid brought them back is a good bet. There still quite a few bases here, though no where near as many as decades ago.

I have another phone token with that weird profile too, late 1930s from France. I wonder how long they were used for and how many places that cut design turned up, it's certainly distinctive.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 00:18

super nailgun: Jan 1, 2014

Turbinosamente posted:

My ebay luck has been so so lately.

There was room for one more page in the type set album, so I paid way too much for this old bicentennial page. But I was able to get the 40% silver clad version of the set for half the price! They were already cracked out of a mint set years ago before I got them so they aren't in prefect shape, but are good enough for the album. Now I don't have to worry about getting a good set of bicentennial coins ever again. Fun fact, I somehow didn't have an Ike dollar from this series before this which is what prompted the half assed search on ebay to begin with.

And I paid the market rate for this shield nickel, but I really liked the die cracks on the face. They look like branches coming out of the laurel leaves to me, almost makes them look purposeful. Apparently a ton of these nickels have die cracks partly because the mint wasn't used to striking such a hard metal yet (so they used a lot of force to compensate) and partly because there wasn't much of a budget to remake dies either so they used them until they were absolutely destroyed.

Nice! I love the Ike dollars, they're so comically huge. I got a few from my dad when I visited recently, a bicentennial (along with a bicentennial Kennedy half) and a 1972. The back side of the regular Ike dollars is so good, that lunar eagle design goes hard.

Shield nickel is cool as hell too, I don't think I've ever seen one of those in person but I'd love to get one. We'll see if it ever happens... I've avoided buying anything other than arcade tokens on eBay because I know if I just started buying whatever looked neat I'd end up with an impossibly huge collection much faster than I'd expect. Probably best to rate limit a bit by restraining myself to flea markets and finds in the wild.

Along with the Ikes and half, I also got a little bit more for the exonumia category that my dad had hung onto since my brother and I were kids. I don't recall ever having gone to the bowling alley on base so he must have picked that up later, but the other designs I definitely remember many passing through my hands as a youngster.

Turbinosamente posted:

For modern coins I do tend to like the reverses more, particularly the National Parks series in quarters and the shield reverse on pennies. Somewhere I read or heard somebody making GBS threads on the modern shield design which is weird to me as I loved it when it first came out and prefer it to the old static drawing of the Lincoln Memorial. Hell, I like the original proposal better for the Jefferson nickel as well instead of the straight on view of Monticello we got there.

Absolutely agreed, especially on the shield penny. Some of the newer dollar variants are pretty killer too. I got one of the 2019 Polio Vaccine ones in change from a vending machine while I was visiting, first time I've seen one of the innovations series. Super neat design on the back and the Liberty variant on the face isn't bad either.

super nailgun fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Apr 4, 2024

# ¿ Apr 4, 2024 11:31

super nailgun: Jan 1, 2014

Turbinosamente posted:

Ikes are cool, I keep holding on to the duplicates I have even though I've put them in the spending change. And if you like the lunar eagle, get a proof coin, at least in a Susan B Anthony dollar.

Final silly question, what year is that Chuckie Cheese token? When deciding which one to keep in my collection I looked them up: apparently the ones from 1977/78 carry a premium as those are the first years of operation. I ultimately went with the one I have from my birth year, 1990, since I remember the 90s 'tude redesign Chuckie the most.

Yeah! Love the SBAs and that looks great with so much definition. I have a pile of circulated ones but I definitely wouldn't be mad if I find myself with a proof someday.

The tokens are a 1990 (sign design) and a 1982 (rat design).

# ¿ Apr 9, 2024 18:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Not all gold glitters!: Numismatics, paper money, bullion, and exonumia