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Hobbies 🪙 Ask the numismatist

JNA said:
For those Cyburbians who were scouts did you earn coin collecting merit badge ?
Do you still have your coin collection ?

Related do you still have your merit badge sash ?
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1) Yes.
2) Yes. (Few additions since the 1980s, though.)
3) No.
 
Maister said:
So what is the deal with 'bullion coins'? Why 'invest' in these?

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Because you're an economic/political system failure prepper and/or someone that believes silver is "real money" or you just like stacking shiny metal discs in order to play 'Scrooge McDuck'.
scrooge mcduck GIF


But for me, I sort of do the same, but I prefer buying the less market desirable common circulated foreign silver coins

coin_20221108.jpeg
 
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I will tell/ask you this...my FIL gave my boys a few Morgan dollars. I have not given to them yet and will not until they are setttled down. I'll dig them out and take a picture and you can tell me what they have.
mendelman said:
I bought this today:

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It's a coin collector thing.
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I will ask you this...my FIL gave my boys a few Morgan dollars. I have not given to them yet and will not until they are settled down. I'll dig them out and take a picture and you can tell me what they have.
 
SlaveToTheGrind said:
I will tell/ask you this...my FIL gave my boys a few Morgan dollars. I have not given to them yet and will not until they are settled down. I'll dig them out and take a picture and you can tell me what they have.
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I'm happy to help. Try to get clear obverse and reverse (aka both sides of the coin) photos of each and I'll let you know the 'value'.
 
@SlaveToTheGrind

These are common US silver dollars and are generally worth $25-30 retail. If you wanted to sell them to a dealer, you'd probably get $17-20 each.

But...these are a great start to a coin collection if one is so inclined. The 1885 is steeped in the trailing edge of the Old West mythology. The others represent an interesting post WWI world economic stability effort by the US to shore up Allies' economies, particularly the UK. EDIT: Pittman Act of 1918
 
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I believe my brother has a Carson City Morgan. (My family were among the first whites in Nevada.)
 
My great aunt owned a grocery store that stood on a corner in front of her dwelling. Her two sons worked there, one as a butcher, the other in management.

They had a big bicycle with three baskets for home deliveries.

She adopted my only child mother after TB took both her parents while she was still a teen.

She put every silver dollar she got in a box under the counter. She distributed them as birthday tokens to kids in her family. I have six of them left.
 
These are pure nickel coins (from around the world) I purchased recently:

coin_20221216_1.jpeg
 
Mom has a ton of those and the half dollars and I think a few old Susan dollars. If I inherit them I'll find a couple near mint coins to sell to a certain numismatist.
 
Whose Yur Planner said:
I cashed a check at my bank. As part of it, I asked my normal dollar coins. The young lady gave three Eisenhower dollar coins from 1972. Those things are huge my today's standards.
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DVD said:
Mom has a ton of those and the half dollars and I think a few old Susan dollars. If I inherit them I'll find a couple near mint coins to sell to a certain numismatist.
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Buy stamps from a machine at any post office, your change will be in dollar coins...great for tooth fairy use.
 
Dan said:
While I was at the APA conference, my wife was going through her grandmother's old armoire back at home. She found a little box with some cheap costume jewelry, and these coins. Whatcha' think?
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Hmmm...

They may be real. And if so, there is some not insignificant value in them...but these are often counterfeited and/or just copy metal copies for costume jewelry purposes. Assume these are just cheap metal tokens, though.

If they are real:
1879 Stella dollar (coiled hair)
1794 Flowing hair dollar
1909 St Gaudens 20 dollar gold coin
:cool:
Can you get clearer and better lit photos of each individually with edge photos too?
 
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Max Mehl Was Right on the Money

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A blog entry of interest to this thread. The blog is Hometown by Handlebar, which until his passing in March was written by Mike Nichols, retired reporter from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In his retirement he used his reporting chops to lay out a comprehensive account of Fort Worth history and lore. This blog post was linked to another blog post I was reading about the history of one of the city's department stores. The son of one of the local store moguls was a numismatist of some note. The buildings shown in the post are well known to me and many others in Fort Worth. Note the prominent cast stone coins on the facade of his office.

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More about the Mehl Building from Fort Worth Architecture
 
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I took little hamers and a saw to a couple of zinc plated dimes to make this pair of earrings. They are priceless, as in not for sale, only gifts.
 

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mendelman said:
Argue Seth Meyers GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers


...since 1965, business strike US ten cent coins intended for general commerce are cupro-nickel clad composition (an inner core of pure copper, with outer layers of a nickel-copper alloy)

Sorry. ;)
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Not a coin expert. I began transforming coins to jewelry a cpl of yrs ago, when I realized my old coin collection was nothing of value. I put coins on the railroad track where the train turns them into ingots. You can hammer and burnish them but not abrade the surfaces.

The silver ones are better to work with.
 
fringe said:
Ugh. Lady Di on the reverse?
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She probably still looks better than him. 😉

EDIT: Sorry...you said 'reverse', so that's actually a human representation of "Britannia" and her strength.
 
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Not a question, but something interesting to report: I actually got a quarter in my change that showed the value in numerals (25¢), not in words (TWENTY FIVE CENTS). It was the Edith Kanakaʻole American Women quarter.
 
Gedunker said:
That was my guess.

I don't care for the quality of the relief especially on the reverse. It doesn't seem very crisp to me.
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It's a bit lower relief, but that's common now for the mass produced bullion coins and also my photo was just a quick cellphone pic, so details get a bit washed out.
 
mendelman said:
She probably still looks better than him. 😉

EDIT: Sorry...you said 'reverse', so that's actually a human representation of "Britannia" and her strength.
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Britannia's figure looks to be weilding a frog gig with the laurel relegated to the shield, meaning peace only behind that hegemon barrier. She wears a warrior helmet that acknowledges the label of "bloody British".

Way short of US coin depictions of Lady Liberty and further still of Hindu pictures of Kali, the giver of birth and destruction.
 
fringe said:
Britannia's figure looks to be weilding a frog gig with the laurel relegated to the shield, meaning peace only behind that hegemon barrier. She wears a warrior helmet that acknowledges the label of "bloody British".

Way short of...
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Yep. The UK still believes its 19th century worldwide strength is its 21st reality.
 
Creepy relics dept.

My father flew a cargo plane in the Berlin airlift of 1948-49.

He had coins from lots of countries.

I found this rusty steel one in my old coin box. Cleaning with a wire brush scrubbed of a lot of detail.
IMG_20231005_092727~3.jpg
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[Cleaning coinage with any abrasive is usually not preferred.]

The obverse appears to ahve the German eagle with a swastika in its talons.
 
Gedunker said:
[Cleaning coinage with any abrasive is usually not preferred.]

The obverse appears to ahve the German eagle with a swastika in its talons.
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Exactly. Impatience on my part. I've noted before I am hammering old coins into "ingots" to make jewelry, so am not focused on preservation. Yes the eagle holds a swastika.
The US made pennies out of steel in 1943. I think I have some but rust itself is very unforgiving, just like my attitude toward this relic.
 
Dear Numismatist,
I was emptying out an old piggy bank not long ago and near the bottom I found that most of the coins dated to the early-mid 60s. I understand that there was a higher silver content in the quarters back then. Is this true? Also, I'm assuming a 1964 quarter is worth exactly 25 cents, but just on the off chance they aren't, is there any point to keeping this old piggy back full of 60 year old change? Or is the vending machine downstairs waiting for its big payday?

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Maister said:
Dear Numismatist,
I was emptying out an old piggy bank not long ago and near the bottom I found that most of the coins dated to the early-mid 60s. I understand that there was a higher silver content in the quarters back then. Is this true? Also, I'm assuming a 1964 quarter is worth exactly 25 cents, but just on the off chance they aren't, is there any point to keeping this old piggy back full of 60 year old change? Or is the vending machine downstairs waiting for its big payday?

View attachment 61747
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US dimes/quarters/halves were 90% silver through 1964.

A silver 1964 quarter has a face value of $0.25, but a silver bullion value of $4.18.

Spend the 1965 and after coins for face value.

Send the 1964 and earlier dimes/quarters/halves to me. ;)
 
Maister said:
Dear Numismatist,
I was emptying out an old piggy bank not long ago and near the bottom I found that most of the coins dated to the early-mid 60s. I understand that there was a higher silver content in the quarters back then. Is this true? Also, I'm assuming a 1964 quarter is worth exactly 25 cents, but just on the off chance they aren't, is there any point to keeping this old piggy back full of 60 year old change? Or is the vending machine downstairs waiting for its big payday?

View attachment 61747
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As I have posted before, I hammer silver coins into "ingots". Then I hammer and saw those into shapes that make earrings.
IMG_20230622_155247-1.jpg
 
@mendelman I see on social media or television shows people digging up coins and hoping to find the holy grail. They then proceed to run their fingers across the coin to remove dirt and find out whether they have a 1983 Lincoln or a 1856 Flying Eagle (had to look that up). My first thought is that will scratch the coin, but it has been sitting in dirt and likely through several freeze/thaw periods which may have the same result...I don't know...just a thought I always have. Similar thought with people holding old documents without gloves.
 
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