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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Richmond, Va

    Let's talk coin collecting

    Had a coin collection when I was a kid, put all/most of my belongings in storage at a friend's house back in about 1987. Friend decided to sell his 17-acre horse farm to downsize as he and his wife are now in their 70's, so he called to have me (finally) retrieve my things. This was about 2 yrs. ago, since I've re-acquainted myself with my coins and my baseball and football cards. Then my fishing partner decides to start buying silver, so I join him and have been adding to my collection for a bit.

    I've bought some "junk" silver (silver only for it's melt value) but have been trying to find a true interest in certain coins. So, I've become avid buying really nice Franklin 1/2s and Morgan dollars. Today I received 4 coins I won on e-bay auctions. All Morgans, 1894-O, 1894-S, and two 1898-O, one which is graded MS-63. All these coins are at least AU (Almost Uncirculated) condition, and I have 3 more Carson City dollars on the way. I decided to make my goal to collect all 15 Carson City Morgans. I now have 4, all in very nice condition.

    I've had some very nice conversations with many friends about coins left to them and thought there'd be some out here in DBR land.

  2. #2
    Good thread!

    I too have coins, baseball, and football cards, in that order. I have not valued them in decades, but I have no sense that coin collecting is anything like what it was in the mid-to-late 70s/early 80s, when I was actively doing it. Very little of what I had was valuable even then ... I collected mostly common European stuff (was living there) and some Commonwealth nations. A highly treasured find for me would be something like a Scottish shilling of which maybe 1m were minted instead of 30m, and purchasing it from a dealer who didn't know the difference. I had a few bills too; It was a marvel to this 10 yr old to walk around Italy with a 10,000 lire bill in my pocket ... hard to believe it was only worth $6 or $7. Italy had an interesting coin for its public pay phones; they had "half-pipe" grooved channels cut across them - IIRC, 2 on 1 side, 1 on the other. The receiving slot in the phone was similarly shaped. I suspect it helped cut down on the use of slugs.

    I always wanted a Roman coin, but never was willing to put up that much allowance $ for one. I always wondered if those things were being manufactured anyway, they were so common in coin shops, and you could get a decent (acknowledged) replica at a museum. My oldest coin was early 19th c. from British Guiana, a half-stiver in highly worn condition. Not worth much, but it was a coin, and it was old. Same for a Confederate $10 bill.

    My baseball cards were even more unremarkable. I can't think of a single card that stood out as rare or valuable, and later in life, when I had a card-collecting son of my own, I noticed Topps was reprinting cards from the era, perhaps to a near-indistinguishable standard, torpedoing any age-related value mine had. [I would think they'd have to identify it in some way as non-original, but the fact that they could and did do that made quite an impression on me]. Our local symphony orchestra conductor (emeritus now) is a baseball nut and one time I was talking to him about cards. He regaled me with his best finds, and all I could say in return was that I probably have the most complete collection of .220 hitters and 4.85 ERA pitchers from the 70s he's likely to see.

    as an aside, remember the cards with the badly-airbrushed ballcaps? See:

    http://1977topps.blogspot.com/2011/1...-mariners.html

    I had a lot of these dogs.

    Relatively few football cards. They were less interesting - harder to compare stats except at "skill" positions then.

    Can't recall if it was more football than baseball but there were a few years, maybe early 70s, where the cards were of different sizes and didn't stack up as nicely.

    I don't even know of any coin shops around anymore. Perhaps they're lumped in with gold and diamond dealers, IDK. But certainly not like the kind that existed when I was young.

    FWIW I was never of the era to put ballcards in the spokes of my bike, like many people did earlier with what would have been valuable Mickey Mantle cards. Or is that an urban legend?
    Last edited by cspan37421; 04-19-2019 at 06:51 AM.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Oregon
    Quote Originally Posted by duketaylor View Post
    Had a coin collection when I was a kid, put all/most of my belongings in storage at a friend's house back in about 1987. Friend decided to sell his 17-acre horse farm to downsize as he and his wife are now in their 70's, so he called to have me (finally) retrieve my things. This was about 2 yrs. ago, since I've re-acquainted myself with my coins and my baseball and football cards. Then my fishing partner decides to start buying silver, so I join him and have been adding to my collection for a bit.

    I've bought some "junk" silver (silver only for it's melt value) but have been trying to find a true interest in certain coins. So, I've become avid buying really nice Franklin 1/2s and Morgan dollars. Today I received 4 coins I won on e-bay auctions. All Morgans, 1894-O, 1894-S, and two 1898-O, one which is graded MS-63. All these coins are at least AU (Almost Uncirculated) condition, and I have 3 more Carson City dollars on the way. I decided to make my goal to collect all 15 Carson City Morgans. I now have 4, all in very nice condition.

    I've had some very nice conversations with many friends about coins left to them and thought there'd be some out here in DBR land.
    I collect Morgan 1$. A word of caution about coins on eBay - quite a few of them are Chinese fakes. They have become excellent counterfeiters - I've been collecting Morgan's for years and still find it difficult to spot the fakes. Check the sellers feedback, avoid anything shipped from China. Best way to avoid fakes is to buy only coins "slabbed" by one of these grading services: NGC, PCGS, ANACS. Have fun collecting!

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Oregon
    Here's a video showing a CC mint Morgan that looks perfectly fine until its put under a microscope.
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wP49WUN1YnY

  5. #5
    I seem to have 1882, 1883, and 1884 Morgans. The first and last I have in my notes as CC, but the middle one, just C. Perhaps it's just a recording error I made, or is there some other mint mark or a known error that might correspond to a single C?

    BTW, these were passed down through the family from grandma - very unlikely ebay or Chinese origin.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    Quote Originally Posted by cspan37421 View Post
    I seem to have 1882, 1883, and 1884 Morgans. The first and last I have in my notes as CC, but the middle one, just C. Perhaps it's just a recording error I made, or is there some other mint mark or a known error that might correspond to a single C?

    BTW, these were passed down through the family from grandma - very unlikely ebay or Chinese origin.
    I'm pretty sure there is no "C" mint mark for that coin. Any chance you wrote "O", but it came out looking like a "C"?

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Ggallagher View Post
    I'm pretty sure there is no "C" mint mark for that coin. Any chance you wrote "O", but it came out looking like a "C"?
    Well - I typed it in a spreadsheet. So to quote Mike LaFontaine of Hi Class Management, "I don't think so!"

    But I do wonder if it was an O that was marred into looking like a C. I'll have to dig it out and take a look.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2018
    Location
    Richmond & Montross, VA
    I sold my coin collection years ago, but I do have one cool anecdote. Hally, one of my father's clients who owned a construction company, went to the bank to make a deposit and pick up coins to make change. In the change, he picked up a roll of 1955 double-die pennies, all uncirculated and today each worth nearly $3,000.

    To make it even cooler, when Hally died, he left $5,000 to every one of his full-time employees.

    I don't know what happened to the pennies.

  9. #9

    Update - it's CC

    So I dug out the box 'o coins and found the Morgans. Turns out all three of them are Carson City - so it was a transcription error from paper to spreadsheet. All three came in a display box and plastic frame (bearing the title Carson City Uncirculated Silver Dollar), complete with a quote by Duke's most (in)famous law school graduate "As we approach America's Bicentennial, this historic silver dollar is one of the most valued reminders of our national heritage." There was also a paper card - see scan attached, with serial number digitally removed - that said more about it.

    [a look down the alumni list suggest there's some competition for that appellation. I was referring to the fellow from the class of '37]

    There was also an 1878 S in there as well, though boxed differently. It was also uncirculated.

    There were a ton of other coins that she merely set aside - wheatbacks, Indian nickels, mercury dimes, and so forth. Nearly all circulated and well-worn, though it appears a few Kennedy silver half-dollars were set aside right away. All just loose and bagged. Mixed in there was an 1841 seated Liberty dollar, but in pretty bad shape. It looked like it had been buried for 20 yrs and then run through a vacuum cleaner. Or vice versa.

    All these loose coins, and several more small caches of others (old European, etc) ... any suggestions how to organize them ... e.g., where to buy coin display pages (for 3-ring binder) or cardboard/cellophane covers? I doubt there are any coin stores within 100 miles of me. Thanks.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Oregon
    Quote Originally Posted by cspan37421 View Post
    I seem to have 1882, 1883, and 1884 Morgans. The first and last I have in my notes as CC, but the middle one, just C. Perhaps it's just a recording error I made, or is there some other mint mark or a known error that might correspond to a single C?

    BTW, these were passed down through the family from grandma - very unlikely ebay or Chinese origin.
    There is such a thing as a coin with a C mint mark. Tar Heels should know it stands for Charlotte, which had a US mint from 1838 to 1861. Long before the California gold rush, there was a North Carolina gold rush, and the mint was established to turn the gold into coins. But there was no silver in the mines, so there are no silver dollars with a C mint mark.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Richmond, Va
    Quote Originally Posted by cspan37421 View Post
    So I dug out the box 'o coins and found the Morgans. Turns out all three of them are Carson City - so it was a transcription error from paper to spreadsheet. All three came in a display box and plastic frame (bearing the title Carson City Uncirculated Silver Dollar), complete with a quote by Duke's most (in)famous law school graduate "As we approach America's Bicentennial, this historic silver dollar is one of the most valued reminders of our national heritage." There was also a paper card - see scan attached, with serial number digitally removed - that said more about it.

    [a look down the alumni list suggest there's some competition for that appellation. I was referring to the fellow from the class of '37]

    There was also an 1878 S in there as well, though boxed differently. It was also uncirculated.

    There were a ton of other coins that she merely set aside - wheatbacks, Indian nickels, mercury dimes, and so forth. Nearly all circulated and well-worn, though it appears a few Kennedy silver half-dollars were set aside right away. All just loose and bagged. Mixed in there was an 1841 seated Liberty dollar, but in pretty bad shape. It looked like it had been buried for 20 yrs and then run through a vacuum cleaner. Or vice versa.

    All these loose coins, and several more small caches of others (old European, etc) ... any suggestions how to organize them ... e.g., where to buy coin display pages (for 3-ring binder) or cardboard/cellophane covers? I doubt there are any coin stores within 100 miles of me. Thanks.
    Very interesting stuff. Have those coins been graded professionally, also known as "slabbed?" That would be very revealing, regarding true value. The 1878-S has less value than the CC's and all your CC's are worth at least $150 and probably a lot more.

    Where in Tenn. are you? I've found coin shops around me I had no idea existed over the years.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by cspan37421 View Post
    So I dug out the box 'o coins and found the Morgans. Turns out all three of them are Carson City - so it was a transcription error from paper to spreadsheet. All three came in a display box and plastic frame (bearing the title Carson City Uncirculated Silver Dollar)

    There was also an 1878 S in there as well, though boxed differently. It was also uncirculated.

    There were a ton of other coins that she merely set aside - wheatbacks, Indian nickels, mercury dimes, and so forth. Nearly all circulated and well-worn, though it appears a few Kennedy silver half-dollars were set aside right away. All just loose and bagged. Mixed in there was an 1841 seated Liberty dollar, but in pretty bad shape. It looked like it had been buried for 20 yrs and then run through a vacuum cleaner. Or vice versa.

    All these loose coins, and several more small caches of others (old European, etc) ... any suggestions how to organize them ... e.g., where to buy coin display pages (for 3-ring binder) or cardboard/cellophane covers? I doubt there are any coin stores within 100 miles of me. Thanks.
    The silver dollars were probably part of the GSA hoard sold in the early seventies. Slabbed but not graded as those services didn't exist at that time.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by duketaylor View Post
    Very interesting stuff. Have those coins been graded professionally, also known as "slabbed?" That would be very revealing, regarding true value. The 1878-S has less value than the CC's and all your CC's are worth at least $150 and probably a lot more.

    Where in Tenn. are you? I've found coin shops around me I had no idea existed over the years.
    Chattanooga ... the hint is in my "zippy" user name.

    Finding coin shops around here isn't that intuitive. There appears to be multiple numismatic societies with online directories, but those aren't always up to date. Google is a little better. Even then one is likely to mainly find gold and silver dealers, not coin dealers. But there are a couple, and I travel through bigger cities in the region from time to time, so if I needed to get something domestic, I probably could. IDK who would sell or buy old European coinage. It's a very thin profession, it appears.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by dball View Post
    The silver dollars were probably part of the GSA hoard sold in the early seventies. Slabbed but not graded as those services didn't exist at that time.
    Middle paragraph of my attachment above seems to place that around the right time.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Oregon
    Getting back to this thread.

    For your 3 "CC" Morgans, do not remove them from the original packaging. Keep everything that came with it.

    To find a coin shop, search for the following in your area: jewelry stores (some also carry coins), gold bullion dealers and crypto currency exchanges. ebay is now the world's largest coin dealer; like travel agents and other brick and mortar businesses, it's tough to overcome online competition, so many coin shops are a side business for the store types listed above.

    You can find coin display supplies online. Yes, there are plastic pages with a dozen of more pockets. If you want to store your coins in a looseleaf binder, that's easy to do. Put the coin into a "flip", and then put the flip into one of the pockets.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Y'all seem to know your stuff on this subject. Have a couple questions to pose. When my wife and I moved into our new home, my parents loaded up a U-Haul with various stuff of mind they'd been storing for 15 years, including my childhood collections (as well as my fathers' childhood collections). The collections include baseball cards, comic books, coins, stamps, etc. My dad's stuff, in particular, is pretty interesting and I've done some research on the baseball cards in Beckett's. If he'd kept his collection in mint condition, there'd be some very valuable Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, etc type cards in there. Alas, he was a kid when he collected these and they are NOT in mint condition.

    Anyway, I'd like to have an expert review the various coin and card collections and let me know what has some worth, what doesn't, the grading of some of the assets, etc. I just don't think I have the time or energy to go through the thousands of cards, coins, and stamps. Curious if anyone knows if that's a service people provide? Would I have to go to one of the collect-able shows? My biggest concern is asking for advice in any field where I'm not an expert --- getting taken for a ride. Thoughts appreciated!

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by bundabergdevil View Post
    Y'all seem to know your stuff on this subject. Have a couple questions to pose. When my wife and I moved into our new home, my parents loaded up a U-Haul with various stuff of mind they'd been storing for 15 years, including my childhood collections (as well as my fathers' childhood collections). The collections include baseball cards, comic books, coins, stamps, etc. My dad's stuff, in particular, is pretty interesting and I've done some research on the baseball cards in Beckett's. If he'd kept his collection in mint condition, there'd be some very valuable Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, etc type cards in there. Alas, he was a kid when he collected these and they are NOT in mint condition.

    Anyway, I'd like to have an expert review the various coin and card collections and let me know what has some worth, what doesn't, the grading of some of the assets, etc. I just don't think I have the time or energy to go through the thousands of cards, coins, and stamps. Curious if anyone knows if that's a service people provide? Would I have to go to one of the collect-able shows? My biggest concern is asking for advice in any field where I'm not an expert --- getting taken for a ride. Thoughts appreciated!
    I strongly suspect it's uneconomical for a pro to value such a collection, because it would be time consuming and as you said, the items are not mint. Hire a diligent middle schooler to look into it using whatever the modern valuation tools are (in my day they were books, but I bet a lot is online now, perhaps by subscription in some cases).

    As far as selling the stuff off, the conventional wisdom is to a little bit at a time rather than try to find 1-2 buyers to take it all. That's not generally what buyers want. They are filling in gaps, not looking to go from zero to big collection in one transaction.

    If it's really in the thousands, then even the middle schooler's time might be pricey. You may be smart to try to look for and pick out any particularly rare items that could have a chance of being in the collection. For instance, suppose Topps printed a few dozen Ted Williams cards one year in which he's holding a fishing pole instead of a baseball bat. They catch the error quickly, but the variant is rare, in circulation, and valuable. You want to focus on finding items like that, not the ones that they printed 10 million of that have been through the spokes of a bicycle. Know the rare ones that are worth finding, and scan your collection for them. Unless you're really interested, I wouldn't spent much time valuing the rest. Just know what to look for, and get a general feeling about the rest.

    For instance, 10-15 yrs ago, about 100 older US coins came my way (liberty nickels and dimes, Indian head nickels and pennies, Mercury dimes, wheatbacks, and Eisenhower and Morgan dollars. I had my middle schooler look them up. Aside from the dollars, the average coin was worth under $1 ... and that's probably retail. I suspect that a dealer would have offered under 50 cents a piece to take them off my hands. So if you have thousands of things to value, you might spend most of the collection value just paying minimum wage to have them look up each item. Maybe it's different today, maybe baseball cards command more, but just consider cost/benefit.

    PS thank you neals384 !!

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Oregon
    Quote Originally Posted by bundabergdevil View Post
    Y'all seem to know your stuff on this subject. Have a couple questions to pose. When my wife and I moved into our new home, my parents loaded up a U-Haul with various stuff of mind they'd been storing for 15 years, including my childhood collections (as well as my fathers' childhood collections). The collections include baseball cards, comic books, coins, stamps, etc. My dad's stuff, in particular, is pretty interesting and I've done some research on the baseball cards in Beckett's. If he'd kept his collection in mint condition, there'd be some very valuable Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, etc type cards in there. Alas, he was a kid when he collected these and they are NOT in mint condition.

    Anyway, I'd like to have an expert review the various coin and card collections and let me know what has some worth, what doesn't, the grading of some of the assets, etc. I just don't think I have the time or energy to go through the thousands of cards, coins, and stamps. Curious if anyone knows if that's a service people provide? Would I have to go to one of the collect-able shows? My biggest concern is asking for advice in any field where I'm not an expert --- getting taken for a ride. Thoughts appreciated!
    But that’s the fun part! With your extensive collection you may have months or years of discovery ahead of you. It’s not a race, right? With such a diverse agglomeration, it may make sense to pick one area, say baseball cards, and pursue that as time and interest allows. Set the rest aside for later.

    Of course if the goal is to sell what’s valuable you already know how to cherry pick the best from your own collection, like those CC Morgan’s. As you noted, condition means everything so look for the best and have fun learning along the way!

    or just box everything up and send to me. I will send a very generous check by return mail

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by Neals384 View Post
    But that’s the fun part! With your extensive collection you may have months or years of discovery ahead of you. It’s not a race, right? With such a diverse agglomeration, it may make sense to pick one area, say baseball cards, and pursue that as time and interest allows. Set the rest aside for later.

    Of course if the goal is to sell what’s valuable you already know how to cherry pick the best from your own collection, like those CC Morgan’s. As you noted, condition means everything so look for the best and have fun learning along the way!

    or just box everything up and send to me. I will send a very generous check by return mail
    Thanks for the thoughts Neals/CSPAN. Regarding the bolded --- I'd swap out "discovery" with "potential disappointment". I did start in on the baseball cards because I'd been an avid collector in my youth and was aware of Beckett's and had a general understanding of the grading system. As I mentioned, my dad's collection included some pretty valuable cards from the 1950s Topps collections. The 15 or 20 I pulled out and looked up had an aggregate value in the six figures. But they were bent and the edges torn and several had notes like "Trade to Tommy" (my dad's childhood neighbor) written in bright orange market on the back. So, their actual value was, ahem, considerably lower.

    Suffice to say, I've lectured my father a good bit about the ability of his childhood self to take care of his things. I have also asked for Tommy's contact information to lecture him on the same.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by bundabergdevil View Post
    Thanks for the thoughts Neals/CSPAN. Regarding the bolded --- I'd swap out "discovery" with "potential disappointment". I did start in on the baseball cards because I'd been an avid collector in my youth and was aware of Beckett's and had a general understanding of the grading system. As I mentioned, my dad's collection included some pretty valuable cards from the 1950s Topps collections. The 15 or 20 I pulled out and looked up had an aggregate value in the six figures. But they were bent and the edges torn and several had notes like "Trade to Tommy" (my dad's childhood neighbor) written in bright orange market on the back. So, their actual value was, ahem, considerably lower.

    Suffice to say, I've lectured my father a good bit about the ability of his childhood self to take care of his things. I have also asked for Tommy's contact information to lecture him on the same.
    Ha! I hear ya. Turning that over in my mind, I wonder if those minty cards from those days would have been worth what they are today if everyone took care of them carefully. Probably not! The typical abuse they suffered contributed to the scarcity of the minty ones. Not sure that helps you cope.

    Another thought that occurred to me ... I probably should never try to imagine what my old coins would be worth if they were all in EF or uncirculated condition. If ifs and buts were ...

    At some point you just have to move on to acceptance in the stages of grief.

    side note, on cleaning coins. The conventional wisdom is that you should never attempt to clean a coin, presumably because you might take off some of the metal. OK, but ...

    a) whose coin is it anyway? Why can't you do what you want with it? (you can ... but a dealer might use that against you)
    b) Ever seen a nasty looking coin at a dealer? Why are they all so clean there? You think they all came in that way and were kept so shiny, even the worn ones?
    c) I once worked for a coin dealer as a teen. He had me clean coins that came in - and in the simplest/crudest fashion, too. Nothing special.

    Saw a thread on this on a coin site. I've come to think that the best comment about the advice to never clean a coin was: "Stop it. Just stop."

    Bottom line, enjoy your collectibles however you see fit. They're yours. Be aware of future possibilities, but don't sweat it too much, or you'll strip the fun of collecting away.

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