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91Scrap jewelry, copper, silver and gold coins - hoarding, melting and collecting
Nobody pays the actual metal value. Refiners have costs and even without that, you usually aren't selling to the actual refiner. In many cases, you aren't even selling to someone who actually is selling to the refiner - you'll be selling to someone who sells to someone else and maybe they eventually haul everything off to be melted.
8 comments
84Treasure in Your Pocket Change - WarTime Nickels (35% Silver)
I suspect the 1950's were probably the ideal time for collecting U.S. coins from pocket change. You could find Mercury dimes and Buffalo nickels daily. Even the older Barber dimes and the Liberty or Shield nickels would turn up now and then. Standing Liberty Quarters and Half Dollars were common. Indian Head pennies were more unusual but not impossible to find and if you wanted real silver dollars - Peace and Morgan - all you needed to do was go to the bank and ask for them.
10 comments
76Liberty Head "V" Nickels - fact and fiction
The story is told that the original design was gold plated and passed off as a five dollar coin to unsuspecting merchants. That's very unlikely to be true.
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72The very valuable 1877 Indian Head Cent
What makes the 1877 Indian Cent so valuable? The mintage was low at 852,500, but the 1909 San Francisco issue was only 309,000 and might have been worth less than $40.00 in similar condition. Why such a difference?
4 comments
78Beauty and the Beast - U.S. Quarters
This was a struggle. If I were only going by the obverse, I would choose the Washington Quarter without hesitation. Designed by John Flanagan (who spent five years working with Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the designer of the beautiful $20 gold mentioned in another part of this series), the portrait of Washington is simply stunning.
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76The U.S. Shield Nickel - the ugliest coin ever made?
A well known publication for coin collectors described the Shield nickel as "the ugliest of all known coins". Parts of the American public had other reasons to dislike it too: some thought the original reverse design was reminiscent of the Confederate “Stars and Bars”. As the first issue of this coin was in 1866, and the U.S. Civil War had only ended in 1865, it is easy to see how emotions would still be raw over that issue.
4 comments
75American Half Cent copper coins
You might think that the low demand for half cents was because of the low face value, but the purchasing power of a half cent in 1855 was roughly equivalent to a dime today (2010). An unskilled workman earned about seven cents an hour then, so this was not an insignificant amount of money. It may have been that there were simply enough of these coins already in circulation. However, then as now, inflation was steadily eroding the purchasing power of these small coins.
10 comments
88Three iPhone/iPad apps for U.S. Coin Collectors
I was surprised to find that there isn't much available. While there is a wealth of information available on-line, apparently few have thought about the tremendous advantage of mobile apps. After all, coins are found everywhere, often under circumstances where a computer is not available. A dedicated app to provide grading, pricing and rarity info would likely be quite popular. I'm thinking particularly of subscription services such as the well known "Grey Sheet" (Coin Dealers Newsletter) - havi
4 comments
77Selling our children's vintage toys
Honestly, we can't understand that. Both my wife and I wish our parents had saved toys from our childhood. My dad tossed out two complete 1950's vintage Lionel train sets with no more thought than he would have given to a an old pair of sneakers. I'd have no place for those trains now and I guess my father didn't either, but I wish I could at least have given them to someone who would appreciate them.
6 comments
76The American Two Cent Coin
How odd that was. Why would anyone every think to make a two cent coin? The oversized large cents were interesting, but this was even more so. So, that's where I started. I bought books about coins, I scrounged the library - this was decades before the Internet, so ferreting out knowledge wasn't easy, but there were magazines I could subscribe to and some local coin dealers I could pester with questions. I learned what had caused these short-lived and very interesting coins.
10 comments
