Adventures In Sorting

Thanks for the update. This is been a fun adventure to follow! You are much better than I am - I have twenty, yet a mere twenty, mercs to go through and I keep getting distracted so I have yet to finish them.

Would love to use Coinstar but there are none anywhere near me :(

Hey... is Coinstar a franchise? Can I buy a machine and install it somewhere? Oh, right... what would I do with all that change (other than fritter away thousands of hours looking for varieties, which actually sounds fun)

ThisIsFun,
You are among my favorite CCF members.
Never once have you complained about this daunting, yet amazing task.
Hopefully your family appreciates your hard work and are willing to listen to your findings.
If you end up with a few hundred special coins after examining several thousand, and IF
you KNOW what you have, well, it will all be worth the effort.
CARRY ON! We are all in your corner and cheering for you.

Woohoo! Mom just called, she found another stash of silver dollars. She doesn't know much about the coin types but there was a piece of paper with them that said "119 common dates" and there were a few other dates listed separately, including an 1878-S Trade dollar (yippeeee! the only one left from my granddad's original collection), 1880-CC, 1889-S. We don't even know who sorted them or when. Regardless, it was just a rough sort or inspection and I know considerably more now. Looking forward to examining them. She checked some random coins and they seem to be Morgan and Peace dollars, assorted dates.

She held a few up to the webcam while we Skyped and unfortunately many are in PVC 2x2s and have green slime. I hope she find the time and energy to give them an acetone bath. I probably won't get my hands on them until May. I've put off VAMming the ones already in my possession until I finish with the rest of the coins. Guess I'll wait until May and do them all at once.

Sounds like a fun adventure to me! Love to sort through coin stashes like that! My wifes dad had about 120 Morgan and Peace dollars he left to her. She was not interested in learning about them at all. I looked through them and did find a 1889 CC in what looks like Fine condition. Although she still has no interest in coins I think she is glad I found a hidden gem.

Finally got my hands on the last stash of 113 silver dollars Mom recently found. Tragic-- dozens of them have tremendous PVC damage, including the one remaining Trade dollar (1878-S) from my granddad's collection. These have probably been in the flips for 50-60+ years.

As usual, most of the coins are well-circulated but there are a few uncirculateds in this last stash, some with wonderful cartwheel luster. One of those is an 1879-S Morgan with just a smidge of PVC near the denticles. Hopefully that one will not look damaged after the acetone bath.

About half of the coins were in flips and of those, 2/3 had significant PVC goo. There are a few un-PVC'd Morgans with really nice toning.

WARNING!! The following pictures show graphic carnage. If you have delicate sensibilities, cover your eyes and click to another page, perhaps one with puppies and kittens.

Oh, my eyes! (just kidding)

I would be interested in before and after pictures if you have time.

Glad you're following my adventure now Moe! It's kinda scattered around several threads. There's a thread somewhere about the Mercuries and one about the buffaloes plus a ton of grading posts from late last year and early this year. When I started taking a closer look at the coins I began with the Indian Head cents and found a surprising number in really good shape, posted a dozen or so in the grading section. Still haven't sent the in for slabbing.

I joined both PCGS and NGC both for their membership reference material and for the grading coupons. I have a dozen 1932-D quarters to send in, a nice gold eagle, many IHCs, a 1993-S Morgan, and a few other more valuable coins that should probably be authenticated in case we sell them. At this point I want to keep as much as I can and am going to give my mom a check tonight for a bunch of them. She was ready to take the whole unsorted mess to Heritage last year and I encouraged her to try taking them to a local dealer. One thing led to another and now I don't want to let go of any of them until I know *exactly* what we have. Still kicking myself for telling her to go ahead and sell the dozens of pounds of wheats, steels, and War Nickels. DOH! Oh how I want those wheats back.

A couple of months ago she came across a coffee can full of wheats which my dad apparently saved. She mailed them to me for my birthday (completed my 50th trip around the sun this week, wheeeee!). Not sure when I'll have time to look at them but it can wait. Probably mostly 1940-50s.

The batch of Morgans and Peaces mentioned in the last picture are soaking in acetone now. I picked up a gallon from Home Depot. Might take a few gallons, will have to change the fluid many times because of the heavy coating of sticky green polymer on so many of them.

Sure hope to find an interesting (and valuable) VAM or two in this last batch. A cursory exam of the prior ones didn't turn up much. I've put off a more detailed VAM inspection until finishing with the rest of the denominations/types and my sorting/examining work has been infrequent for the last few months because of other work.

Plus... I've been slumming with the ancients lately Have you guys spent much time on the Ancients forum? The Guess The Emperor thread is great fun https://goccf.com/t/147253
I've bought some dirty ancient coins recently and am soaking and cleaning them, learning about them and their history as I go. Bought some cleaned 'biblical' coins, picked up a few interesting ancients locally recently. Yet another hobby, like I have the time...

Oh, and I want to try my hand at minting some of my own coins the old-fashioned way. Bought some thick steel rod this weekend, going to engrave some crude figures and stuff on them, melt some silver, pound with a big hammer...