I'm Wading Through A Hoard Of US And World Coins That Began About 1905!

triggersmob: Thanks for the tip, Steve. Good to know, as there are probably a dozen of those in this mix, all looking pretty good conditionwise. I hadn't gotten around to checking values on any of this stuff yet...I guess Numista is the new KM? (Along with ebay and other auction results?)

Princetane: Good to see you're coming around a bit. I noted earlier that I'd been tripping over the sort of material (key dates, 19th century, commems, etc.) you mentioned in your latest post...still haven't even opened the rolls of Morgans or the Barber minors, or the old mint/proof sets. The stuff I scanned yesterday was all pretty much hanging out loose in random containers.

Speaking of "loose," I feel like Scrooge McDuck in his vault, just running my (cotton-gloved) hand through piles and piles of old coins...haven't encountered anything in these quantities in many years. No gold has turned up yet, so I presume the original hoarder and his son found a way to dispose of that decades ago.

Last night's revelations were a Civil War token, a few boxed Vietnam-era naval medals (some celebrating the USS Shangri-La decommissioning and the 6th Fleet's presence somewhere), and a bunch of old modern-size $1-2-5-10 bills in an envelope, so I guess anything's still possible.

Overall, though, my forecast right now is that after I've separated out the numismatically worthy coins the bulk of this project is going to end up as silver bullion. I don't think anyone involved in its ownership (my friend and her kids and grandchildren) is going to be much interested in schlepping it around to local coin dealers or becoming ebay sellers.

Just spent a couple of hours rooting around in Box #3, which was full of odd containers like recipe/index card boxes, glass jars, a ladies' shoe box, etc. The first snapshot below shows a recipe box full of mixed paper rolls, pill bottles, and some "real" coin tubes (for a change). Not seeing any more non-USA stuff, so I guess those deodorant tubes were the extent of it as far as world material is concerned.

The Shield nickels are showing up with and without rays, but so far they're all pretty uniformly fair-vg at best.

The Morgan and Peace dollars shown below are just the first handful I grabbed out of the shoe box (Capezio, size 6M) where they were packed tightly in vertical piles of 25 pieces with crushed butcher paper filling in the overhead space, so they haven't been sliding and bumping into each other. Some -- like the 1880 pictured here -- appear as though they might have been polished years ago, but the vast majority are unmolested. BTW, that toner at the lower right corner of my photo below is a 1928-P, one of the key dates in the Peace series. Six of the others are mintmarked D, S, or O. No CC's yet, and no Seated Liberty specimens yet.

On the whole, the dollars are in fabulous condition compared to all the minors I've been inspecting. I started collecting in 1955, so I understand all the reasons for that, but I just wish these three "accumulators" had been a little more discriminating when it came to these hundreds upon hundreds of silver minors! I'm estimating an average grade of F for all the dimes, quarters, and halves here, and they cover a span of 80+ years, Barbers through 1964.

To be continued, I guess. There's so little here that requires any kind of deep dive that I should actually have all the sorting and my friend's summary (with my guidance to her) finished up in a week or two.

Nice mix!

Seeing an Ike makes me happy.


The three coin set shown is 40% silver clad (Cladding is 80% Silver 20% Copper, core is 79% Copper 21% Silver). The six coin sets (with cent, nickel, and dime) are Cu-Ni clad.

Nice Group love to see the classics in those tubes.

Took little time off from this chore so I could focus on my own collection. Now I'm gradually getting a little more intimate again with this old hoard I've been assigned.

Just wanted to slip in these three photos to illustrate what I'm up against...I mean, what I found in the leather pouches, which are rawhide on the interior and measure 5"x7" with a width when full at about 2.5". I'm showing the Lincoln cents here because, based on a few survivors, I believe most of them were minty fresh when they went into storage 36 years ago. I don't even want to think about the Indian Heads and CWT's that ended up destroyed in the other pouch. So, first a pouch and then a tiny sample of the hundreds that were stored in it, followed by a smaller extract from that group portrait.




Best to all ~
Tom

I thought that was a Don Imus quote.