What Is The Oldest Coin You Found In Your Change? Not Buy.

1896 silver american dime. Not quite in my change, but I was diving beside a dock at Rockport, Ontario, and found it in 2 feet of water when I was returning to the surface.

There`s been so much in the last couple of years.
1cent 1932 and before that 1937.
5cent 1941 and before that 1938.
10cent 1949 and before that 1956.
25cent 1964 and 1966.

USA coins
1cent 1910.
5cent 1939 and before that 1938.
10cent dont really remember but around the 60`s.

Just discovered this thread!

When I was a small boy in England in the late 1960s, Victorian bronze 'bun' pennies (issued 1860 - 1894) still turned up occasionally in change, usually very worn. One day I got in my pocket money an 1874 penny that was in almost Fine. That was the coin that started me collecting! I can remember getting an 1888 penny in change during the Easter holidays in 1968.

My Mother once got a very worn George III 1806 halfpenny in change as a penny. That would have been around the time I started collecting, and I was very excited when she gave it to me!


By the time I started collecting coins, it was rare to find any silver before 1920, the year when the UK reduced the silver content from 92.5% to 50%. My oldest silver change find was a 1912 shilling. Shillings from 1816 onwards remained legal tender until 1990 as the equivalenr of 5p. There are now no pre-1971 coins in circulation in the UK.

I had an 1897 20 rappen coin in change in Switzerland in June 1981.

The oldest US coin I have ever had in change was a VF 1942D Wheat cent, which I got in change at a diner in Oklahoma in the year 2000 when driving Historic Route 66! My oldest (and only) US silver coin in change was a 1960 Roosevelt dime, received in change at Macy's in New York when I was on a Christmas shopping trip in 2004!

My dad, growing up in the 70s, had a keen interest in roll hunting.

He saved three rolls of lightly circulated (no MS in the lot, if I remember correctly) 1973 Mountie quarters and picked out all the silver he could find. So I dug out a forgotten pillbox of his change (all of it good enough to keep), and there was a 1903-H dime in AG! Apparently it was caught in the wild - pretty cool. Unfortunately, my oldest circulation find is just a 1939 wheat found in a penny bin in a science lab. If I hadn't rescued it, it probably would have become one of those really weird coins that people always post in the Errors forum (this one's melted!! etc.).

From what I can remember:
1 cent 1938
5 cents 1935
10 cents 1940
25 cents: It was a George V but the date was worn off.
Also a 1910 Wheat penny but that's not from Canada.

Oh, ok.

1 cent: 1945
5 cents: 1949
10 cents: 1962
25 cents: 1940
50 cents: the 70s probably
$1: 1987, until someone brings a bunch of nickel dollars in and I get a hold of them

Canadian:
1 cent - 1945 (back in the 1990s if I remember right)
5 cents - 1968
10 cents - 1974
25 cents - 1957 (only silver I have ever found in the wild from any country, not counting when I was a kid and my mom let me look through her change)

U.S.
1 cent - probably a 1940's Wheat cent. I know I would still have it since I keep them all.
5 cents - 1938 Jefferson nickel. Never had a Buffalo found in the wild.
10 cents - 1965
25 cents - 1965
Still have them all in my Canadian collection too. Pretty amazing to get those in Texas, I think.

Lincoln Penny 1920
Jefferson nickel 1947
Washington quarter 1965

And still looking....