Movies About Coins

I just rented X-Men: First Class, and a coin is central to its plot. The movie starts out during WWII, and the first scene centers around a 2 Reichsmark silver coin. This coin is shown several times, and is used again in a shocking scene at the end. Sometimes the coin isn't real, but done with computer graphics, and it's done well. There's also a huge Nazi gold bar in one scene, with an explanation about how it was made.

"A Simple Twist Of Fate" starring Steve Martin has numerous coin references in it and his gold coin collecting is a major part of the final plot twist.

I just re-watched it recently and there are refeerences to early internet coin shopping and saving on taxes by buying from out-of-state and several other things that are just as relavent to today's numismatist.

His neighbor/friend/dealer tries to get him interested in buying Walkers but he is only interested in gold coins.

He does like to take his coins out and play with them and bath in them - obviously no-no's. But most of the references are interesting anyway. I'd call it the most prominent coin collector movie I've ever seen or recall.

My daughter watches a show on one of those Disney channels called Zoey 101, Britney Spears little sister stars in it. Its geared to tweeners and so it usually has some pretty lame plots but on one of the episodes some of the main characters try to scam another of their buddies who is a rich, self centered snobby type. They try to get him to shell out to buy a coin collection from another kid to teach him a lesson about something or another, I dunno exactly what the point was really, wasn't paying attention I guess, but someone on the show must know a bit about coins because they mentioned a 33 St Gaudens to bait the kid into buying. It was silly to throw that in since anyone doing any research at all is gonna find that a 33 Saint isn't gonna be for sale but it kinda shocked me that someone knew enough to put in that little touch.

Not sure if this is the most current movie money thread, but I just watched Pennies From Heaven with Steve Martin (again) and it features a very large 1922 Peace dollar in one of the dance scenes. Pretty cool.

It's just been on TV downunder here in Aus.
Good movie, I really like it and loved seeing those coins.

Steve

I remember running home from school to watch the Hardy Boys.
Do yourself a 43 second favor, and step back to 1956.



Actually it's kind of dark.

A couple of TV shows that have not been mentioned yet.

Fawlty Towers has an episode where a con artist tried to steal Basil's Coin collection.

An old episode of Mythbuster's had silver dollars being shot. There was a thread here about it from 2006 that is locked. That thread does not mention that they did use a Seated Liberty Dollar, and shot it with a black powder pistol from the same era as the coin. They were not able to get a hole through a silver dollar with period specific guns thou.

More accounting that coin collecting but when Malcolm met his Grandfather (Christopher Lloyd). Looking at a ledger sheet Malcolm impressed gramps with detecting fraud and embezzlement on the part of a quarter master from the civil war. I know there was uniforms and guns did anyone remember coins in 'Gramps' Civil war collection?

Edit: forgot to mention the name of the 3rd show... "Malcolm in the Middle"

How about the Castle episode where they find a cache of about 1200 or so 1792 Half Dismes.

How about James Cameron's Titanic where Rose pays Jack with a 1912 Barber dime.

Or when Doc in Back to the Future III opened up a case and there were stacks of old US currency from every time period from the Civil War to 1955.

I also read a Nancy Drew novel where a magician bought a bag of 1000 supposedly worthless magician tokens to give out to kids when he performed at their birthday parties. However, he finds out that he is getting threatened by a mysterious someone and the homes in which the children at the party lived were broken in to. Nancy Drew investigates what is going on and discovers that one of the families had a coin collection that was stolen. Then she talks to the kid whose birthday was celebrated and he speaks of a "lady coin," a coin other than a magician's token. Intrigued, she investigates further and finds one of these "lady coins." She makes an sketch by rubbing a piece of graphite on a piece of paper on top of the coin. She takes the sketch to a rare coin specialist and she identifies it as a 1933 double eagle. It turns out that the bag of magician's tokens was spiced with 1933 double eagles by an unscrupulous individual so he could smuggle them into the black market. The bag gets sold to the wrong person (the magician) and the double eagles are dispersed and have to be stolen. The individual is caught and arrested and all of the coins are seized.