A Coin's Life

This is exactly what this thread is about, Imagination and Mystery!

I thought just carl's story would end up being the meteor hitting Canada and being turned into a Canadian dime. Not telling what coin it ever was worked out great, we didn't need to know. It's one molecules journey and a wonderful one at that, thanks.




Thanks for telling it rusty_f, and it's not too long, the longer he better. Don't get worried about keeping it short, make long paragraphs.




When it's the coin talking they might have a lot to say, so let them ramble

Edit: spelling

<an ominous multi-toned voice bursts out as the first roll is opened>
WE ARE THE 1980-D COLLECTIVE! RE-ROLLING IS FUTILE!

We have been together since being minted,


We were meant to be circulated but never were,


We have ruined many Coin Roll Hunters day in our 34 years.


The latest Hunter thinks he has spread us out... he thinks he will never see us again... he HOPES he will never see us again

Story about today:

Today was just another game at the arena. Another cold day during basketball season wedged up under a piece of metal at the opening door. I've lost track of all the years I've spent stuck here, the numerous fans walking right past me more eager to see the UConn Huskies play, and I don't blame them.

A group of four young students crowd around the door I'm stuck under around 9:30. I've been abused for years, a 1944 Wheat penny. I'm not going anywhere, but hopefully with another game today is the day! One of the students, a very frugal (and bored) one at that finds a friend of mine who was lost too.

We both have ended up lost here due to excitement of the basketball games and in the shuffle of getting tickets out we were dropped! Regardless a student picks up my non wheat friend and turns around. Then he comes back to look again! He spots me and finally kicks me out of my sticky situation!

I'm elated that I'm free. I'm worse for wear, a lot of heavy scrape marks from the concrete and metal I was rescued from, but happy and warmer each second. Although I have no numismatic value, and am only .01, I've realized I'll have a home now

#1 Connecticut 81-64 #4 Louisville (if anyone cared/wondered. Women's Basketball)

My embryonic state was just a bar of .900 fine silver, much like lots of other coins. The occasion of my birth was like just about any other coin, with either a squeeze or a bang. My current owner can't quite make his mind about that. Squeezing and / or banging seems to be involved in somewhere along the line with the coming into being of lots of things and that includes coins. Coining presses have that sort of analogy.
I was born in Berlin, in 1894.

My creators must have thought I was a very beautiful baby; my current owner certainly thinks that.

I was to travel halfway around the World, very soon after my birth. I lived a very cushy life in my new land, but I did circulate a bit. Then war came, but that was half a world away. My first owner for any length of time was a missionary, who was active in the area during and before World War 1, where I circulated.

Perceiving my beauty, and also knowing that we were very scarce, my first owner decided to collect four others of my ilk, and kept us aside for his kids. We were five in number. There was Uncle Rushton, Auntie Mercie, Auntie Cathie, Auntie Bernicie and Auntie Lynette. I came to belong to Auntie Mercie.

The family came to live in Sydney after WW1, and I came with them. The land in which I circulated did suffer in World War 11, at the hand of Japanese and Australian soldiers. I was safe and sound at that time, happily sleeping in Sydney. The land became an independent Nation in the 1970's.

Old Uncle Rushton was an interesting bloke. One of the most interesting things about him is that when he died, he was actually found standing up! His last act on this mortal coil was to attempt to take letters out of his letter box after the postman had come.

Of the fate of three of my siblings, my current owner does not know. In the 1990's, Auntie Bernicie needed some money, so she asked my owner to auction him. She received quite a pretty penny from the auction proceeds.

I was handed down to Uncle David, my current owner out of the estate of Auntie Mercie, and I guess I will be handed on to Uncle Andrew his son, in another estate transfer, sometime in the future.

I now have a companion that is 100 years younger than me. He comes from the Valcambio Mint in Italy, and looks very similar to me and has exactly the same dimensions and fineness. We live as a pair, each of us now screw encapsulated side by side, in the same box.

Is there any out there who can identify us from the above story?

Not a clue Domain555, they all looked pretty good thou. And thanks jbuck I was a little over whelmed slogging through them, and they never stopped. Just like the Borg!

Nice save duncanbishop24 I just got a 1954 hole filler in a roll a few days ago, gotta love the Wheaties.

I still can not figure out what coin sel_69l is talking about, my Krause searching has turned up coins of the right content, or the right mint mark, or the right year but never all three


COUSIN! ! ! You young whippersnappers from the '80's! I was minting at the start, 1765. I been 'round for many a long year... I also know that some of the nasty stories about Katie were made up by her own SON, to discredit her after her death. Maybe he thought she killed his dad too, or maybe he just started that rumor. One thing is for sure, the sensational story is the one that is remembered, no matter if it is true or not.

ASLAN, Thanks! I am going to keep it but not in my collection. Probably just keep it with them but I have a '44. I Think I have all of the wheats past '40 so I knew I didn't need it to fill a hole, but still wondering how many years it was stuck there is intriguing.

A Barber with the SHIVERS ! !

now there is a scary thought.

Thanks matthewvincent, nice story there.

I am an American nickel.

At least that is what they usually call me; I do not know why. Although it is getting hard to read, the name "FIVE CENTS" is still clearly stamped into me, and I am made of more copper than nickel. Ah well, I guess most of us inanimate objects in this universe have little say in what the humans call us.

I was made in 1948, in a place called "Philadelphia". As far as I am aware, I did not remain in that place for long. It was the post-war boom, and people were spending money like there was no tomorrow, on all sorts of things they couldn't buy before. And five cents could still buy lots of things back then.

I saw through the Golden Age of America, the fifties and sixties. I must have crisscrossed the country a dozen or more times, in the pockets of people driving those big old cars that looked like starships. I don't know how long coins like me are supposed to circulate, but I don't think I'd have lasted in the system for too much longer at the rate I was wearing out. Fortunately, my destiny was about to change.

It would have been sometime in the late 1960s, I guess, or maybe it was the early 1970s, when I finally found my way into the hands of a tourist from Australia. I don't even know if I was specially selected out or if I just happened to be the last nickel standing in her purse when she left the country. All I know is, if I was one of the nicest looking nickels she'd seen in her travels, she mustn't have been in America for very long.

My job had now changed. I was no longer "money", but a "souvenir". On arrival in my new homeland, I was placed with a collection of other coins and banknotes she had picked up in her travels. Hoo boy, this woman travelled. We were a regular United Nations of coinage, about 200 or so coins tucked away into a little plastic coin album, with very few countries having more than four or five coins representing them. She labelled me "U.S.A. 5 cent piece" - at least she got my name right. There were only two other Americans with me at first: a '66 dime and a '68 cent. Later we were joined by another nickel (a '64), and a '79 SBA dollar. They all look much nicer than me, but that didn't really seem to matter.

The accommodation was cramped, especially as the woman kept on travelling and bringing back more and more souvenirs, but never bought another coin album to put the new arrivals in. The poor Brazilians were stuffed six into a single coin pocket. It was the banknotes I felt sorriest for; they really deserved better than being folded up into a tiny cube of paper and stuffed into a pocket intended for one of US coins. It should be obvious by now that we're not talking about a proper "coin collector" here; we were really just souvenirs of her travels. There were also a few oddball coins she must have found or been given rather than having travelled to go there, since she didn't know where they were from or what they were. We even shared precious space with an Indian temple token.

By the mid-1980s, the travelling had pretty much ceased - health reasons, ran out of money, or just got sick of travelling, I don't know why. The South American contingent (including the aforementioned Brazilians) was the last to arrive, in the mid-1990s; I don't know if she'd taken one last fling or if friends had brought them back for her. Anyway, we were put away in a cupboard and mostly forgotten. The sticky-tape holding us each in place in the coin pockets turned yellow and brittle long ago. Sometimes the album would be taken out and looked at occasionally, to bring back memories of bygone days and foreign lands, and I suppose I helped keep the American flag flying for her.

Fast forward now to 2013. My owner is now very old, for a human, and is forced to move into a nursing home. She can't take us with her - there's no space for souvenirs and trinkets there. So we are given away to a missionary charity.

The fellow who handles the donated coins on the charity's behalf (whose mother also just happens to have been good friends once with our previous owner) is impressed with the quality of many of us, though he seems to be less impressed with our accommodation. He keeps muttering things like, "this one is gunna need acetone, it's covered in green goo!" and, "why would anyone scrunch up an American one dollar note and stuff it into a coin album pocket?". In any event, the guy decides to purchase many of us for his own collection.

Including me. Mere hours ago, there was some kind of initiation ritual involving something called a "database", and now I'm officially part of his collection - a collection including a rather larger number of American coins than I've seen in many a year, but surprisingly, not including a 1948 Philadelphia nickel. Not until now. My job has changed, for the third time in my life; now I am a "collectable coin" and being "the United States 1948-plain 5 cents" is my new job - at least, perhaps, until the guy gets a better one.

Part of the initiation ritual was being given a new name. I am now "Sap number 11,000". That's right, this guy's collection has just passed the eleven thousand mark. Even though it's just a number (and a rather large number at that), it's a more personal name than anything I've ever been given up to now.

I may never see my homeland again, but I don't think I mind too much. After all, I've now spent more than half my life "down under".