A Coin's Life

Great start of your story njnumis. I'm looking forward to reading the next installment



-MV

Sweet, finally a 'To Be Continued'

Thanks njnumis

BEAUTIFUL!

I loved how it never got into fighting on Sicily, the other allied generals were fighting amongst themselves as to how to proceed so Patton got in his tanks and took over the entire island before the rest knew what was happening.

The story of my 1979 SBA Avatar coin.

I'm going to start my story in 1982. The first 3 years of my life were kinda rough and I don't really want to talk about that, too many bad memories. I know, I know, now you are wondering what could have happened that you can't even talk about it. Well how would you like to be a dollar being passed off as a quarter all the time?...Or how would you like to be only minted for 3 years before being snuffed out of production? Yeah,Yeah, I know about 1999, I've met a couple of those guys! Ok, see what you did? You have me typing angry again!!

Alright lets get this story back on track. It was 1982 when I met this Great Coin Collector. I'm pretty sure he was minted in the early 1920's or so. I'm really good at guessing when people were minted. I don't know why? I'm like RainMan except with guessing the age of humans. So anyways I don't know why this guy picked me out of all the other millions of SBA's that were out there but he did. One day he wrapped me up and stuck me in a envelope and sent me to California to get a shiny coat of paint on my back side. I instantly felt really good about myself, like I was different, like I all of sudden had value. I really appreciated him for doing that for me. Alot of his coins were in really nice cases, but he had something different in mind for me. He made me into a belt buckle!! It was really cool. He put me in a display case and tons of people would look at me. They would point and call others over to take a gander at me as well. One of the Morgan dollars got jealous and started making fun of me. I just laughed. It didn't bother me. I knew I was hand picked by the collector and that is all that mattered to me.

A few years later I was taken out of my case and handed to this small boy. I could tell he was most likely minted in 1977 only a couple of years before me. I later realized that this little boy was my new owner. You could tell he was excited to have me. That quickly faded though. I was taken on a long trip to Michigan where the little boy lived at the time. A few weeks later the boy took me out of the belt buckle. Looked at me a while, and then put me in a box with other coins. I never saw the belt buckle again. Every year the box opened and another coin was dropped in. This went on for years until just recently. 4 years ago I started hearing a lot of click clacking going on outside my box. This happened a lot! Then one day he opened the box and got out all the coins that were in the box I was kept in. He sorted us on the table and looked us over and sorted us out. That little boy the collector gave me to was a lot older now. He had a little blonde kid there looking at me as well. I'm pretty sure the little blonde boy had been minted in 2006, I might be off a little. Give me a break I was in a box for a decade or two. Then I heard my owner tell the little boy, "All the coins you see here on the table were given to me by my Grandfather. They are all special coins to me and someday I'll give them to you and your brother and your sister".

He put them all up in the box except for me. He looked at me a while with a smile and started tearing up a little bit. Then he said, "I miss you Grandpa, I wish you were still here".

I see my owner a lot more these days. There is always one thing he says that I don't really understand, maybe you'll know what it means.

He always yells, "Click Clack till I Die!!" It's usually after his wife yells at him.

Thanks MeadowviewCollector! 75% of it is true.

I know how people like pictures. Well I found this picture of the little boy and the Great Coin Collector in my Avatar Coin story.

THE ROARING `20'S (get the it's a long one)

"Hey, Smiley! I need you to do me a favor." I couldn't see the guy that spoke he was flipping me like crazy. Over and over again, I was getting dizzy. I couldn't see Smiley either. It was 1923 and I'd been around for a few years, someone blowing a smooth saxophone down the street made me wish I had been dropped into it's case instead of being tossed endlessly into the air... PLEASE STOP! I'm GONNA BE SICK!

*SMACK* I heard a fellow penny slammed down onto the workbench, I was still flipping. I was finally getting an idea of where I was. It was an auto shop, I've been in them before. See I was minted into a coin in 1919, it was the end of a thing called a 'WAR'. I never really did understand what was going on just that the car I was in had been scraped as part of the war effort. I know I felt a lot better after the mint struck me and I was being used as pocket change instead of grinding away slowly as part of a bearing housing in an engine.

The flipping man started to tell a tale of horror, the likes of which I which I had never heard... he wanted to grind down my back... half way off... GUTTING ME! ! !

QUICK TRY TO MISS HIS HAND... roll under a car into a grimy pile of oily rags, even down a drain ANYTHING! Anything but this! But he never missed. The whole while he and the other man 'Smiley' were talking about how to RIP me APART, like it was nothing to them.

Finally I was *SLAMMED* down next to my fellow, my new back, my 'soon to be' other HALF. All I could see was the back of his head, but I could tell he was scared too. The next few hours were worse than my entire time in that car engine

Smiley started with my other HALF first, because he was a little rougher then me. "If I mess up with this gungy one I'll work on the other one and find a different one after that." NO! Not ME. He didn't make a mistake and I never did see him smile, until the end when he'd finished with me. He held us up then put us back to sore, raw back and chuckled, an evil grin spread across his grease smudged face as he held us up in calipers and compared us to another new coin, a coin that had not been ripped apart. I could see the horror in it's face, if Smiley had messed up it would have been his back half that was GONE.




I honestly don't know how he did it all, from the grinding down to the sticking together, I was trying to not pay attention as much as I could. I just kept thinking about the best times in my life, when I ended up being tossed into a saxophone case or a hat next to a guitarist. I knew I would probably end up in a speak easy. Prohibition had started when I was very young. The interesting thing about telling people they can't have something is they just want it more. Being money I know this better than most.

After my new re-minting as a cheat coin for a low level gang-land thug, I saw the inside of many gin-joints and speak-easies. There was always a card game going and always something nice playing. I can't even think of how many people we cheated. Billy and me, I finally figured out that was his name, the guy that liked to toss me into the air, and he never missed. He was so good at swapping me out for a real coin that was in about the same shape as me. If some jamook thought he was getting wise. The guy would try to catch me before Billy could but they never managed it, Billy was a genius at slight of hand. One second I'd be in the air flipping like mad the next I'd be hidden while the wise guy would be inspecting my square and true cousin that still had his back, and apologizing up one side and down the other to Billy for trying to call him a cheat. There was usually a scuffle. Nothing ever too mean, Billy would push them they would beg forgiveness and run if they were smart. If they were dumb they would be picking up their teeth and whimpering away.

Why would anyone want to have a 2 headed CENT... a quarter maybe, but heck anything smaller is just not easy to catch. For some reason that is what Billy wanted, and he never missed. I never could understand that, it was like he had a special magnet in his hand that actually attracted copper.

I bet you're wondering about my other HALF. Well so am I. I never once heard a single word from him. I think that day with Smiley took too much away from him to ever come back, and being where I am I can't exactly have a face to face sit down chat with him, now can I? I've tried to see him while flipping reflected in double mirrors in bars, but I can only ever see slight glimpses. he looks sad, and worn and old.

Billy and me we went everywhere. I won him a free steak dinner in Atlantic City, on the board walk. I could not believe how big the ocean was. I was a "City Coin" I was born in Philly but never actually saw the place, I was bundled up and sent to New York. There is a nice ocean view from the Big Apple, but the boardwalk was just so much more impressive. There was a storm rolling in but the people just stayed. It was only a light summer sprinkle but it was amazing to see.

I never know what happened to Billy, I never saw him again after we parted company. I never got flipped quite like he could again. I like to think that after almost six years of good service he was giving me retirement but I think he was just drunk. He came out of a club stinking of booze, I was the only coin in his pocket, he'd spent the rest on a bottle to take home. It really did feel kind of lonely in that pocket. I guess he was feeling lonely too. His best girl had just gone splitz-ville with some other joker on the pay roll of Billy's boss, so Billy couldn't do anything with out starting a gang war.

So like I said, Billy was drunk, very drunk, and very sad. As he walked out of the bar he tried to put his bottle in his coat pocket and almost dropped it. It took him a few seconds to find out why he couldn't put the bottle in, because he forgot to lift the flap on the pocket. This problem solved he staggered off in the direction of a lone guitar. It was playing a happy tune, I like jazz and blues both. But right now I was so glad to be hearing a happy tune. As we got closer I could feel him sober up a little, he started walking in stride with the music, he was almost dancing by the time we got to the player and he stopped and started tapping his feet. I was happy that he was happy, if only for a moment. Then it came, that last perfect flip. Even drunk he never missed, but he didn't catch me... At first I thought he was going to toss the guy for what he had in his guitar case, but the usual 'I'll flip you for it', 'double or nothing', 'I always take heads' didn't come. Instead he said "Thanks man, I really needed that." and there it was... the LAST perfect flip and into the case I went.

I sat there in the cold wondering when Billy was coming back for me, he never did. I was enjoying the music so there was that at least. I was bundled up into a pocket with all the other change in the case not long after Billy left.

"Well? What are you now?"... Did he just talk to me? Now Billy talked to me but only to distract the mark. I can't remember how many times I heard him say 'come on you hit tails the last three times, it better be heads this time... YES, Heads! Pay Up!'. That was just part of the game, he wasn't really talking to me. But this guy, this guitarist was actually talking TO me. He flipped me over and over, I could feel agility in his fingers but nothing like Billy's. "Well Ain't ya a strange duck! And a Two Headed duck at that, I think I got's my self a new good luck piece." George was his name and he traveled a lot. Jumping freight trains and riding the rails. He kept me separate from his other change so he didn't spend me by mistake. I was in his left hand pants pocket, with a bunch of guitar picks.

I saw a news paper one day and realized I was ten years old. TEN! More than half my life had been spent as a cheat, a fraud. All I knew was how to trick people. But in the end the bankers cheated us all, one week you could toss a few coins on a diner's counter and eat a feast. The next week a few bucks couldn't get you a loaf of stale bread.


To Be Continued....

... In "George and the Giant Depression"