50 Year Old Coins Today Vs Then

It is now 2024, and coins from the mid 60's are commonly found in change. The last 90% silver coins were dated 1964 (even though some were minted in 1965 and 1966) and half dollars were changed to 40% silver clad for the years 1965 thru 1969, thereafter they too were the same copper-nickel clad as the dimes and quarters.

Pennies and nickels from even earlier can still be found from time to time. Even seasoned coin collectors will often spend or cash in average condition pennies and nickels from the 50's and 60's. Due to the conversion from silver to clad dimes and quarters from 1965 and later are common, anything before that are silver and only occasionally pop up in change, usually due to someone cashing in a coin collection or long-lost coin jar.

I often have thought about how such a scenario might have played out in past generations. For instance, in the early 1960's would it have been common to find 50-year-old coins in circulation?

Let's look at the penny as it had been made of copper from the start, it wasn't until the 1980's that it was changed to the cheaper zinc composition they use today, although there was some nickel used in Flying Eagle and Indian Head pennies before and during the Civil War and of course steel was used in 1943. In 1964 the Lincoln Penny had been around for 55 years, and a few years before the reverse was changed to the Lincoln Memorial from the Wheat design.

Due to the lack of real change to the common Wheat design for 50 years prior to the 1959 change it is likely that there were plenty of coins at 50 years old or more in common circulation. I remember in the later part of the 1960's buying a roll of 50 pennies with my allowance each week to look for old pennies and even found the occasional Indian Head penny. I probably had a dozen or so collected from this and change during the 60's and early 70's. I would toss back Wheats from the 40's and 50's as they were not yet old enough to keep.

How about the nickel? It hadn't been redesigned since 1938 but in the 60's finding a well-worn Buffalo nickel was not unusual, I found a few of these over the years. "Dateless" Buffalos were the most common but even better condition ones were found from time to time. Of course I would keep the silver WW2 nickels I would find.

Dimes and Quarters however were a different story. Due to the change from silver to clad most of the pre-1964 dated dimes and quarters were long gone by 1970. In the last 10 years I have found a couple each here and there in change. I have found more in CoinStar reject bins over this period as people cash in their coin jars and dead relative's coin collections. I suspect many of these came from stolen collections cashed in by ignorant thieves.

My sister worked as a bank teller in the 1970's and would save any silver she found and buy it from her drawer at the end of the day. Her bank had a procedure that allowed that, and she was able to recover several coffee cans of silver coins in this way. I did not have such a job, but probably would have done the same if I had.

Half Dollars were already pretty much gone from circulation by the 1970's due to both the silver situation and the Kennedy assassination. Due to the lack of use it was easier to find silver half's, be they 40% or 90$, including Franklins and the occasional Walking Liberty. While I could not afford to buy half dollars at the time (50 cents was my allowance for the entire week and I had pennies to search and candy to buy) my sister had bunches of them. 50-year-old halves were rare in the late 1960's for sure.

I have to mention Silver Dollars; at the time they were long a novelty, occasionally being given as a gift from Grandma. They were never used in circulation when I was growing up, even less so that the Golden Dollars are now. I have read that they were used in casinos and sometimes in exotic places like Wyoming and Montana but by the time I was old enough to be able to gamble or travel to these places they were long gone.

It is my opinion that 50-year-old coins are much more common today then 50 years ago, and many are tossed back with little regard for their age. The fact that they have little intrinsic value to the public has a lot to do with it. 50 years ago, the penny bought what a dime does today. You could buy a gallon of gas with a quarter, but that quarter was worth 10 times what it is today.

Coins today have no real purchasing power by themselves, they are mostly used to make change for cash purchases. When is the last time you went into a store and used coins to buy something? When you do the cashier looks at you like to are a fool. I had a pocket full of quarters a while back and bought a bottle of water at a local quick-mart for just under $2.00, the gal looked at me and asked if I broke open the grand-kid's piggy bank. Most coins are received in change, tossed in a jar and when that jar gets filled are cashed in, rarely are they used to buy something.