Thoughts On Common Cents In A Time Capsule

That's actually a cool idea, Brandmeister. If only local coin shows were a thing. It seems I remember one, here, 20 years or so ago.
It's odd for a town of 200K to not have an active coin collecting thing going on, isn't it?

When people make time capsules, they usually preserve things from the date of the capsule's founding - so a capsule founded in 2026 would likely be expected to have a collection of 2026 coins, not rolls of coins from 1962.

The other item to note is that time capsules are not foolproof methods of preservation. Remember Miss Belvedere, that 1957 Plymouth car buried for 50 years in a time capsule in Tulsa. Intended as a gift to the future to be opened at Oklahoma's centennial, when it was finally opened in 2007 it was found that water had flooded into the vault and the car had become so badly rusted that it was not salvageable.


That depends. What was the original purpose of keeping them? And do they still serve that purpose?

If they were kept in the hope of future value, then sorry, that was futile - mainly because while you were saving EF-AU examples of 1962 coins in the 1970s, there were plenty of people in 1962 saving MS examples, thus keeping demand for such coins very low.

If they were saved because "they were too nice to spend" and you wished to preserve them from deterioration, then congratulations, you have succeeded in that goal. The "future generations" you have saved them for might not be too appreciative of them, but they're there if they want them.

Consider what might have happened if you'd simply kept that money in the bank, instead of withdrawing it as pennies. "Hundreds of rolls" of pennies amounts to several hundred dollars in face value. A couple hundred dollars sitting in the bank in 1972 would have accumulated a couple thousand dollars in compound interest by now, which sounds like a lot but $2000 today still buys you less things than $200 would have bought you in 1972; the deposit account interest rates have mostly not kept up with inflation. But that would still have been better than the face value you'd get if you just banked them all today, or the "double face value" you'd get for your hoarded pennies if you dumped your coins onto the market as-is. In hindsight, you'd have been better off (financially) by spending those pennies straight away on something else - perhaps buying a small stash of gold and silver coins. Of course, to gain "full value" for your gold-and-silver hoard today you'd have had to resist the temptation to cash it out during the various price peaks that have come and gone between then and now.


If we're discussing "what the heirs and successors do to the hoard", then I'd agree - if no-one in the family is interested enough in the coins to either treasure them themselves or to learn how to maximize value for them, then "just banking them" is their likely fate. If that bothers you greatly enough, then the only recourse is to do something about it yourself, while you can still control the process. You know that there are places you can take them that will give you more than face value for them (eBay, coin clubs, coin dealers, etc). Blink away the sentimental tears, bite the bullet, and sell them.

Or, if "maximizing money received for their sale" is important to you, sort through them for errors/varieties first. You almost certainly won't find any million-dollar coins, but you might find a couple of $10 ones. Whoever buys your coins is probably going to do that themselves anyway; it might as well be you that gets the benefits from your own hoard of coins.

Finally, if the financial aspect isn't really that important to you and you're feeling charitable, there are probably some missions and charities around your area that accept donated stamp and coin collections. Those charities likely have "coin people" on their committees, who know how to maximize value of donated coins to ensure the charity receive maximum funds. It's win-win-win: you get to support a charity that's meaningful to you, the charity gets money from the sale of donated items, and the coins end up in the hands of other collectors who actually want them.