How Far Back Can We Go? Second Edition! Ended At 1492 Waiting On 1491

1909 vdb

1909 Canadian large cent

My dad found this when he was digging a garden bed in the late '80s.

jeffrose, that's the way to find 'em !

Storytime: I was a pubescent kid in '59 with not enough spending money to afford a roll of cents (unless it was a 25c. roll; remember those?); no way to get to a bank, and parents too distracted/disinterested to help. I did manage to convince my grandparents to search their pocket change, and that's how I acquired my early Wheat cent S and D mints.

My fantasy is a trip in the Wayback machine to six years before my father was born, where I would lovingly persuade my earnest, practical and detail oriented grandpa to set aside from his struggling shoe shop business, the immense sum of -nine dollars- by going to the local Seattle bank and buying six unopened rolls of the brand-new Lincoln pennies, two each for each of his future grandkids. Oh and be sure to check that they have those mysterious tiny initials on the back. And while he was at it, pick up a roll for each of us of the previous Indian style too.



It's sort of discouraging to realize that for practical purposes, *all* the loose ess-veedeebees have been claimed by the coin hobby in some articulation or other; that you're -> not <- gonna find one roll hunting nowadays, and short of metal detecting beneath the floorboards of every town in the west, there is no way to increase the available stock. They are all in the secondary market now, requiring one to simply choose a favorite source, price-shop carefully, and worry about the mortgage next month.

So the Lincoln album I started around age eight or so, that contains coins contributed by three generations of identically yclept casual collectors, continues to remain unfilled.

For the price of that one penny in a grade that would compare well with most of the rest of the album, I can purchase multiple handfuls of coins such as the one below, equally as or more attractive than a similar size copper featuring a murdered politician an American icon/hero for the Ages.
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1909 RUSSIA 15 KOPEKS; 0.500 silver; 20mm; mintage= 21.6 mil. :

Uruguay 2 Centisimos

That last coin is a little old for 1909 ...

British India 1908 1/12 Anna with nearly shattered obverse die

1908 IHC

1908 10 Cash from China- Kwangtung Province



Steve