Sharing Stories. Know A Person With A Super Rare Coin(S)?

My calculus teacher in high school also ran the school coin club. At one meeting he pulled out a sequence of three or four Canadian 1948 dollars encased together, where the northern lights on the reverse progressively disappeared, all gem. My memory of it is hazy since it was 40 years ago, but at the time everyone in the club was drooling over what he said the value was. Many of us were also in his calculus class, and we heard a rumor from previous older kids who said to bug him to "show us his books", so all year long we bugged him about it. Finally close to the end of school, we came to class and he had a couple old books standing up on his desk. It was a first edition of Isaac Newton's Principia. At that time (1975) he said it was worth $100000. Maybe $500k today. Here we all are, staring incredulously at this calc teacher who brings a hundred grand into a classroom. His coin collection was amazing; every week it was something. I can't remember them all but I know I got to hold a 1909S VDB. I always wondered what that guy was doing teaching high school math.

A buddy of mine was helping a family settle their mom's estate. She had worked at Woolworth's for 40 years and had a large number of leather purses in the basement filled with silver coinage. He doled out the Mercs by the pound, scanned through the SLQs for any 1916s then separated them out. He told them what to look for in the Washington quarters and the Walking halves. But he personally went through the Morgans. He said he was scanning the dates of each one (there were a few hundred) when he got to a specific one - 1893. He was too excited to turn it over and risk the disappointment of a CC or an O or nothing, so he set it aside. But curiosity won out and he slowly flipped it over to reveal - an S! He sent it in and it graded out as an F12. The family sold it to him for about half of FMV for all the work he put in for them. Of course, those of us who are collectors know that wasn't work at all.

I posted this thread twice (I messed up) so we can have DOUBLE the fun!

I grew up in a middle class family, but with old money from the grandparents, and strangely enough, not a one of those grandparents nor any of their society friends collected rare coins. They seemed to prefer stamps, silver tea sets, and other things. My grandmother collected bells, Meissen porcelain and Victorian tea sets, and my grandfather collected 19th century firearms and shot glasses.

My dad was an avid coin collector. He gave me his collection when I was still in elementary school, bank notes and coins. This was supplemented soon by my grandmother who gave me a roll of mixed Morgan and Peace dollars she and my grandpa had saved from change in Nevada during frequent trips to Reno, and also about a 1/2 lb. bag of 40% Kennedy halves and circulated washington/roosevelts. No rare coins to be found. Didn't bother me. Still doesn't. I spent a lot of time in law firms growing up, surely some of the lawyers had rare coins, right? Nope. They spent their money on Cuban cigars, cognac, wine, and ever-larger houses filled with ever-increasing amounts of antiques.

I can honestly say that I have never met anyone outside of the bourse at a show who owns even a single super-rare coin, much the pity. Out of the 90+ employees in my department, none of them collects coins except me. It would be quite joyous indeed to bump into someone at work or out on the town who has something super-rare, but it just hasn't happened for me yet.

I remain optimistic, at any rate, that this should occur at some point in time so that I may have a story of my own to share along the lines of "I once knew someone..."

Yours in collecting,
AB

OspreyCoins I missed your post so I do not even know what coin you are reference. If you can be subtle about it try or you can PM me because now I am curious.

@ospreycoins - what coin is it? I don't care so much about the story you apparently cannot tell but I do want to know what the coin was if you'd be so kind as to indulge me.

Thanks

@Osprey is leaving me hanging.