What Makes Your Heart Race?

I get excited when I see any real shiny coin in hopes it's a 2010. My son was born about 10 months ago and ever since I have saved every single 2010 coin I have come across. Between roll searching and pocket change I will realize I could have bought a house with it! Well, maybe an expensive dinner for two, but you get the point.

Cracking open that first roll

Lots of circulated finds keep me going but the best heart racer was from a hopper of quarters dumped out on a table and on top was a uncirculated 1932 staring at me along with many other silver brothers. It was the last one I turned over.

wheaties... and War Nickels.

My wife.

My heartbeat actually rose, but sank when I was at a local fleamarket recently and came across a space where the lady was selling misc junk...but in that junk there was a large jar filled with cents, by looking at the sides of the jar and sifting through what was on top, roughly 1 out of 3 were wheat cents with Two Cent rolls burried with the ends facing up. One roll had the closed end facing up, but the other had a wheatback facing up. As my heart pounded, I quickly asked the lady how much for the jar, she looked extremely confused and gave me an even stranger look and asked, "you want to buy money?" I said, yes, I collect coins...she took the jar from me and said, "these aren't for sale..." as she simultaneously kicked a partially torn 1 gallon plastic bag stuffed with cents that was sitting on the floor. My jaw must have hit the floor. I didn't even see that bag sitting on the asphalt in a puddle of water. In fact I didn't even know if there were wheats in there, I just had a strong feeling that it was from the same source as where the jar came from. But I tried keeping my cool, and told her I'd give her $75 for the jar and bag...then she really got spooked because I was offering that kind of money, and refused to sell. As I left feeling defeated and like I had lost access to a truly unsearched hoard of cents...no sooner had I started leaving the canopy and tables, she said something to her son, and I saw him scrambling to pick up the bag of cents and removing it from the sale area.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have been greedy and just offered to purchase the two rolls after she denied my offer to buy...but I was just blinded by the excitement of finding what I believed to be an old and truly unsearched hoard cents.

-LTB

I think she is there every weekend and as she picks up stuff throughout the week and just adds to the junk. I don't think she even takes the stuff home when the weekend is over...just bungee ties tarps over everything and calls it a day. It's a disorganized mess. Like the bag of cents that was on the ground had clearly been stepped on and kicked while people rummaged through the junk on the tables. There's stuff piled on the tables and even underneath the tables, hanging on walls, etc. She's probably just a hoarder, who sells misc items to finance her hoarding appetite and doesn't even know what she has or finds, she just hoards anything in the hopes it may sell.

I don't think anything she has for sale is worth $75...in fact, I would've probably had a better chance of making a deal if I really lowballed her...but I'm not about cheating people; I wanted to be fair. The real shame is that I bet that after they briefly looked over the "pennies" and couldn't figure out why I wanted them so badly, just ended up dumping them into a CoinStar machine and getting 90 cents on the dollar.

-LTB