Incredible Find

OK, it's completely credible, but still large and exciting:

I've been helping an elderly widow in our community move to a new house after her husband passed away. As we were moving some boxes she came came across her father's stamp collection and mentioned that he also had a coin collection.

This was a few months ago. Last night she said she wanted to give me her father's coin collection as a thank you for all of the help since she knew I was a collector. She talked it down a bit: "I know he had a lot of Lincoln cents and few Indian heads, so I think you'll enjoy it."

I got the box home and opened it and the first thing I saw was on old Whitman book full of Morgan dollars, then another, then another, then several books of Walking Libertys, Franklins and 1964 Kennedys; then several books of Washingtons. Then there were rolls of dollars, halves, quarters and dimes--all pre-1965. I did a rough count and the total came to about $225 face value.

Of course I had to call her back and tell her that I could not accept the $3,500 dollars worth of silver she had sent home with me.

Still, she does want me to help her sell most of it (and she said she'll give me a nice cut of the loot). So I'm going to spend the next several weeks going through it, checking for valuable error varieties (I'll probably need some help from the forum). Most of it is just junk silver and many of the dollars had been polished, but the sheer amount was almost overwhelming to me! To top it off, I pulled an old envelope from the bottom of the box containing several small unremarkable denominations, but for some reason a 1901-S half eagle had been thrown in there too!

I'll post some pictures and updates as I go through all of this. I don't expect to find any rarities but I have already seen several neat ancillary artifacts associated with the collection that I think are as wonderful as any of the coins.

Stay tuned...