Thought I'd share an interesting coin story for my 250th post.
My father plays poker just about every weekend with his brothers. He generally goes to the bank and gets rolls of quarters to play with. Out of pure luck he happened to be going over the roll he opened before putting it into the game. The roll was filled with brand new quarters, all the same year. All except one, that is.
This particular quarter had no date. In fact it had Washington on both sides. The coin looked just as gorgeous as the other coins that came out of the roll. After showing it to everyone at the table he pocketed the quarter. Later, out of curiosity, he took it to a local coin dealer. The dealer looked at it and was astounded at just how real it looked. The dealer looked at it under a magnifying lens and then told my father its a really really good fake. He then preceded to offer my father 100 dollars for it because of how real it looked. He turned the offer down.
So he took it to another dealer. He pretty much had a repeat of the other dealer. The dealer looked at it, then proceeded to offer and strangely high amount of money for a fake quarter. Again, my father didnt sell it.
Some years later I became extremely interested in coin collecting. I was spending what I could scrap together to get coins at the Antique fest and was reading books quite often on the subject. Then one day my father pulled the quarter out and told me the story. At the end of the story he told me I could have it and do what I want with it.
I took it to my boss and good friend who was the one who really got me into coin collecting. He was quite surprised about how good it looked. We looked at it under a stereoscope looking for a seam where the two halves came together. We couldn't find it. We pulled out a scale and weighed it. Its weight was identical to that of a normal quarter.
About a year later I joined the
ANA and gained access to submitting to the NGC. Along with a few other coins, I decided to send the quarter in. A few days after sending it out, I received a phone call from the NGC. After inspecting my coins they felt I needed to increase the shipping insurance on my coins because of the quarter.
A couple weeks past and the coins finally showed up in the mail. I had a similar experience as many do when they send their first coin into the NGC, I got some body bags. Then I saw the quarter in the beautiful, beautiful, wait for it, body bag. Yeah, they called it a fake. Had you going for a sec, didnt I? Either way, I had a blast with the quarter, still have it today and will probably resubmit it someday just for fun.
wow you totally had me falling for it. I was really excited haha
Posted 10/22/2015 4:05 pm
