Apologies in advance if this is a bit of a rambling post...
My father passed away a couple of months ago at the age of 76. At the time, I didn't post anything about it here on the forums because I was having a difficult time dealing with it. He had been ill for a number of years, having survived a heart attack, colon and prostate cancer, near total kidney failure (he had half of one kidney still functioning), MRSA (which he got in the hospital after his heart attack), amputation of some toes due to gangrene, diabetes, general circulation issues and probably some other problems I didn't even know about. Despite all that, though, his death was actually unexpected. I mean, he spent most of his life going from one doctor to another, but he wasn't actually in the hospital and still managed to live a mostly normal life at home with his wife (my step-mother). In fact, I talked with him on the phone the night before he passed away and he seemed as "normal" as ever. We used to call him the Energizer Bunny because, regardless of the crisis, he always managed to just keep going and going and going...
In the end, we don't know exactly what he died of. He died while in the bathroom, having fallen and hit his head on the bathtub, but the coroner said there was almost no blood and he most likely was dead before he hit the bathtub. Could have been a heart attack, could have been a stroke, but whatever it was it was quick and (hopefully) painless. My step-mother found him and it's a relief to know that he didn't die from the fall and wasn't bleeding to death while she was in another part of the house.
Anyway...
My dad was a big stamp collector in his younger days and also did a little coin collecting. Most of his coin collecting, however, revolved around amassing silver half dollars (Kennedy, Franklin and Walking Liberty) and not much more than that. Over the last few years, as I started getting into coin collecting as an adult, I frequently talked about the coins I was collecting. And, a couple of months before he passed away, I had the chance to show him a bunch of my "best" coins (primarily proof versions of
Seated Liberty coinage, my new proof
Trade dollar, my proof
Morgan dollar, etc.) He had never seen classic proofs before and really got a kick out of seeing them. He was also fascinated by the early coins in my collection, since he had never seen a Seated Liberty coin before. Although it doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things, I am just so glad that I had the chance to share those coins with him before he died.
Jump ahead a few months and I just found out that I will actually be getting a modest inheritance from his estate (split among myself and my three siblings). Not enough to retire on, and most of it is going straight into my 10-year-old son's college fund. After some thought, though, I decided to honor my father's memory and use some of the money to purchase a couple of coins that I'm sure he would have appreciated and that I may not have otherwise purchased for myself. I toyed with the idea of finally getting a proof
Seated Liberty dollar or
Twenty Cent Piece, but those are both on my list of coins I hope to buy someday and would probably eventually buy anyway. So, instead, I decided to go with an 1877 Draped Bust Dollar (which will be my very first pre-1800 coin) and a really nice proof
Morgan dollar that would normally be way outside my budget (I already own a proof
Morgan dollar, but not as high grade and not nearly as much eye appeal). Both were purchased at
APMEX and are certified, which means I probably paid a bit too much, but I wanted to get them from some place reliable and didn't want to wait until I made it to a coin show next year. Together, the coins set me back around $6000.
I hope to have both coins in hand next week some time, but here are the pics from the seller. In addition, the proof
Morgan dollar is certified by PCGS and has a TrueView image available, which I'll post here as well. If it's even half as nice in hand I'll have to keep wiping the drool off it.
All right, sorry for the lengthy story. Thank in advance for the condolences, but I really just wanted to take the opportunity to share these magnificent coins with you. They are beautiful in their own right, but knowing that I will be able to think about my dad every time I look a them just makes them even more special to me.
1799 Draped Bust Dollar:
1903 Proof Morgan Dollar:
Posted 10/27/2015 10:28 am
I love the eye appeal on the Morgan.
