For the past few days I've been engaged in the numismatic equivalent of dumpster-diving: I've been sorting through a pair of "sealed" 35-pound bags of ... well, items ... rejected from CoinStar machines provided to me by my local coin shop. Here are a few of them:
The "sad cent" looks as if someone took a torch to it and melted off the copper. Very sad. But next to it is a 10-centime piece from France, then a 5 centims coin from Andorra, and lastly an 1857 USA half-dime. The other side of it is worn smooth, unfortunately.
The second row tokens are probably Japanese Pachinko game tokens; note the random English-word inscription on the one. If you recognize any of these, please post what you know about them. I've retrieved over a hundred of them. Pachinko used to be quite the time-waster in Japanese game parlors; dunno if it still is. Maybe not if I've been able to find all these tokens rejected by CoinStar machines.
Other retrieved items which I decided NOT to share include keys, nuts, bolts, bobby pins, buttons, slugs, medals and "danglies", a lot of tiny cardboard "punchouts", grunge, and more gum than I ever remember seeing stuck under seats in my classroom - ewww! I also have added a large number of current Euro coins and Mexican reform coinage to my collection, including Japanese 100-yen pieces and a few 2-Euro and 10-peso pieces which are worth too much to be dumped into a CoinStar machine. (The Japanese coins will go to my brother, who lives in Japan; the other Euro coinage has been separated and will go to the shop owner; the Mexican coinage will go to a friend who has relatives in Mexico.)
At any rate, I've had fun in going through these bags and plan to go through more in spite of ending up with filthy fingers after each sort. Hey, it's much more fun than playing Pachinko!
Posted 10/03/2009 4:15 pm
