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 Replies: 40 / Views: 4,358 |
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Valued Member
United States
293 Posts |
My wife and I are out of state on a long weekend visiting some of her family and I decided to hit up one of the local coin shops just to see what was available...always a fun way to knock out an hour or two during vacation while my wife is having fun with relatives. They had a really nice, clean, used Dansco 7070 US Type album at the shop for a good price and I've been thinking about picking one up and trying to work on a set, so I figured why not. I get back to the house and my wife asks what I bought, so I show her and and my aunt (who we're staying with) and she says she's been meaning to show us my wife's grandfather's old coins to see if we wanted them (he passed away several years ago, but collected coins mostly from change for most of his life). She asks me to go to the garage with her to help and proceed to bring in several boxes of coins. Once we dig in, we find that it's mostly wheat pennies in tubes and jars, separated out by year, going back mostly to the 40s, but also a few in the 10s-30s. Lots also of nickles, dimes, quarters, halves, dollars, some silver certificates, $2 bills, etc. Not a ton of silver, but a good bit in there. Even a few Half Dimes. My wife was pretty excited to start filling in the 7070 with her grandfather's coins and even wanted to go to the bookstore to pick up some folders to make sets of the pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters that he had collected. The three of us sorted through them for hours Saturday night and a little bit today...I think we've got a pretty good handle on what's in there now. Nothing seems to be terribly valuable monetarily, but it's been awfully valuable to me in getting my wife to see how much fun building a set of coins can be. She likes the idea of having something that was passed down from her grandfather that he started and that she has now worked on. And if we have kids, we can pass the coins along to them one day. We're also thinking about building additional sets of at least the pennies (since those are the ones he collected the most of) for the other grandchildren so they'll have something from grandpa's coin collection. It's been a good weekend! I'm glad I made the trip to the coin shop and picked up that 7070  |
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Valued Member
United States
168 Posts |
Nothing like getting someone else to see why a hobby can be so awesome. I'm still working on getting my family interested as well, but it's been seven years and still no luck... |
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Valued Member
Australia
465 Posts |
Nice story.
I hope my kids / grandkids (none yet of course) will think like that one day.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
14454 Posts |
even though the coins monetary value may not be that much the memories they just made are priceless and something you two will remember the rest of you life
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Pillar of the Community
United States
533 Posts |
That's how I got into coins. My Grandmother had a bunch of old coins that I used to dig through when I was a kid. Then I came across a bunch of solver my Great Grandmother had put away and that was it. I still have all of those coins that were passed down and I believer one or two may be in my 7070. I don't know if my Daughter will get the bug but, like you, I hope to leaves something interesting that may spark an interest in this hobby that I love. At this point it's pure conjecture as my Daughter just turned four.
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Valued Member
 United States
293 Posts |
I've seen so many instances, just in my short time back in this hobby, of people coming into a shop with a book or box of "dad's coins" and asking how much are they worth that this experience was wonderful to see. Of course there was the "you know, some of these could actually be worth some money" talk, but most of what my wife and her aunt were chatting about were memories of him. How he ended up with all of the coins he had, where he had lived when he was collecting, etc. I learned a lot about him just through their talking during coin sorting. Heck, I never even knew that he collected coins before this past weekend! And apparently, we were doing all of this work with his collection on his birthday which my wife thought was quite appropriate :) We filled several folders for pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters which go back to the teens and before (I'll probably talk her into moving them to Dansco albums when we get home, but I definitely didn't want to stifle the fun while here!) and the 7070 has a good start including Half Dimes, silver dollars, half dollars, etc that go back to the 1800s. It was good to see that people could see these really old coins that he collected and be more interested in the fact that HE collected them than "hey, you collect coins, how much do you think we can get for these?!" I know that times are tough and money is money, but I was very happy to see people appreciate the collecting side and especially the human side of this! Thanks for all of the comments :) jcook54, great start to your collecting as well! Cool story! |
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Moderator
 United States
187702 Posts |
These are the kinds of stories that make this hobby great!  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
8904 Posts |
Stories like this make me VERY happy! Congratulations!  |
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Valued Member
United States
153 Posts |
I think this hobby is Fantastic. I have a five year old daughter. She sees I collect coins and now she wants to collect everything. She collects everything from rocks to leafs to sticks to papers. I can't wait until she gets a little older so she can understand the hobby and get involved. I would really love it. I have a 55' DDO my father got in change at a local corner store in 1989. I would love to pass it down to her and she pass it down to her child (if she has any). Like I said I think this hobby is Fantastic |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
533 Posts |
My Daughter is the same way. right now here "treasures" are stored in an old lunch box and consist mainly of gravel, real gravel. She does like coins though and I try to keep her interested by letting her play with old Ike dollars or circulated halves. Someday I hope she'll get into. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
797 Posts |
Those stories are great. That is kind of what got me into coins. My grandfather had a pretty nice collection of coins. Some are pretty valuable and some are not, but mainly I just like seeing the (mostly) complete sets from many years ago. Plus it is fun sorting through them with my father and trying to fill in some of the holes in his collection. Luckily for us, there are not too many holes...but some of those hole are VERY expensive coins that may never be filled. Mainly it serves as good memories of those who have passed on and good times with family that are still living and can enjoy it with you.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
625 Posts |
My father passed his coin collection on to me this summer and I have been working on building on to what he had. I hope to get my kids interested in coins to pass the collection on to them some day. I know I will most likely be long gone when they pass it to their kids but I do it all now to keep it as a family keep sake that can be enjoyed by generations. Thats what I love about this hobby.
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Valued Member
United States
293 Posts |
We had quite the trip today...approx. 95lbs of mostly rolled coins in a duffel bag. Carried on a 3hr flight half way across the country...luckily the plane wasn't completely full. Getting through airport security was interesting to say the least. I thought they were going to start individually dumping out the rolls of coins at one point, but they just hand searched everything and let me re-pack it all up and I was on my way. The duffel bag is destroyed (I wasn't exactly planning to haul coin across the country on this trip) but everything seems to have made it intact. I guess I'll be out shopping for Dansco albums tomorrow...
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3294 Posts |
How much extra did they charge you for carrying that extra weight?
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Valued Member
United States
293 Posts |
nod2003:
$0! I think, after this experience, that a lot of the weight issue is more about the people who have to deal with the luggage than things like gas, etc. They don't expect that many people will carry on a 95lb bag...it was pretty awful...so they didn't charge anything. My wife and I were sort of expecting a charge (and so were the airport screeners), so she checked at the gate and they said that as long as it fit under the seat and we didn't try to put it in the overhead, it would be fine at that weight. Trying to put it in the overhead would be a safety hazard.
It might also have helped that we were flying Southwest...they still allow 2 checked bags, 1 carry-on, and 1 personal item (all for free) when most airlines are charging for some of that. They didn't seem to mind it at all as long as we were handling the bag and they weren't. If we had checked it, there would have been a charge because it was over the 50lb checked bag limit. I was also scared of checking it because of the condition of the duffel bag.
We asked a local coin dealer what the best way to do all of this was...we were planning to ship them back via USPS. He said if he was going to a coin show, he'd take stuff in a carry-on so that's what he'd recommend. That's what we tried and other than the cumbersome nature, it worked just fine.
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Valued Member
United States
436 Posts |
It's great that you're continuing with the passion he had. I really hope my daughter looks at my collection when the time comes, and does the same thing. Good Luck!
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Replies: 40 / Views: 4,358 |
Posted 11/02/2009 06:02 am
