CRH in the 50's

[jrf30]

This is from Dan Soawrd, in NUmismatic news. I found this section very interesting. Amazing how things have changed. :-)

<< Like many of you, I started collecting when I was around 10. That would be 1957, if you are interested. As a teen-ager, the local bank let me and one of my friends use one of their back rooms to go through bags of pennies, nickels and dimes to fill the holes in our Whitman folders. My friend actually found a G-VG 1916-D Mercury dime during our time at the bank.>>

WOW.

ANyway, just an FYI. Oh, how it must have been back then to search. Shoot - EVERY coin was silver or wheat. ALL of them. LOL. How do you sort if they ALL are keepers? :-)

[silvereagle78]

Ha, I never thought about how it was back then. Definitely times have changed, Imagine a bad day for them is not finding a key date or a double die

[golden silver]

Back then they were'nt keepers and silver was worth face. But I dream of the old coins people used to spend on the regular basis. Kids playing the game in the back yard of how many coins can you toss in the hole then running off foregetting about the coins. Wow the treasure that still lays hidden. My dad said as a kid in the early sixties in Montana you would pay with a bill and get change back in silver dollars. Amaizing. Can't imagine it.

Golden Silver

[treasurefiend]

Back in the day my uncles both worked in a laundy mat and they both had Mercury dime collections, well they got into scuba diving and they sold their collections for face value to buy 2 spear guns!!! Lets just say my grandpa was more that ticked off at them!!!

[AGCoinHunter]

Back then it was errors and key dates. Silver was the norm. How is wish it was still like that.

[Ju8vP3t]

Didn't the slots in Vegas pay out in Morgan Dollars back in the day?

[scotty1418]

I think the sad part is that since all the coins were silver there wasn't a mad rush to pull the older coins out. I have heard stories of normal change in the 60s with mercury dimes, barber coinage and even some earlier.

We have lost that with the clad coins.

[silverfinder]

I became interested in coin collecting around 1958, when I was nine or ten. I began collecting pennies at that time. It was absolutely no big deal in those days, and into the early 1960s, to find scads of pre-1920 cents, although the oldest ones I found were 1910, and these were common. A few kids my age found one or two 1909 cents, but none with mint marks, and no Indian cents. Buffalo nickels were everywhere, and so were Standing Liberty quarters (most already worn slick), Walking Liberty halves (including early ones with mint marks on the obverse), and Mercury dimes. Every bank had silver dollars on hand, and many of these were virtually uncirculated and still highly lustrous, even those from the 1800s. I would occasionally buy one with a dollar bill given to me as a birthday or holiday gift, keep it for a while, and then spend it after I became bored with carrying it around. Despite the fact that I never encountered Barber coins, Indian head cents, or V-nickels in change, these coins were still circulating in small numbers, and had I the interest and financial wherewithal to pursue coin roll hunting back then (remember - I was only a kid) I am certain that appreciable numbers of such coins, along with Seated coins, Columbian Exposition and Carver half dollars, and possibly even a few Shield nickels would have turned up in Fed boxes and in bank bags.
My most valuable coin received in change - and this was in 1965 or '66 - was a 1918/17D nickel, worn but with the date still quite readable. At that time, Buffalo nickels were still common. But by 1970 or so, they, along with most silver coins, were largely gone from circulation.

[Rich Hartford]

Didn't the slots in Vegas pay out in Morgan Dollars back in the day?

They were still used in the 60's.

[obediah]

Most people just go thru life without examining it, I've met (and enjoy) talking to older people who's eyes have been open who have lived informed lives, just a few now, and most seem to have known what is happening today was coming, they just thought it would of been sooner. Nothing is the same as it was say in the 50's or before- it was a different world in too many ways to list.

[Rich Hartford]

I never payed much attention to the coins I had as a kid. As soon as I got it, I spent it. I remember when the pennies changed from wheaties to memorial. Never ran across an IH, V nickel, or a Morgan/Peace Dollar. It was not uncommon to get an SLQ or Buffalo nickel. Even back then most were worn out. I can remember my mother sending me to the corner store with a half dollar which was usually a Franklin or a Walker.I never had a Kennedy that I can recall. Dimes were a mix between Mercs and Rosies. I had a paper route in 1964 so I guess when I went out to collect on Friday's it was all silver I was getting.
I would guess that silver circulated throughout the 60's. I remember I had a friend that had a cigar box filled with rolled silver quarters. He was saving them because they were silver. I thought he was nuts.

[mistergee]

Can you imagine purchasing a box of halfs and EVERY coin was silver? i think my head would explode.

[Ju8vP3t]

Didn't the slots in Vegas pay out in Morgan Dollars back in the day?

They were still used in the 60's.

That's what I thought Rich, I think it was in the movie "Ocean's Eleven", the original with Old Blue Eyes, one scene when he was in a casino, people were playing dollar slots with morgans....forgot the movie, but the scene was in Penn Central RR station in the '40's, before wide-spread air travel, this guy is sitting at a lunch counter, gets up to leave and asks the girl "what do I owe you?" camera pans down at her pad, he had steak & eggs, toast, potatos, juice, and coffee with a piece of apple pie, she added it up, and it came out to $1.15 .. that'd hardly get you coffee now days..

[mountainman 2]

Can you imagine purchasing a box of halfs and EVERY coin was silver? i think my head would explode.

Who could afford to back then. Wasn't that about a month's pay for most people?

[Silver Stripe]

The old men at the coin club I joine CRHed back in the day "when you could find something" as they call it. (Noone knows I CRH now, period). They hunted the Barbers and before and threw the Walkers and Bens back. Times got tight they would spend the Barbers without a second thought- kinda says something about how much Seated was still floating around. HH Mark
BTW I'm trying to get one of these ole farts to adopt ME LOL.

[Rich Hartford]

Can you imagine purchasing a box of halfs and EVERY coin was silver? i think my head would explode.

Who could afford to back then. Wasn't that about a month's pay for most people?

In 1957 the minimum wage was $1.00 an hour. My father earned somewhere between $55.00-$65.00 a week which was enough to raise 3 kids at the time. My mother did not have to work.
So a box of halves was more then a months wages

[rileyboy]

Great post here! I found it while reviewing many of the posts that I have never seen. You guys know I'm a history buff when it comes to CRHing decades ago. Just thought I'd bring up jrf's post for many of the newbies to read and enjoy. Remember, this post was made back in 2009.
rileyboy

[mlayers]

Can you imagine back then. You would be find standing liberty, walkers, barbers man some nice old coins. Lets make a time machine and go back into time wow what a heart stopper that would be....Matt

[SFBayArea]

Well, everyone talks about every coin being a keeper.. but not so in those days. I'm sure silver prices back then were still lower than face value so no one wanted to keep plain 90%ers.

I spoke to a guy who collected coins in the 60's and he said back then it was easy to find standing liberty quarters and mercs. They were everywhere. Buffalos were still common in the 60's.

This is the same idea as me says in the 80-90's, copper pennies aren't worth crap. I even remember finding copper pennies in a dumpster back in the 90's. Someone threw away $2.00 worth of copper pennies. Inflation over time makes all prices go up even metal. Although, there are better investments such as stocks and such which keep up with inflation, I'd rather have money in coins than paper money (which has the lowest potential value out of anything).

I'm also sure if I kept my boxes of 2001-D uncirculated halves and wait 20 years, they will have a premium. No doubt about that. I could say in 20 years, every coin in that box was a keeper. If you look at it, uncirculated 80's OBW rolls have a premium ( not as much as silver but do have a premium).

My advice is that if you have paper money laying around, at least convert it to something else for the future (ie stocks, housing, precious metals, collectible coins). Paper money over time is just worthless. Sad to say but a 1980's $100 dollar bill is just worth $100. If you have $100 in uncirculated 80's rolls of halves, you'd at least get 50% premium. Perhaps if you wait 100 years, paper bills might have a small premium but not much since too many bills were printed last 20 years.

[kalebdad]

A 17 Year old kid making minimum wage in 1950 would have to work 750 hrs after tax to be able to afford a box of halves. That being said You Only had to work 1 Minimum Wage Hr to buy 1 Oz of Silver compared to today of 4.25hrs of Minimum wage to buy 1 oz of silver.

I guess what I am saying is the move in the 50's would have been buying bar not CRH.

.50 for $12 or .75 for $34