Roll searching or collecting stories

Immy · Feb 17, 2006

Here's my favorite -

About nine years ago I was at my favorite casino and sitting next to me was a young lady feeding pennies to her machine from a small cup. Out of habit I always try to glance at people's coins and drive myself nuts if I see a wheatie. I thought it was odd that there wasn't a shiny coin among them. In fact, they all looked pretty old and worn. My curiosity got to me and I said "Those look like old coins." She replied "Oh, yeah. They were my grandfather's." My eyes must have gotten as big as saucers and I knew I couldn't pass this up. Her cup was about half full (when full they hold about $5) and I told her I'd give her $5 for the rest. She happily agreed. Then she broke my heart by saying "Gee, I wish I had met you earlier. I've shoveled a whole bunch of these into these machines."

I wanted to cry! I thanked her (her name was April), cashed out my machine and drove home in a mood that was beyond giddy.

The contents of that cup still amaze me to this day. Some 350 pennies and 99% were pre-1935. Dozens of mintmarked teens, 20s & semi-keys but none of the big dates. The only ones missing from the series were the 1909-S VDB, 1909-S, 1914-D, 1915-S, 1922, 1931PS. Some of the earlier dates were in Fine and Very Fine. It took me over a week to ID and grade them all and kept me in a state of euphoria for weeks.

Any other roll searching/collecting stories?

Snee · Feb 17, 2006

I don't really have any inspirational or cool stories of my own...but I read a post from someone on here once about an article they read that talked about this guy dime roll hunting and he found like a $10 gold coin. That'd be a suprise...

The best story of my own, I guess, would be when I was a kid. My parents were helping me collect shells on the bank of this river and my dad found and gave me a 1935 quarter. It's totally smooth from the water, but it still has plenty of detail to tell what year, etc, it is. So that's the first coin of my collection.

Illinois Jeff · Feb 18, 2006

When i was a teenager, my family moved into a home next to a house full of young single guys. One afternoon i heard some noise out front and came out to see these guys cleaning their attic by throwing box after box out of the attic window. What a way to clean out the attic, but while watching them, a box they had thrown had split open on the asphalt driveway. My curiosity got to me and I approched the box to see numerous whitman coin folders. One of the guys laughingly said from above, "you can have that, theyre going into the garbage anyway". I had been a coin collector for about 5 years and at that point thought I could use the folders anyway. It wasnt until I got back into the house to have a closer look that I discovered that all of these folders, 20 in all were all full! They ranged from indian heads to standing liberties! It was at that point that I learned the expression about 1 mans junk being another mans treasure.

Immy · Feb 18, 2006

Wow, great story Jeff!

Here's another one that should have had a better ending.

My parents inherited a 1903 Specter & Sons player piano in the late 70s (right during my white hot early days in coin collecting) and hired a man to come over to restore and tune it. My whole family watched as he carefully took it apart piece by piece. As he was about to remove the keyboard he said "Now here's where we may find hidden treasure. Over the years children often slip coins in between the keys and they get permanently stuck under the keyboard." I immediately left my spot on the living room stairs and stood by the piano as he removed the keys and probed the dust beneath them revealing...nothing! What a let down.

If you know anyone with an old piano you never know what lurks beneath!

Snee · Feb 19, 2006

Immy, my dad's a piano technician. I was with him once on the job and he had to gut the piano to do stuff to the strings and pinblock. Inside was a 1904 or 05, pretty nice condition, indian head. He gave it to the lady who owned the church there because he resolved that it belonged to her, but still. This was before my coin collecting days, or I may have put up an argument.

A few months ago someone gave him a 1909 upright piano and I was looking forward to getting it open to see if anything good is inside...a clad dime and penny. Oh well...

Just this evening though, I had an awesome thing! I've been waiting until I have enough to post, because I didn't want to scan pictures and post every day. I've been saving up my roll hunting finds for weeks. I'll post tomorrow (Sunday) most likely. I bought $100 in pennies this morning from a bank. The first box gave up 3 wheats and a clad dime. The second box gave up 5 wheats. The third box...gave up 128 wheats and 3 canadians!

Half of the rolls in the box were pink and had the address of the roll maker...some company in chicago, they were printed before zip codes came into play. It was awesome, I was getting like 8-10 wheats in every one of those rolls! That won't happen again any time soon, I can tell you that much!

Immy · Feb 19, 2006

What a coincidence Snee!

He's probably found a lot of interesting stuff over the years.

Great score on those wheat rolls. Wonder if the bank has any more...

Can't wait for your cumulative report!