What was it like in 64?

[HavokSouls]

Anybody CRH in 1964? I mean you could just go to the bank and everything would be silver right? (minus cents and nickles) Or would you just throw the silver back and keep really old coins?

 

[Diver_Down]

I was not alive at the time, but coin collectors would search rolls for coins for their collection. Before the '64, collectors would search lower denominations as that is what they could afford. If they could search halves, they were focused on walkers and barbers. Looking at population reports of the New York Subway Hoard, barbers were still seen in circulation.

 

[Citiboy289]

There is a thread that discusses this on the board here is a link http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/g...ng-their-silver-coins-1965-a.html#post3150386 Several members posted into it , would answer some of you questions , concerning CRH follow the link to the SUBWAY HOARD , People were always searching ----

 

[jrf30]

I remember in 1964 the new Kennedy half coming out. My dad and I saved a few becuase they were so special. He got two in a special holder with a commenerative certificate and all that (Probably overpaid for something not worth it, but back then he thought those things were cool) But mostly my brother and I would save Franklin halves and throw back the 1964 Kennedy halves as something we didn't want. HA. The quarters and dimes were also silver, so it meant nothing special to us then. Does that sound weird? It is not. THink of it from today's viewpoint. We have the same thing happening right now, so we have the perfect illustrationto show why we did NOT keep silver back then. Every single nickel we touch today is made of more copper than the value of the nickel. Do we all hoard nickels? Keep every single one we find? Nope. Yet in 50 years, when people talk about finding some of the "old nickels" with the copper still in them when they search coins, they will talk in awe of "the days when every nickel was a keeper" and how cool it must have been for those people (US!) to be able to keep every nickel we saw. Yet we don't think so. It's just not a keeper to us at this time. Just like the silver coins were not keepers to everyone back in 1964. 1965 was a different story, but still it took years for the silver to eventually dry up. Want to truly know more baout back then? Watch the nickel when we change the composition. Watch how long it takes to truly disappear (It will take years to stop being in rolls of nickels) And if you are alive in 50 years (I won't be) then you can be the one talking about the good old days and explain why you didn't go get box after box of nickels at the bank and just store them. People then will say you should have stored them all. But we don't. You'll see. :-)

 

[ArkieBassMan]

I had a great-Uncle that CRHed back in the days when coins were still made of silver. He looked for key dates like the 1916-D Merc, the 1955 doubled die cent, etc.

 

[onfire]

Back in 65 we were more interested in mini skirts

back in the 70's we had a guy at the firehouse who would bring bag's of coins and lay them on the table for the silver. When silver hit 50$ we all thought george hit the big time Guess not years later I asked his daughter if he sold She said no when it hit 9$ he lost a quarter million. Oh well. Who knows were those bags ended up. Knowing George he probably buried them.

 

[minkybodl]

Silver was so cheap in 64-65 that it was almost about even with the face value so you couldn't make anything off of what you could find. Most households did have a change jar where they started saving the silver coins they got knowing that one day when the price of silver went higher they would be worth more. I spent most of my parent's silver savings when the ice cream truck came by.

 

[fistfulladirt]

I was two years old, and my memory is fading.

 

[TimZim]

I was 8 years old and tryed to get some and save them. They were still in stores in 65 thats when i looked at age 9.

 

[thripp]

I remember in 1964 the new Kennedy half coming out. My dad and I saved a few becuase they were so special. He got two in a special holder with a commenerative certificate and all that (Probably overpaid for something not worth it, but back then he thought those things were cool) But mostly my brother and I would save Franklin halves and throw back the 1964 Kennedy halves as something we didn't want. HA. The quarters and dimes were also silver, so it meant nothing special to us then. Does that sound weird? It is not. THink of it from today's viewpoint. We have the same thing happening right now, so we have the perfect illustrationto show why we did NOT keep silver back then. Every single nickel we touch today is made of more copper than the value of the nickel. Do we all hoard nickels? Keep every single one we find? Nope. Yet in 50 years, when people talk about finding some of the "old nickels" with the copper still in them when they search coins, they will talk in awe of "the days when every nickel was a keeper" and how cool it must have been for those people (US!) to be able to keep every nickel we saw. Yet we don't think so. It's just not a keeper to us at this time. Just like the silver coins were not keepers to everyone back in 1964. 1965 was a different story, but still it took years for the silver to eventually dry up. Want to truly know more baout back then? Watch the nickel when we change the composition. Watch how long it takes to truly disappear (It will take years to stop being in rolls of nickels) And if you are alive in 50 years (I won't be) then you can be the one talking about the good old days and explain why you didn't go get box after box of nickels at the bank and just store them. People then will say you should have stored them all. But we don't. You'll see. :-)

Nickels are 75% copper and 25% nickel, but nickel is more than twice as valuable -- currently $7.58 per lb. compared with $3.55 per lb. for copper. That means the copper content has an absolute worth of 2.93¢ and the nickel content is 2.09¢, for a total of 5.02¢. However, melting nickels down requires a lot of heat, so you would never get that much for them if you could scrap them.

I think the cent is also a good example of a valuable coin. Before Oct. 22, 1982, they are 95% copper and would be worth over 2¢ if they could be melted. However, only around 20% of the cents in circulation are copper, which is not like in 1964 where 100% of the dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars were 90% silver. However, AFAIK the spot price of silver was so low in 1964 that the coins were still not worth more than face value, unlike copper cents, which are worth more than face value now.

 

[ckrakowski]

what was it like in 1964? silver silver everywhere as far as the eye can see.

i was not born until 1987 but this is what i imagine it was like.

 

[50cent]

1964 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Gold Maven]

I was just a little shaver with my penny and nickle boards, but I remember Dad saying the silver disappeared very quickly from circulation after '65.

 

[Sonny01]

Back in '64 silver was just there and nobody that I knew saved it. What I looked for was Indian Head pennies (because no one called them cents) Buffalo nickels and any silver dollars. But, money was hard to come by so I didn't save many dollar coins.

 

[FormerTeller]

You also had to consider what the value of the dollar was back then. Not that many people had enough savings to "invest" (read speculate) in massive amounts of silver coins purely for the metal value. It would be the same as someone today hoarding nickels. I've heard of a few people who've bought massive amounts of nickels recently, $1,000,000 worth in the case of Kyle Bass, but who's got an extra million dollars sitting around in the hopes of MAYBE doubling their money IF congress passes a law allowing you to melt them? It's speculation, pure and simple.

I inherited my grandmother's coin collection. She'd been collecting coins for their numismatic value for years, but it looks like she didn't start saving silver coins until sometime in the 1970's. Even then I assume she saved only what she could spare from the grocery money, etc, but it's clear she didn't have a huge bankroll for silver.

 

[clovis97]

I can't add much to the conversation, but a good friend of mine tells a story about a friend of his:

During the late 50's and all through the 60's, he went to the bank every Monday and Friday, and bought five rolls of dimes, just to look for Merc's. Since he did this every week, the tellers would lay the 5 rolls on the counter when they saw him come in. Supposedly, solid rolls of Merc's wasn't a rare thing before 1964.

He started saving several rolls of silver every week after 1964, but his main search was still for Merc's. He CRH'ed every week until he died sometime around 2005 or so.

I'm told that "He had one heck of a collection" when he died, and that his kids sold most of it off several years ago.

 

[Bad Wolf]

Just a thought, but if and when our glorious leaders ever give us the okey-dokey to scrap copper cents, might the sudden supply scuttle the scrap value, at least in the short-term?

 

[BuffaloBoy]

before my time, but my grandfather actually worked for brinks back in the 50's, he doesn't remember the details too great(he's 89), but he does remember the heavy "cash bags" full of bills he carried down the busy city streets, he was armed with a revolver with 3 other people around him. He remembers when the 1964 kennedies came out, the banks went through them very quick and there was a constant demand, he said.
i'll have to ask him for the story again, to me, it is priceless.

 

[watercolor]

In 1964 I was 14-years old and had been coin collecting for about 3-years. Whenever I could scrape $10 or $20 together
from lawn-mowing ($1.25 per large yard) I would head to the bank for rolls of dimes and quarters.

After searching through the rolls, I'd pick the ones I needed for my collection and re-roll the rest and take them back to the bank.
I finished my Washington & Roosevelt collection by 1964 but I'm still a few Merc's short of finishing that one.

I also had a neighbor that was a butcher and several of his customers would always pay him in silver dollars. . . he had about
3 cigar boxes full of them and every couple of weeks I'd go over to his house and trade him paper Silver Certificates
for the Morgans I needed for my collection.

The good 'ole days. . . (sigh).

 

[JJDEMARAY]

I don't think there was a big move to hoard silver until the early 70's. I remember when my dad got some information(two weeks before the general public knew) in the early 70's about how valueable it would be and he went around to a few banks and got tons of silver. I can still remember he and a buddy throwing all these coins on our kitchen table and pulling the silver ones out. He was a teacher and wishes now that he would have mortgaged the house and ran around the state for the two weeks and done this.