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this is so cool! When I was a kid I would save wheats, mercs and bicentential quarters. I had no idea about silver of course or I would have saved all silver I found but I spent much of these coins at some point. I thought I had spent them all. Then I got a call from m mom this morning. Turns out that I stuck a bunch of wheats and 23 mercs into a little sack and asked her to hold onto them for me. I had a few hundred of them at some point (which hints at how much actual 90% I could have saved had I only known) and atleast one franklin. Had some kennedy halves as well but I dont remember years.

the sack of coins was accompanied from a note from my young self... "these might be worth something someday". Apparently I had made my mom save them for me. I dont remember doing it, but it sure was neat. Looking back at the level of mercs I used to find there must have been a ton of silver in circulation in the 80s.

Treetop wrote:this is so cool! When I was a kid I would save wheats, mercs and bicentential quarters. I had no idea about silver of course or I would have saved all silver I found but I spent much of these coins at some point. I thought I had spent them all. Then I got a call from m mom this morning. Turns out that I stuck a bunch of wheats and 23 mercs into a little sack and asked her to hold onto them for me. I had a few hundred of them at some point (which hints at how much actual 90% I could have saved had I only known) and atleast one franklin. Had some kennedy halves as well but I dont remember years.

the sack of coins was accompanied from a note from my young self... "these might be worth something someday". Apparently I had made my mom save them for me. I dont remember doing it, but it sure was neat. Looking back at the level of mercs I used to find there must have been a ton of silver in circulation in the 80s.

Smart kid. Good Mom. Great story

Interesting that you sensed you needed to protect yourself from yourself!

Difficult to second guess yourself in your youth, plus with all that we now know about the markets, but I did get my dad's quarter collection (just from circulation, nothing fancy there) and as a younger person I was stupid enough to pull them out and spend them on stuff that I would now consider a waste. But... in doing that I did stop at 1965; for some reason I couldn't part with the silver ones. So I still have 64 and befores that he pulled out of his change and put in with his hand, to pass on to my grandkids.

Yes, I remember keeping the wheat pennies as well as silver coins as a very yourg child. Still have them! Not nearly as much as I would like but some. A roll of 1964 Kennedy halves from the bank when issued and 1965 as well. I remember my father saying how they weren't as valuable since only 40% now! A shame what our currency has become. Nickels and pennies are the only current coins with intrinsic value at this time (aside from the very stray silver dime, quarter, half or nickel!)

Each year when I was a kid, I had an Aunt and Uncle visit us from California. They would stop in Las Vegas on the way and when they arrived, they would give each of us kids a silver dollar from Vegas.
I still have several Morgan dollars from my Aunt Marie and Uncle Bob in my collection.

Cool story. It's interesting to know there was still a lot of silver in circulation in the 1980s even after the price went so high in 1980.

When I was a kid, about 10 years old, I started saving coins I found in a small cardboard box. I knew older coins were worth something, and assumed someday the ones that were common then would be worth something as well. Eventually I decided on a cut-off date- I would not include any coins more recent than 2001 I was of course totally unaware of the metal content of coins back then. I looked through the box again a about year ago when I started being interested in coins again. No silver, no wheat pennies, just a few coppers were worth slightly more than face value. Oh well, maybe they'll be worth something by the time I die.

angel2004 wrote:Nickels and pennies are the only current coins with intrinsic value at this time (aside from the very stray silver dime, quarter, half or nickel!)

Not really... it's just a coincidence that nickels are approximately equal metal to face value right now, and pennies are 2x. Those coins were intended to be tokens as well, it's just that the currency eventually lost so much value (and metal values went up) that even the tokens were worth more than face value. The same thing will probably happen to clad quarters and dimes a few decades from now (if it doesn't happen sooner due to hyperinflation, which some believe will happen soon).

Treetop wrote:Looking back at the level of mercs I used to find there must have been a ton of silver in circulation in the 80s.

You just lived in the right place, where I live silver doesn't circulate, it seems enough
retail clerks, etc around here knew that if one gets in the wild it doesn't stay there
very long.

The only thing of note I can remember finding back in the 80s is wheat pennies because
none of the coin dealers up here bought them so nobody else would pick them out to sell
so there would be some left for me to find.

If I took them to Grand Forks, ND I could get 1.5¢ each for them, which later dropped to
1.3¢ each, then later to 1.2¢ each. At least there was some market for them. If I knew
then what I know now I would have kept the wheats, all in all I probably only sold a few
dollars face.

fansubs_ca wrote:

Treetop wrote:Looking back at the level of mercs I used to find there must have been a ton of silver in circulation in the 80s.

You just lived in the right place, where I live silver doesn't circulate, it seems enough
retail clerks, etc around here knew that if one gets in the wild it doesn't stay there
very long.

The only thing of note I can remember finding back in the 80s is wheat pennies because
none of the coin dealers up here bought them so nobody else would pick them out to sell
so there would be some left for me to find.

If I took them to Grand Forks, ND I could get 1.5¢ each for them, which later dropped to
1.3¢ each, then later to 1.2¢ each. At least there was some market for them. If I knew
then what I know now I would have kept the wheats, all in all I probably only sold a few
dollars face.

Agreed. I hand sorted a lot in the early to mid eighties. I had VERY little luck with quarters and dimes, so I eventually just sorted nickels and pennies. I was probably only sorting $20 or $30 a week at the time.

When copper prices went up and they changed to zinc pennies, I could see the writing on the wall and started saving as many copper pennies as I could afford. I ended up dumping them for face value in the nineties because I was tired of lugging them around. At the time, I was getting $.45 a pound for #1 copper scrap.