This post was inspired by @ruth-girl's "Good Old Drachmas" post. @Ruth-girl's essay brought to mind the coins my husband bought years ago. These purchases were not so much investments as a family hobby. A kind of legacy.
My son, who was only a child, would go along on trips to coin shows with my husband. The two of them were accompanied by our friend Myron--a true numismatic connoisseur. Myron passed away from COVID last year, a fact that makes remembering the coins all the more poignant.
Groat, David of Scotland 1367
Value?? A Henry V (1387-1422) Groat sold for $432 in 2006
Image credit: CNG. CC license 3.0
My family owns one groat, from 1888. It cost $90.00. The value today ranges from 3 pounds to 103 pounds, depending on the rating of the coin. I've no idea what our coin is rated.
My husband's coin adventures took place in the early 80's. What happened to the value of numismatics in general since that time? According to an article published by U.S. Rare Coins Investments, it all depends on the coin, and the integrity of the dealer. Truly rare, top quality coins have appreciated tenfold. Other coins have not appreciated at all, or have lost money.
U. S. 'Capped Head' Half Dollar, 1822
MS62--excellent rating, sold for $1800 in 2020
We don't have the half dollar featured here. What we do have is a capped head half dollar (with large letters) from 1833 in Extra Fine condition. My husband paid $50.00 for it. Today at least one vendor sells it for $198.00.
At one point, my husband went through an English phase. Myron liked English coins and had done some research on them.
A 1714 Queen Ann Farthing
450 Pounds (estimated)
Image credit: Clemchanbers. License CC 3.0.
We don't own the Queen Anne featured above, either, but we do have a 1793 farthing, purchased for $50, and an 1825 farthing, purchased for $65. The value of the 1793 today seems to be about $35.00. The value of the 1825 seems to be about $50.00
There is no way to establish value without knowing the grade of the coin, and I don't have that for either farthing. Although, I'm willing to guess that at a $50 purchase price, the grade wasn't very high.
Buying coins is like buying diamonds. If you don't know what you're doing you pretty much are at the mercy of the seller, particularly in the informal coin shows that pop up here and there. However, unlike diamonds, coins have history behind them. Take the groat, for example.
The groat was first minted in 1280, by Edward I. The coin was worth 4 pence. It was a silver coin and was in circulation throughout the Middle Ages. The last groats were minted in 1888, and were colonial coins. Following the story of the groat takes us through medieval and modern English history. (Information on the groat derived from the Website Chard. )
If you're buying from an established dealer such as Stacks, you have some confidence in the grading of the coin, although there is likely to be a surcharge for enjoying that extra confidence.
Mercury Dime 1940
Value from $50 to $1000, depending on rating.
Melt Value
There is a kind of coin collecting that is separate from numismatics: meltdown value. Investors buy Krugerrand, for example, for the gold meltdown value. The same thing is true, on a much more modest level, for certain dimes that were minted during the twentieth century. Before 1965, dimes were minted in the U.S. with 90% silver alloy. According to one coin site, JM Bullion, that works out to be about .072 troy ounces per coin.
My mother once had a small piggy bank of these dimes. One day, a thief broke into our apartment and carried the piggy bank off, along with a transistor radio and my paycheck. I got the paycheck back (a duplicate), but never saw the coins or radio again.
My husband bought several mercury dimes, graded MS-65. At least that's what the vendor claimed. I've listed three here, with purchase price and approximate (who knows?) current value.
Purchase 
Value today
$28.00 
$59.99: 1939D
$35.00 $38.00: 1940D
$25.00 $27.00: 1941D
Sometimes, a Mistake is a Good Thing
In 1943, with U. S. resources fully committed to WWII, pennies were minted in zinc-coated steel. Copper and bronze were needed elsewhere. However, it seems some 10 or 15 Lincoln pennies were mistakenly minted in bronze. In 2019, one of these pennies sold for $204,000. (Information on Lincoln pennies derived from Heritage Auctions.)
My husband will never sell his coins. Each coin has its own history and now that history is tied up in my family's history. My son does not see the coins as receptacles of monetary value but as tokens of his childhood, laden with significance. Of course, if things really got tough, these mementos would carry another kind of value, the kind that might be traded for food or shelter.
1933 Double Eagle: Highest Price Ever Paid for a Coin
Value: sold at auction in 2009 for 7.59 million dollars
Image credit: U.S. government. Free of copyright restrictions
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Love all the info on the old coins A.G. The golden eagle is a beauty. I used to work at a bank and sometimes would save a coin that looked interesting. I have a small collection (Canadian) but nothing rare.Your post makes me want to check them out. I just have them in a small bag in a drawer.
Thank you so much for visiting and for your kind comment.
Take out that bag. You never know what you'll find. I didn't include this bit of information: in 1947 a boy found one of the rare Lincoln pennies in his pocket (lunch money!). Who knows what's in that bag :))
Hope you are having a peaceful weekend and the view from you back window is rewarding.
(Thank you for the generous tip!)
Most welcome A.G. It would be wonderful to find a rare coin. What a great find for the boy. I also collected a few stamps at one time and have them tucked away somewhere.
The weekend is going good and winter is rolling along.
I hope all is well and safe in your piece of the planet.❤️
Great post. I used to collect wheat pennies, buffalo nickels and mercury dimes when I was a kid. I would go to different banks and get rolls of coins and search for the old ones. Great memories. I'm sorry I don't have them now.
Hello @pokerm,
You take me back, and I'm sure other people also who imagined they might one day find the one hidden rare coin. There were always stories about how ordinary people discovered accidentally they had treasure in their pocket.
It would be wonderful to have those coins now. If only we had a lens as children to look into the future and know what would be valuable, what would be worth keeping.
Thank you very much for that meaningful comment and for reading my blog.
What a beautiful post, @agmoore .
My mother kept old silver coins that she would bring out, eventually. It was fascinating just to hear her say such obvious things as "This one is five bolivales" and then stop talking to think.... I have the habit of keeping copies of my country's monetary cone. Inflation in Venezuela is so brutal that I have a lot of material from the last few years. With the advent of digital money, maybe in time they can be used to enjoy nostalgia, at least.
When I was young I was fascinated by incidents of social collapse in the past: the Russian Revolution, the Black Death, and....hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic. So when you speak about hyperinflation in Venezuela, I have a real sense of the disaster that it is for ordinary people trying to live every day. I think it's also one of the reasons I've always been attracted to tangibles, something to hold onto and trade in hard times.
Thank you for your kind words. I really appreciate your visit to my blog. Have a peaceful day.
Reading one of your blogs is always an education @agmoore
I had never heard of the term numismatics before. It's amazing how much that Double Eagle sold for... wow, that beats even crazy alt coin crypto gains 😂
Although I've never really been into coins, or collecting them, my grandmother used to talk a lot to me as a child about when money changed here in the UK from shillings, farthings etc to pounds and pence. I guess she wanted to impart some history to me. Not much of it stuck to be honest, but what I do remember was these two big commemorative coins my grandparents had, I think they were gold plated. When I was a child I'd always ask to play with them, they were like treasure and inspired thoughts of Smaug's treasure in the hobbit.
I think coins hold close memories like these for many people of a certain age. It is crazy to think that in a generation's time there may no longer be any coins, or even paper money.
What a lovely comment @raj808! You capture the spirit of my blog as you describe your grandmother. She was doing what grandmothers have done across cultures and time: transmit culture. You were lucky to have her.
When my husband started bringing the coins home I was fascinated. Each one carried with it the suggestion of other lives. Some coins were beautiful. These I was not allowed to touch because the oils from my hand would damage them !!
You think there will be no more coins? 😒
Thank you very much for the visit. I enjoyed it very much. Have a great day.
Hopefully it won't go that way, but as legal tender... I think it is very possible. After all, we are writing on a platform powered by cryptocurrency 😂 Even governments are now looking at CDC's (centralized digital currencies), basically government issued blockchiain national currencies. China have already trialed this with the digital yen.
Essentially government issued digital currencies allow for much easier tracking and movement of money... it is no wonder the governments of the world are looking at them very seriously lol Once they've transitioned to these types of issue of value, there is no point in wasting resources on coins or paper money.
That's the crux of it, I think. In the U. S., there will be strong popular resistance to going all virtual. We can't even agree on getting rid of the useless penny. Let's hope we are ornery enough (at least in the U. S.) to keep physical cash in our pockets :))
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