Every now and then at auction, I’d pick up a box of sundry items and find a few coins in the mix. I know nothing about the value of old coins, but I always hoped that one among the lot would be worth something more than its face value.
The coins were both foreign and U.S., but they were worth very little. At auction, buyers turned out mightily when coins were up for sale. Rarely did they go unsold. At a auction of tons of Franklin Mint coins a few years ago, buyers snapped up bags and boxes of coins, some of them commemorative. One buyer paid $1,300 for a set of silver coins.
In researching coins to sell on eBay, I did learn that the art of collecting coins and currency is called numismatics.
Once, I picked up a group of 50+ coins from 1903 to 2001 from the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Italy, Mexico and Palestine. Another time, I got a group of 40 pennies and other coins, including a 1911 Liberty Head V Nickel (in bad shape), Lincoln Memorial pennies, Roosevelt dollars, Buffalo and Indian head nickels and a Kennedy half dollar. Most were pre-1950.
Some of them sounded impressive to me, but they were worth only a couple dollars. In most cases, I got no more than $10 for the lots.
The most precious coins I didn’t get – because I wasn’t around when they sold – were a 1946 Booker T. Washington commemorative half-dollar and a 1952 combined Washington and George Washington Carver coin designed by African American artist Isaac Scott Hathaway. Another time, I was enamored with two antique Victorian coin purses that I didn’t recognize until an auctioneer identified them for me. Vintage coin banks turned up pretty regularly because they were very popular at one time.
I got to thinking about my worth-less coins recently after learning the story of a South Carolina couple who found a stash of gold and silver coins. The coins had been left in their new home by the previous owner, and the couple returned them. The husband found 46 gold Liberty $5 coins and 18 Morgan silver dollars. The coins were made in the 1800s and were worth an estimated $25,000, according to the owner of the coins.
The owner had tucked them into the back of a drawer and forgot about them. He had placed other coins in his collection in a safe.
Retired Army veteran James Mumford and his wife Clarrisa said they never even considered keeping the coins.
“We had no idea the coins would be worth that much, but regardless we knew who the previous owner was so, of course, we immediately gave them back,” the wife said. “I keep joking with my husband that karma has to be on our side now.”
What would you have done?
