Flying Eagle Cents

Minted for just three years, the Flying Eagle cents are popular with collectors, and can be found at coins shops in lower grades for under $10 each.

The price of copper had gone up in the 1850's and the mint decided it simply cost too much to produce the larger copper one cent pieces of the day.  Cost is still in an issue for the mint over 160 years later, as the price to make a modern penny is now a little over 2 cents.

This lead to two big changes with coins of this era.  The first being that the half cent coin was abandoned in 1857 and the smaller Flying Eagle replaced the large cent.  In 1856 a pattern coin was shown to members of Congress, and this had a mintage of just 2,000 coins.  The coin only survived for 2 more years, as problems with the design created by James B. Longacre led to cracks in the dies and was a difficult to manufacture.

Below are three of the coins I purchased at the local coin dealer.  One has a hole that reduces the value but I thought this was a unique and inexpensive example to add to the collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monster Box

 

Lots of collectors like silver coins. A popular one available are the American Eagle Silver Bullion Coins. These coins are very beautiful, and you can purchase these directly from the United States Mint and other authorized coin dealers.


According to the U.S. Mint website, "these coins provide investors with a convenient and cost effective way to add a small amount of physical silver into their investment portfolios. Since their launch in 1986, American Silver Eagles have become leading bullion coin investment products."

However, there are buyers that like to add more than just a small amount of silver to collections. These “silver stackers” conduct purchases through authorized vendors and will order a Monster Box of coins.

So what is in a Monster Box? 500 coins. Specifically, 500 one ounce Silver Eagles, contained in 25 tubes with 20 coins in each tube. Each coin contains one ounce of silver. The coins only have a face value of $1, but these collectors buy as an investment with the hopes that the price of silver will increase.  As of the market close on 3/20, silver traded at $28.78 dollars an ounce. One individual coin is sold by the mint for $62.95. Times this by 500 and you can see this is quite an investment.

For those of us that don’t have the money for this purchase, and just want to see what a Monster Box looks like, check out the You Tube video below. The buyer opens a Monster Box live on camera, and also includes some other silver purchases. You may want to turn the speakers down on your computer, as the music that accompanies the unboxing is loud. 

I am not sure what someone does with a Monster Box besides put all of the coins in a safe, but wanted to show an example of extreme collecting.

Coin Roll Hunting Part 2

I tried my luck again with coin rolls, this time with 5 nickel rolls I got from the bank. There is a little bit of variety in nickels rolls, thanks to a recent change in design. I will look out for the Westward Journey nickels that were minted in 2004 and 2005. In these rolls, you can usually find some older dates in decent condition.

Lets see what was inside the rolls:

　

I was able to find 12 Westward Journey nickels in all 4 varieties:

6 Ocean in View!

3 Louisiana Purchase/Peace Medal

2 Keelboat

1 American Bison (Buffalo)

Personally I enjoy finding the buffalo coins the best, because series pays homage not only to Lewis ands Clark, but to the original buffalo nickel, minted from 1913 to 1938.

The coins are not particularly valuable beyond 5 cents, as they were minted in 2004 and 2005, but the coin roll hunter searches for variety in the rolls.

As for the older coins, I was able to find:

2 from 1959

1 from 1957

1 from 1956

The 1956 was the oldest coin I found in the rolls. One of the coins from 1959 has a lot of luster and looked as if it came out of a mint or proof set, so I consider that one a good find.

As with the penny rolls, this is a very small percentage of the actual amount of coins in circulation, but just wanted to show the variety that is able to be found in a handful of rolls.

Found in Change

When I make a purchase, I always go through my change to see if I get any interesting or rare coins.  Today after paying for my pizza lunch, the guy behind the counter gave me a nickel and three very shiny quarters. 

After the state quarter program ended, the mint decided to ride the popularity of the program and added national park quarters.  5 different designs were released last year, and I had yet to see any minted in 2012.  In my experience, these seem to be very hard to obtain through transactions where every day coins are given as change.

I was very surprised that it took until March of 2013 for me to see any of the 2012 quarters.  I was happy to get 3 of the Hawaii Volcanoes quarters.  All three were shiny and looked as if they were brand new from the mint. 

There were billions of the state quarters minted, so it may be that these coins have to be used up before banks issue the new National Park coins.  Either way, I was happy to see these today and will add to my collection.

CRH

This stands for coin roll hunting. Collectors will go to the bank and ask for rolls or even entire boxes of coins. The goal of the hunter is search through each roll to find value or variety in the coins. In some cases, collectors will search the rolls to fill up coin albums. Finding each date of a coin series is fun and is a great and inexpensive way to introduce youngsters into the hobby.

I went to the local branch and asked for some rolls of pennies. The official term among serious collectors of pennies is cents. The coin actually says one cent on the reverse (tails) side of the coin. Penny is the old English term for the denomination. However, the penny is the more popular and accepted way to ask for these at the bank.

I'll look for a few different things in a the rolls. First, are there any wheat cents?  These are distinguished by the wheat stalks on the reverse of the coins and were minted prior to 1959.  Collecting "wheaties" is still popular, although these are not very common in everyday change. 

Secondly, I'll search for the special Lincoln cents from 2009 which have different images on the reverse. Lastly are there any pre-1982 cents?   I will pull those aside. Depending on the price of copper, these can be worth up to 2 cents each. It is against the law to melt copper pennies for their metal value, but it's a common practice among the CRH clan to get a percentage of how many copper cents an be found in random coin rolls.

The occasional Canadian penny and even dime will sneak into a roll, which I will also add to my keep pile. 

There are 2 types of rolls from the bank. Bank rolled coins are coins wrapped by a machine and will be tight with a crimped edge. Customer wrapped rolls will be loose and are wrapped by hand. The rolls I got from the bank this time were customer wrapped.

So lets take a look and see what I found:

I opened the rolls and most of the pile I found were not anything special.  However, I did find:

                                                           42      coppers
                                                           one    2007 Euro 2 cent coin from Spain
                                                           one    1955 Wheat cent
                                                           one    1979 Canadian cent
                                                           two    2009 Lincoln log cabin cents

That was a lot of variety in just 5 rolls!

 

Obviously, this a fraction of an extremely tiny percentage of coins that are in circulation, but for purposes of this blog, I just wanted to the reader an idea of what CRH was all about.

Coins on You Tube

There are lots of interesting coin videos on You Tube. From collections to stackers and unboxings, there is something for just about anyone interested in the hobby. Some real interesting videos are guys with metal detectors filming videos in parks, playgrounds and farmers fields.

After the signal, they grab a camera and start digging a plug in search of a coin. Now many finds I have seen are one cent Lincoln Memorials and clad coins. However, there are plenty of silver coins are still being dug from the ground. A silver Washington is worth about $6, so all that digging can add up to a good investment.

One of the most successful detectors goes by the name chicagoron61 on You Tube.  He uses an underwater metal detector to search the shores of Lake Michigan and comes up with some great items. Besides coins, Ron specializes in returning lost class rings to their owners, and films these encounters on his channel. See below for one of his better days of hunting:
 

The video is a bit on the longer side, but is really cool and you can click through to the end for his recap.   Ron's equipment and technique are amazing, and he really finds a lot of treasure.  Check out chicgoron61 on You Tube for more of his videos.  I'll be posting more awesome coin videos in the coming weeks, so check back and let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by my blog!

Welcome!

Welcome to my coin blog!

I'll be writing about coin shop purchases, coin roll hunting and my discoveries made in spare change. Along with links to interesting coin videos from You Tube and other stories found on-line, I hope to provide a unique view of the hobby.

Below is a lot five-cent pieces from recent trip from the local coin dealer:

 

 

Designed by the engraver Charles Barber, these are Liberty or “V” nickels in good to very good condition. Keep in mind that good to very good is at the bottom of the coin grading scale.

The Roman Numeral V is displayed on the reverse (tails) side of the coin.

These five-cent pieces were minted in large quantities and are not very uncommon or valuable in this condition. According to the Official Red Book Guide to United States Coins, the 1902 is the most common coin of this lot, with almost 31.5 million coins minted.  This may seem like a high number, but modern nickels are minted in extremely large volumes.  In 1999, over one billion nickels were minted in Philadelphia, with an additional billion from the Denver mint.