CRH in the 50's

This is from Dan Soawrd, in NUmismatic news.  I found this section very interesting.  Amazing how things have changed.  :-)

<< Like many of you, I started collecting when I was around 10. That would be 1957, if you are interested. As a teen-ager, the local bank let me and one of my friends use one of their back rooms to go through bags of pennies, nickels and dimes to fill the holes in our Whitman folders. My friend actually found a G-VG 1916-D Mercury dime during our time at the bank.>>

WOW.

ANyway, just an FYI.  Oh, how it must have been back then to search.  Shoot - EVERY coin was silver or wheat.  ALL of them.  LOL.  How do you sort if they ALL are keepers?  :-)

Ha, I never thought about how it was back then. Definitely times have changed, Imagine a bad day for them is not finding a key date or a double die

Back then they were'nt keepers and silver was worth face. But I dream of the old coins people used to spend on the regular basis. Kids playing the game in the back yard of how many coins can you toss in the hole then running off foregetting about the coins. Wow the treasure that still lays hidden. My dad said as a kid in the early sixties in Montana you would pay with a bill and get change back in silver dollars. Amaizing. Can't imagine it.

Golden Silver

Back in the day my uncles both worked in a laundy mat and they both had Mercury dime collections, well they got into scuba diving and they sold their collections for face value to buy 2 spear guns!!! Lets just say my grandpa was more that ticked off at them!!!

Back then it was errors and key dates.  Silver was the norm.  How is wish it was still like that.

Didn't the slots in Vegas pay out in Morgan Dollars back in the day?

I think the sad part is that since all the coins were silver there wasn't a mad rush to pull the older coins out. I have heard stories of normal change in the 60s with mercury dimes, barber coinage and even some earlier.

We have lost that with the clad coins.

I became interested in coin collecting around 1958, when I was nine or ten.  I began collecting pennies at that time.  It was absolutely no big deal in those days, and into the early 1960s, to find scads of pre-1920 cents, although the oldest ones I found were 1910, and these were common.  A few kids my age found one or two 1909 cents, but none with mint marks, and no Indian cents.  Buffalo nickels were everywhere, and so were Standing Liberty quarters (most already worn slick), Walking Liberty halves (including early ones with mint marks on the obverse), and Mercury dimes.  Every bank had silver dollars on hand, and many of these were virtually uncirculated and still highly lustrous, even those from the 1800s.  I would occasionally buy one with a dollar bill given to me as a birthday or holiday gift, keep it for a while, and then spend it after I became bored with carrying it around.  Despite the fact that I never encountered Barber coins, Indian head cents, or V-nickels in change, these coins were still circulating in small numbers, and had I the interest and financial wherewithal to pursue coin roll hunting back then (remember - I was only a kid) I am certain that appreciable numbers of such coins, along with Seated coins, Columbian Exposition and Carver half dollars, and possibly even a few Shield nickels would have turned up in Fed boxes and in bank bags.
My most valuable coin received in change - and this was in 1965 or '66 - was a 1918/17D nickel, worn but with the date still quite readable.  At that time, Buffalo nickels were still common.  But by 1970 or so, they, along with most silver coins, were largely gone from circulation.

Didn't the slots in Vegas pay out in Morgan Dollars back in the day?

They were still used in the 60's.

Most people just go thru life without examining it, I've met (and enjoy) talking to older people who's eyes have been open who have lived informed lives, just a few now, and most seem to have known what is happening today was coming, they just thought it would of been sooner. Nothing is the same as it was say in the 50's or before- it was a different world in too many ways to list.

I never payed much attention to the coins I had as a kid. As soon as I got it, I spent it. I remember when the pennies changed from wheaties to memorial. Never ran across an IH, V nickel, or a Morgan/Peace Dollar. It was not uncommon to get an SLQ or Buffalo nickel. Even back then most were worn out. I can remember my mother sending me to the corner store with a half dollar which was usually a Franklin or a Walker.I never had a Kennedy that I can recall. Dimes were a mix between Mercs and Rosies. I had a paper route in 1964 so I guess when I went out to collect on Friday's it was all silver I was getting.
I would guess that silver circulated throughout the 60's. I remember I had a friend that had a cigar box filled with rolled silver quarters. He was saving them because they were silver. I thought he was nuts.

Can you imagine purchasing a box of halfs and EVERY coin was silver? i think my head would explode.

Didn't the slots in Vegas pay out in Morgan Dollars back in the day?

They were still used in the 60's.

That's what I thought Rich, I think it was in the movie "Ocean's Eleven", the original with Old Blue Eyes, one scene when he was in a casino, people were playing dollar slots with morgans....forgot the movie, but the scene was in Penn Central RR station in the '40's, before wide-spread air travel, this guy is sitting at a lunch counter, gets up to leave and asks the girl "what do I owe you?" camera pans down at her pad, he had steak & eggs, toast, potatos, juice, and coffee with a piece of apple pie, she added it up, and it came out to $1.15 .. that'd hardly get you coffee now days..

Can you imagine purchasing a box of halfs and EVERY coin was silver? i think my head would explode.

Who could afford to back then. Wasn't that about a month's pay for most people?

The old men at the coin club I joine CRHed back in the day "when you could find something" as they call it.  (Noone knows I CRH now, period).  They hunted the Barbers and before and threw the Walkers and Bens back.  Times got tight they would spend the Barbers without a second thought- kinda says something about how much Seated was still floating around.  HH  Mark
BTW I'm trying to get one of these ole farts to adopt ME LOL.

Can you imagine purchasing a box of halfs and EVERY coin was silver? i think my head would explode.

Who could afford to back then. Wasn't that about a month's pay for most people?

In 1957 the minimum wage was $1.00 an hour. My father earned somewhere between $55.00-$65.00   a week which was enough to raise 3 kids at the time. My mother did not have to work.
So a box of halves was more then a months wages

Great post here!  I found it while reviewing many of the posts that I have never seen.  You guys know I'm a history buff when it comes to CRHing decades ago.  Just thought I'd bring up jrf's post for many of the newbies to read and enjoy. Remember, this post was made back in 2009.
rileyboy

Can you imagine back then. You would be find standing liberty, walkers, barbers man some nice old coins. Lets make a time machine and go back into time wow what a heart stopper that would be....Matt

Well, everyone talks about every coin being a keeper.. but not so in those days.  I'm sure silver prices back then were still lower than face value so no one wanted to keep plain 90%ers. 

I spoke to a guy who collected coins in the 60's and he said back then it was easy to find standing liberty quarters and mercs.  They were everywhere.  Buffalos were still common in the 60's. 

This is the same idea as me says in the 80-90's, copper pennies aren't worth crap.  I even remember finding copper pennies in a dumpster back in the 90's.  Someone threw away $2.00 worth of copper pennies.  Inflation over time makes all prices go up even metal.   Although, there are better investments such as stocks and such which keep up with inflation, I'd rather have money in coins than paper money (which has the lowest potential value out of anything).

I'm also sure if I kept my boxes of 2001-D uncirculated halves and wait 20 years, they will have a premium.  No doubt about that.  I could say in 20 years, every coin in that box was a keeper.  If you look at it, uncirculated 80's OBW rolls have a premium ( not as much as silver but do have a premium).

My advice is that if you have paper money laying around, at least convert it to something else for the future (ie stocks, housing, precious metals, collectible coins).  Paper money over time is just worthless.  Sad to say but a 1980's $100 dollar bill is just worth $100.  If you have $100 in uncirculated 80's rolls of halves, you'd at least get 50% premium.  Perhaps if you wait 100 years, paper bills might have a small premium but not much since too many bills were printed last 20 years.

A 17 Year old kid making minimum wage in 1950 would have to work 750 hrs after tax to be able to afford a box of halves.  That being said You Only had to work 1 Minimum Wage Hr to buy 1 Oz of Silver compared to today of 4.25hrs of Minimum wage to buy 1 oz of silver.

I guess what I am saying is the move in the 50's would have been buying bar not CRH.

.50 for $12 or .75 for $34

 When I first started roll hunting in the late '70's, I remember going thru halves, dimes and quarters, not finding squat. Wasn't the greatest time for a kid to start the hobby as silver prices quickly approached $50 an oz, and everyone had their hand in the cookie jar.
 I do remember grandma giving me a fistfull of mercs when we would visit every few months, she worked at a small town post office, she pulled silver from circulation as she knew I was collecting.  Miss ya grandma. Had my eye on grandpa's coins, especially that old gold quarter eagle....miss ya too gramps.

A 17 Year old kid making minimum wage in 1950 would have to work 750 hrs after tax to be able to afford a box of halves.  That being said You Only had to work 1 Minimum Wage Hr to buy 1 Oz of Silver compared to today of 4.25hrs of Minimum wage to buy 1 oz of silver.

I guess what I am saying is the move in the 50's would have been buying bar not CRH.

.50 for $12 or .75 for $34

Yeah.. but how much was an ounce of silver in the 50's?

A 17 Year old kid making minimum wage in 1950 would have to work 750 hrs after tax to be able to afford a box of halves.  That being said You Only had to work 1 Minimum Wage Hr to buy 1 Oz of Silver compared to today of 4.25hrs of Minimum wage to buy 1 oz of silver.

I guess what I am saying is the move in the 50's would have been buying bar not CRH.

.50 for $12 or .75 for $34

Yeah.. but how much was an ounce of silver in the 50's?

Silver was about 75 cents in 1950 and went to about 85 cents by 1951. It rose to about 91 cents by 1960.

So, if you took a Dollar bill in the 50's and bought a Morgan Dollar you would be sitting on $26.28 in silver today.

Using an average value of 88 cents for an ounce on silver in the 50's you would be sitting on $33.93 for that ounce of silver as of right now.

As things stand right now, silver bullion would have been the way to go, potential numismatic value aside which could be substantial. Consider if you had used those 50's Dollar bills to purchase at face value high grade or uncommon circulating silver coins and sold them 10 years ago when silver was $5/oz.

so, anyone who searched back in the 1970 or before, im just curious, did halves, or any coins for that matter come in boxes? did they come like they do today? or were they in a bag? sorry, just curious. keep it up and hh!

My father was the bookkeeper for a small chain of drug stores in the late 1950s.  One of his tasks was to count the change and deposit it at the bank.  Because of this, he became interested in collecting coins, and started avidly searching through the change.  He didn't have a lot of money, so he concentrated on the smaller denominations.  Early Lincoln cents were readily available, and common Indian Head cents from the 1880s and newer could be found with some effort.  He never found any Flying Eagle cents.  Buffalo nickels circulated along side Jefferson nickels, and one could still find worn Liberty Head nickels on occasion.  Like the nickels, Mercury head dimes circulated along side Roosevelt dimes, and worn common date Barber dimes could occasionally be found.  He never found any Seated dimes.  Heavily worn, dateless Standing Liberty quarters were fairly common, and any of the early Washington quarters were typically quite worn.  Common date, worn Barber quarters could also occasionally be found, but no Seated quarters.

The father of one of my uncles collected coins in the 1950s.  He knew the bank managers at several small town banks who would let him come in on Saturdays and go through coins while being "locked in" the vault.  I suspect that by "locked in" he meant that the secondary door and not the main vault door was locked.  Being older than my father, he was in much better financial shape and could afford to purchase anything he wanted.  He was able to assemble near complete sets of all coins (cents to dollars) from the Barber era to the present.

We CRH'd back in the late 70s/early 80s.  In many ways, we found less than we do today.  Wheats in my area were about as scarce as they are now, and we only had enough money to buy 10 rolls at a time, typically we would find a wheat or two in 10 rolls.  Silver seemed scarcer then, I find a higher percentage of dimes now than I ever did then.  For some reason we did not chase halves, would have been the smart thing to do.  I had a couple nice solid 90% rolls of Bens when I finally did start chasing halves about 1983.  We had one neighborhood grocery store that let us swap rolls each week.  He'd take our old rolls, put them in the front of his box so the cashiers would use them first, then trade us fresh rolls, which were always hand rolled.  We once found a Shield nickel in one of those rolls.  We'd bike there on a summer afternoon, trade our 10 rolls of pennies and two rolls of nickels, bike home, search the rolls and generally feel happy with a couple wheats and maybe a war nickel.  We thought that was a great way to kill an afternoon!

"so, anyone who searched back in the 1970 or before, im just curious, did halves, or any coins for that matter come in boxes? did they come like they do today? or were they in a bag? sorry, just curious. keep it up and hh!"

To answer your question, coins all came in cloth bags.  I have a couple of U. S. Mint bags for 1967 quarters (yes, they actually printed the year right on the bag).  I also have a U. S. Mint bag for 1974 cents from Philadelphia - also printed on the bag.  By the early 1980's, the year and mint were no longer printed on the bag, but were stamped on with ink.  The bags were more generic.  I have a couple that were reused, so they have multiple stamps (date and mint) on them, with the previous ones crossed out with marker.  The only U. S. Mint bags that I don't have an example of are half dollars and dollars.

The problem with bags is that the rolls would bend and break, particularly if the bag was dropped.  In the late 1980's / early 1990's the first boxes started to appear.  The first ones (I still have a few of these), were not flat, but were tall.  Instead of having 5 rows of 10 rolls (of cents) they had 10 rows of 5 rolls.  Now, the mint sends everything out in huge plastic bags that are moved around with forklifts because they are so heavy.

Scott