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