If you are patient, you might just be surprised!

Christmas break has finally come. With no school until after the New Year, the next 10 days or so are mine. Five of my six kids are already home for the holidays and my oldest daughter and her guy will be arriving Friday for the Christmas festivities on Saturday. Need I say that chaos reigns supreme in my house right now? My youngest son and I have already started pouring over coins to fill the holes in his albums and I have been on the hunt for deals to add to my collection.

I had thought that the Thanksgiving weekend had been particularly good to me. I added three PF70UC quarters to my registry set and three PR69UC Eisenhower Dollars to start my registry set of Ikes. Everything seemed to dry up after that though. I couldn?t find a reasonable priced addition to any of my sets, registry or raw. In fact, I was telling my wife just how crazy the markets appeared to be with people paying what I considered to be absolutely outrageous prices for coins. Well that all ended yesterday! I?m not sure what happened but I spent $100 in one day which is a rear occurrence for me. I realize that none of the coins I bought will be here in time to be put under the Christmas tree but that makes little difference since all of my family?s Christmas shopping is already done and mostly wrapped. This was no small task as there will be ten people sitting by the fireplace opening presents on Christmas morning. Around my house Christmas morning is referred to as ?The Great Paper Tear?.

Anyway, what makes yesterday so special? I haven?t got a clue, but when I went to bed last night I had purchased five PF70UC State Quarters for less than $0.20 on the dollar of FMV, three pre-1950 MS66RD Lincoln Pennies (all S) for less than $0.30 on the dollar of FMV, one MS65RD 1939S Lincoln Penny for about $0.30 on the dollar of FMV, a sealed 1962 Proof Set for roughly the melt value of the silver and a 1997 Proof Set for about 50% of the value of a 1997 PF63UC Kennedy half-dollar. Needless to say when I tallied up the price tag for the purchases, I was surprised to find that the total came out to about $100. My son that collects currency had a one word reply when I told him what I added to my collection, ?Damn?. I couldn?t do anything but laugh at his comment. I don?t think I could have summed it up any better.

While all of those additions mean little to my youngest son, he is having a field day going though quarters, dimes, nickels, Sacagawea and Presidential Dollars for his collections. I even picked up a bunch of rolled coins from the grocery store on the way home yesterday so he could have even more fodder to go through rather than just the piggy bank of loose change I put aside for him. (Of course the piggy bank is salted so he doesn?t have to look through a bunch of redundant coins.) All of the extra change we get goes into an old glass jar into which my grandfather would throw his change. The jar is nothing special but it has great sentimental value as I remember fishing through it for coins as a kid. The jar is now about full so tomorrow my son and I will sojourn to the local bank and trade all the lose change for a new batch of rolled coins with which we can amuse ourselves. Depending on how much is actually in that jar, we might also get a stack of 1-dollar bills for my 24-old son to join in on our fun.

In closing, I will leave you with a picture of the 1999S Silver PF70UC Pennsylvania State Quarter I picked up a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, I would be remiss, if I did not wish all the members here a very Merry Christmas. I hope it is a joyful and happy time for both you and your families.

Merry Christmas

Dennis