Ever come across a nice coin you forgot you owned?

[stev32k]

Going though my safe deposit box yesterday I found an unmarked coin envelope inside was this 1885-O Morgan. I have no idea when I bought it, but I think it must have been more than 20 years ago. The coin might be DMPL except it has a slight haze on both sides. It also has some blue toning on the reverse that did not show up in the photo. I'll get some better shots next week.

 

[MTHead-migration]

yes, a 1984 Canadian $5. 1/10 oz of .9999 gold. No idea where it came from.

[michael]

Re: Ever come across a nice coin you forgot you owned?

 

in my case.................. never

 

that 85-o is a really sweet coin with great eye appeal (thumbs u i just cant tell you why but from the photo it is incredibly eye appealling

 

now from the photos and i await better pictures you will do next week

it looks semi- pl and ms-62

 

those parallel lines on the cheek are planchet roller marks not struck out by the force of the dies which does not surprise me being from the new orleans mint

 

and yet the coin; obverse hair details and reverse breast feathers is a full strike!!!

 

again a really eye appealling coin!!!!

[ant]

question on that morgan! do the cheek marks running kitty cornered across then represent cleaning? or are those just contact rubs?

[stev32k]

I managed to rig up some better lighting and a diffuser (used flash before) and these are much better. You can see the haze and the yellow cast which I assume were caused by the coin being in the yellow envelope so long. The coin looks better than a 62 in my opinion even with the haze.

 

[CHABSENTIA]

Yes. Several weeks ago when I emptied out a safety deposit Box.

 

1. 1862 Cent

2. 3 tubes of Mercury dimes and rosies

3. A Dansco album of Mint and Proof Kennedys

4. Several hundred wheat pennies mostly in the 40s and 50s with about 50 in the 60s and one a 1936.

 

 

Except for the Kennedys which may have something I suspect the others are worth nothing.

 

[MBA101]

I managed to rig up some better lighting and a diffuser (used flash before) and these are much better. You can see the haze and the yellow cast which I assume were caused by the coin being in the yellow envelope so long. The coin looks better than a 62 in my opinion even with the haze.

 

 

That looks cool! I hope you don't do anything to it!

[BillJones]

It's not a coin, but political piece. This is a very rare Bryan Dollar (Zerbe 121). I thought that I had sold this piece and was regreting it. Then I found it when we were packing up to move to Florida.

 

This is the only satirical Bryan Dollar that faces right (backward), and it is the only one that is made of nickel plated iron. You don't see this one very often.

 

[EZ_E]

Bill, I assume that the reverse motto is in reference to falling silver prices in 1896 where a silver dollar had but 53C of silver following the repealment of the Bland-Allison act?

[BillJones]

Bill, I assume that the reverse motto is in reference to falling silver prices in 1896 where a silver dollar had but 53C of silver following the repealment of the Bland-Allison act?

 

It was not so much a matter of the price of silver going down because of the repeal of the Bland-Allison and Sherman Silver Purchase Acts as it was to point out the dangers involved for the U.S. dollar and the economy if Bryan’s program were to be enacted. Bryan’s proposal called for the “free coinage” of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1. By “free coinage” he meant that companies and individuals could bring silver to any of the U.S. mints and have it struck into coins at little or no charge. The 16 to1 slogan made the invalid point that 16 parts of silver had the same value as one part of gold. In actuality the real ratio at the time was more like 30 to 1. That meant that relative to gold, those who held silver could have their metal coined into “cheap dollars” under the free silver proposal.

 

The net result of this would have been massive inflation. The new silver dollars (more likely paper dollars that would have been backed by silver dollars) would have greatly increased the money supply. With out a compensating increase in goods and services, prices would have increased tremendously. This would have good, at least for a while, for those owned money; but it would have not been good for most of the U.S. economy.

 

This is the stuff of “banana republics” that simply turn on the printing presses and issue currency to please the people. At the first people are happy because they have money. But eventually the resulting inflation will make their money worthless. These big, base metal Bryan dollars were making the point that a silver dollar had be much larger to be on a par with the value of a gold dollar. If unrestricted coinage of light weight silver coins were allowed, it would do great damage to the economy.

 

So it looks like the William McKinley and the (Elephant Party) had it right, but they didn’t have it right completely. At the time of the 1896 election, the U.S. was emerging from a very bad economic depression, the Panic of 1893. Modern economists would argue that an increase in the money supply was in order to boost the economy. So Bryan and his supporters had a point. BUT the problem was, given the glut of silver that was on the market at the time, their proposal would have placed far too much money in circulation. It would have been like letting a wild bull out the pen with no limits.

 

It should also be pointed out that Bryan did not understand the ramifications of what he was advocating. It one point he admitted that he didn’t understand all the points about free silver, but he’d study it later. This was why Bryan’s critics compared his intellect to the Platt River. It was a mile wide, but only an inch deep.

 

[stev32k]

Very interesting history lesson. Thanks