coin related family pictures...

[ant]

i was sent some pictures for xmas being that i dont have many family pics. and my mom sent me a pic of my dads family when he was young (even though he was the youngest )

My dads family was a very very strict and big family. and on this great day he was pouting and wouldnt take a picture with family. well to get him to hush and at least sit still they gave him a silver dollar (no they were not wealthy) $1 back then was a biggy and my dad was givin one just to shoosh. so here is the picture of the family and my dad flat middle ( pouting ) with a new silver dollar.

 

 

 

anyone else have a picture with a good coin story? of a family member not self.

[EZ_E]

Great post, ant! Love it!

[RI AL]

No picture of family, but when my wife was little, her father would give the kids a silver dollar for Christmas...and for report card A's. Once as a joke gift, when we were dating, one of her silver dollars was a real sad, worn out Morgan. Se gave it to me for a birthday present (we were dirt poor in college) I still have that one too...It's more special than the rest. As it turns out...I fooled her...I married her and got the whole lot of 'em!

 

 

RI AL

[DC Dawg]

Nice picture and story. Do you know what year that picture was taken?

 

Scott

[ant]

well he was born 1932 and he was 5ish. so it would have been 1937 . so it could have been a peace or a morgan. my mom will ask his brother.

 

i do know that the coins i got from dad didnt have it in it cause they allowed him to buy ice cream with it

[DC Dawg]

well he was born 1932 and he was 5ish. so it would have been 1937 . so it could have been a peace or a morgan. my mom will ask his brother.

I asked mainly about the picture "quality" and the lack of smiles. Photography is a pasttime as is history. The history of photography is also a history of technology, which is why I find it fascinating. Let me indulge on a bit of speculation...

 

Your family must have went to a studio that still had a studio box camera with a billow lens from the early 1920s--it was the depression era and the photographer probably did not upgrade his camera. Those cameras required more exposure time than later cameras and was difficult to hold a smile for up to a minute without moving. Leica cameras, which helped cut down the exposure time, were not yet sold in the US (although some companies were using Leica lenses) and Hasselblad was just being formed. Hasselblad became a popular portrait camera starting in the 1950s with their large format, great lenses, and low exposure times.

 

Eastman Kodak and Burke & James made the most popular cameras of the time. We know that Kodak is still around today trying to re-invent itself for the digital age. Burke & James cameras were famous for making very sturdy cameras that took very clear pictures and were favored by the press. I cannot remember if they were closed in the 1970s or 1980s after the owner died.

 

More than likely, the picture was shot on Kodak film and printed on Kodak paper. Agfa films and paper did not gain wide-spread popularity until the 1950s, but saw nice sales in California during the 1930s. Since Agfa is a German company and there were tensions between the world and Germany, sales of Agfa products in the US dropped. Kodak dominated these markets. Agfa started to gain market share in the late 1950s when they started to produce photographic products out of Japan, but they never caught up to Kodak. Agfa dropped out of the film market in the 1990s with the rise of digital photography.

 

Old pictures, like coins, are a look back in history. Both are fascinating and tell us a lot about our past. Thank you for sharing your picture!

 

Scott

[wtc911coins]

nice story I would love to have gotten silver dollars as a kid, would have keep everyone of them for sure

[ant]

thank you scott i too love history and memories (even if they arent mine). i find myself looking in antique stores at old pictures and wonder what it was like at the time the photo was taken. i did wonder why people never smiled (thought is was cause everyone was upset with dad).

 

i was wondering if you could tell me why the light seems to ray off my dad. is that a camera thing (maybe a mesege for me).

[WoodenJefferson]

 

I wrote this to RWB awhile back about my Great Uncle and the 1933 Gold Recall of the Depression Era. We do not know the exact date of the picture, but assume he was about 35 years of age so this would put the photo around 1922. The trout was caught by a dangling night crawler over the side of the boat while he was rowing up a small stream. The trout jumped out of the water and hooked himself and Louie landed it a few minutes later.

 

With the assistance of a oil lamps and a mid wife, my Great Uncle Louie was born in 1887 at his parents home in a small city in South Eastern Wisconsin. At the time of his birth, Philadelphia was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the US Constitution, Thomas A. Edison was patenting the Kinetoscope, the fore runner of moving pictures and shares the same birth date with the late great Boris Karloff.

 

Graduating from High School along with 28 other students in 1906, Louie went on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After 2 years of engineering study he accepted a position with the US Post Office and pioneered the first Rural Routes in Southern Wisconsin.

 

Mean while, his family was running one of the local funeral parlors and Louie assisted when ever possible, mostly taking calls and pick-ups on weekends. He related that there were many times the families would pay off some of the funeral expenses with the deceased gold caps and/or their jewelry.

 

Rather than having to dispose of this type of payment to a local jeweler, Louie and another close relative of his father opened a jewelry store. Out of respect to the families none of the recovered precious metals were ever re-sold in the shop. Stones were removed and other items were melted and transformed. It was the” Roaring Twenties” and women’s jewelry was very fashionable and the business soon flourished.

 

On occasion, customers would bring in gold coins and other pieces of jewelry for cash or to simply buy more jewelry. The gold coins immediately went into the store safe and there they stayed. Most of the gold coins were the $5 Indian Heads but on occasion, a Liberty Head was brought in along with $10 and the rarer $20 pieces. At no time as the bits and pieces of this legacy evolved did Louie ever mention a St. Gaudens. It appeared that they did not circulate at the retail levels, at least in that area.

 

The larger denominations were not saved, they had to be used to purchase inventory and raw materials for the sizing and repair procedures, the basic functions of a well rounded jeweler.

 

In 1930, communications were basically disseminated by newsprint, radio and by word of mouth. The word of mouth at social gatherings such as at church and other fraternal organizations was by no means accurate, one Louie would soon lament. By then, the spreading fingers of the “Great Depression” gripped the Mid-West with out relent. The jewelry business all but dried up, but people still died and the family funeral business stayed the course.

 

Cutting back operations in the jewelry store, it remained open until 1933 when then President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Gold Recall Act in March of 1933. Accurate information was slow to reach Louie and they did not fully comprehend the entire Presidential Order. They did find out that any gold holdings in vaults and safety deposit boxes was subject to forfeiture to the US Government and if not completely complied with, the penalties were going to be rather stiff.

 

One would seem to think that people would be very skeptical of turning gold holdings back to the government but Louie said that everyone was very patriotic and when the President of the United States wanted something done, people willingly complied.

 

The Federal Government set up a redemption center in the local First National Bank and they would redeem your gold coins at a rate of about $21.00 per oz. about $5.00 par value for a ¼ oz. $5 Indian. The Feds paid in paper currency or certificate of deposit at the same bank. At no time was silver was ever handed out for redemption, which disappointed many a person but there was nothing they could do but accept.

 

Louie gathered up ALL the gold coins in the store safe in order to comply with the newly enacted law. They new that the raw gold used in day to day activities in the store’s vault was exempt from this order, as was the dentists small raw gold stocks used for caps and crowns. So, on the day instructed, Louie went to the bank to redeem his personal hoard of US Minted gold coins. The quantity he took was never revealed but as business man, he accepted the certificate of deposit which started to immediately draw interest.

 

It was not until well after the redemption that he learned that it was only the safety deposit boxes inside the banks that were sealed and the contents subject to government review. Also, that he could have kept some of the better gold coins as part of a collection without fear of reprisal. This bothered him fiercely and had he known this in advance, the outcome of that day in 1933 might have been a bit different.

 

Being from a stout German family, the language was fluently spoken and when queried about this in his old age, he would spit and utter, “treten sie mich” which loosely translates “kick me.”

 

Louie retired from the Post Office in 1950 and passed away in 1963 from lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking Lucky Strikes.

 

 

 

 

Note:

 

Louie’s Graduation announcement can be seen here as posted in the Tangents Section

Link

 

Louie had a million stories about the depression era, since he was a mail carrier, he was exempt as was Doctors from gas rationing, so he always had a few extra gallons to share with farmers in the area who’s tractors would have otherwise sat idle.

 

I would ride with him in a 30 mile radius from Oconomowoc and every farmer knew my Uncle. He also had bought a case of .12 ga shotgun shells from Sears the month before they were banned so he handed those out to the locals as well so they could supplement their meals with wild game. He was a very colorful person and well liked.

 

[ant]

 

very very awsome!

 

sounds like a great man! thank you for sharing

[DC Dawg]

i was wondering if you could tell me why the light seems to ray off my dad. is that a camera thing (maybe a mesege for me).

From here it looks like the impression from the top of an envelope that the picture might have been stored in.

 

Woody... great story!

 

Scott

[ant]

it does look like an envelope i have been looking at coins and comics far too much!

 

thanks.

 

keep the stories coming folks

[Coindude]

Here's a recent one. Dschnepp from over at tradingslabs offered up a whole bunch of coins at face value. I'm always interested in getting my sons interested in the hobby so I decided to jump on them. So, I got about 20 bux face value worth of coins, a lot of them silver, for face value plus the cost of shipping which was another 15 bux or so. I was tempted to put away some of the silver halves and quarters, but I'm glad I didn't. Here's a pic with them and their prizes. With my help it was a very equitable split.

[ant]

(thumbs u

[Observer44]

I don't have a picture, but I have a little story. When I was a kid I delivered newspapers , mowed lawns, and shoveled snow. One of my customers was a couple of spinster school teachers. They sometimes paid me with shiny Morgan dollars from a bank bag. I saved them as if they were treasures. One day I went to add another one to my stash and found nothing all 38 of them were gone. I went to my mother crying that my brothers had stolen my coins. My mother then confessed that she had taken them to buy a Easter hat. But she said that when she had the money to pay me back she would put the bills back in my stash. It took many years to forgive her. But I always think what did I lose out on. John

[ant]

ouch. my mom did that with some old munsters comics of mine whole collection just gave to some stranger. i later found out the #1 was worth quite a bit in the condition i had it

 

 

[Observer44]

a couple of years later when we were moving, I packed all my comics, baseball cards, and coins in a big box. My father told my brother to take a bunch of boxes to the dump. and some of them to the new house. A month later I went into the garage to unpack my stuff. To my surprise the box was full of trash. My big brother threw out my stuff and kept the junk. There were about 500 pristine comics and close to a thousand baseball cards, all also pristine. There were many first editions and many rookie cards. I must have had a dozen Mickey Mantle cards among a host of others. In thius case I still haven't forgiven my brother, and that was back in1960. John

[WoodenJefferson]

Just think though, in a couple of thousand years from now, an excavation dig will uncover this treasure trove and it will be like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls.