Coin sighting in old movie

[Elbesaar]

 

We just got Secretariat from NetFlix ... and the coin toss was with a 1921 Morgan.

[tejas1836]

In the movie Indecent Proposal, Robert Redford flips his lucky Walking Liberty half dollar and it comes up heads. At the end of the movie, he gives the coin to Demi Moore for good luck. She flips it over and it's a heads on the reverse too.

[PeteT-migration]

The film "Co Country for Old Men" was previously mentioned. What wasn't stated was that the 1958 silver quarter was likely a film mistake.

 

The context of the scene wherein the coin appears is that the villian of the story reaches into his pocket and draws out a random quarter in his change. He tells the clerk to whom he is speaking that the coin has traveled "22 years to be in this place at this time". Since the film takes place in the year 1980 that would mean the mint data of the quarter is 1958.

 

But the mistake is to believe that a junk silver coin would still be circulating and be in the villans pocket at all. The context of the scene never indicates that the coin was a keepsake of his, or that he'd been hanging onto it for years, only that it had traveled randomly to be in "that place at that time" which means that it was being treated as circulating currency. My father worked as a bank teller from 1964-1967 and he was a personal witness to the rabid gobbling of junk silver by investors. By '67 you'd have been hard pressed to find anything dated pre-65 and by 1970 you simply didn't. In all my years of traveling I have only ever seen one silver junk coin in circulation, a 1964 dime that was handed to me as change in 1985 at a gas station when I bought some candy as a boy. I was 9 at the time and had just started collecting....the excitement of that moment for a 9-year-old boy was incredible....not to mention unbelieveably improbable.

 

The likelyhood that the character in the film actually had a 1958 junk silver quarter in his pocket was far to low to be believeable. But alas, the filmakers were not considering these facts.

 

 

[CaptHenway]

In Scarface (1932) George Raft is seen flipping a silver dollar into the air and catching it in his hand without looking at what he's doing. Hey, I notice these things.

 

Raft was typecast with that coin flipping bit his whole career. He had a cameo in the Woody Allen "Casino Royale" and was flipping a coin.

[mtnstyne]

No coins to speak of but just watched "Too Big to Fail" and have a very strong urge to buy bullion now...

[x2rider]

I was watching the Simpsons last night and Moe Pull a shotgun on a guy trying to pass him some Sacagawea dollars

[mtnstyne]

I was watching the Simpsons last night and Moe Pull a shotgun on a guy trying to pass him some Sacagawea dollars

 

Now that's funny...I have recieved some strange looks when trying to spend presidential dollars, at least I haven't run into ol' Moe!

[relicsncoins]

My daughters were watching "When In Rome" today when I stopped home for lunch. There is a scene in the movie where the main character tosses 4 coins and a poker chip into a bowl that she had taken from a "magic" fountain in Rome. 3 of the coins are U.S. and one of them is foreign. One of the U.S. coins is a bit peculiar. Does anyone know what it is? I will reveal the answer later today. My kids thought I was nuts when I rewound and paused the movie to conifirm what I thought I saw.

 

JJ

 

[shirohniichan]

I was watching the Simpsons last night and Moe Pull a shotgun on a guy trying to pass him some Sacagawea dollars

 

In another Simpsons episode Grandpa Simpson talks about 1918 Liberty Head dollars.

 

"To my son Homer and his entire family I leave these: a box of mint-condition 1918 liberty-head silver dollars. You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people, and one day I seen J.D. Rockefeller flying by. So I run out of the house with a big washtub and... Hey! Where are you going?"

 

The Simpsons explained it was their duty to spend the silver dollars at the mall, so they all hopped in the car.

 

"Anyway, about my washtub. I'd just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a 'walking-bird.' We'd always have walking-bird on Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we'd all watch football, which in those days was called baseball..."

 

Maybe Grandpa Simpson wrote the eBay descriptions for people selling Chinese counterfeits of US silver dollars.

[nunfa0]

This may be a strech but I watched the movie Dragnet the oter day and the porn mag owner appeared to be wearing a Double Eagle around his neck.

[x2rider]

This may be a strech but I watched the movie Dragnet the oter day and the porn mag owner appeared to be wearing a Double Eagle around his neck.

What were you doing John, that you would be looking that closely at a guys Chest

[ModCrewman-migration]

Watched a kid's NetFlix movie with my 9 year-old daughter last night and we came across the movie The Legend of Tillamook's Gold it is a low budget kids film with a pretty simplistic plot, but when we were looking for a movie and I read the description of

 

"When 14-year-old Julie (Suzanne Marie Doyon) relocates to Manzanita, Ore., with her parents and sister, she has difficulty getting used to small-town life -- until she stumbles upon an ancient gold coin and learns about the legend of the Tillamook Treasure. With the help of a history lesson from her grandfather and a Native American elder, Julie goes searching for the buried treasure and, in the process, learns what is truly precious in life.

 

I couldn't pass it up. I believe the coins shown were supposed to be 16th century Spanish gold.

 

(We gave it 3 stars; though my daughter thought it was 4 and I'd have done 2.)

 

 

[DWLange]

TCM recently played "Her Majesty, Love." This 1931 movie was one of a very few W. C. Fields films I hadn't already seen, as it was out of circulation until recently. The movie is set in Germany, and there's a scene in which Fields seemingly tips a butler with a thaler, to the butler's delight. When the recipient examines the coin, it is now a small piece such as a 5 or 10 pfennig, revealing both Fields' character and his skill with slight of hand. I couldn't identify the thaler with certainty, but it was an old coin even then, perhaps 1780s-1800 or so.

[mtnstyne]

Just catching up my DVR recordings and started watching the new TV Series "Alphas" on the SyFy channel.

 

In the first episode one of the guys has amazing aim and throws quarters into a soda machine from across the room.

 

In the second episode another guy uses a quarter to escape from captivity in the back of a truck.

[erickso1]

Watched Tin Cup w/ my father while heading back home for a visit. Marks his ball w/ a Merc. Year unknown.

[Coindude]

I saw Cowboys and Aliens yesterday, they had a ton of Type 1 $20.

[rons]

In the trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes movie they show a bunch of barber halves being thrown into a hat. I was so startled that I didn't catch the dates but they looked to be at least vg

 

[mtnstyne]

On Buried Treasure on Fox last night with the Keno brothers from Sotherby's they were at an Ohio "Treasure House" they found numerous gold coins throughout the house hidden in places like the vents. But what really was cool was they found a 1780 Libertas Americanas. Very Cool

 

[WoodenJefferson]

Popeye eats his spinach and takes on Native Indians hitting them so hard, they spin into coins.

 

The entire cartoon can be seen here Popeye the Sailor Wigwam Whoopee (1948)

 

[comicdonna]

Bonanza episode: "The saga of Annie O'Toole" showed a chest full of Morgans. It was supposedly $25,000 Plus, stacks of Morgans were shown in Annie's restaurant at the mining claims site.

[WoodenJefferson]

Indecent Proposal (1993) In the back of a limo, Robert Redford (John Cage) hands Demi Moore(Diana Murphy) a two headed Silver American Eagle that was used in a coin toss that he nefariously won.

[shirohniichan]

I saw an UNC 1979 Lincoln Cent in Somewhere in Time. The main character reacted as I would upon finding a modern coin among classics.

[Ducksoup]

Don't know if its been mentioned, but in one of the Batman movies (latest one I think) they use a Peace dollar to flip to determine heads or tails.

[CaptHenway]

Bonanza episode: "The saga of Annie O'Toole" showed a chest full of Morgans. It was supposedly $25,000 Plus, stacks of Morgans were shown in Annie's restaurant at the mining claims site.

 

I love improbable writing like that. 25,000 morgan dollars would weigh about 1,473 pounds!

 

!

[VDB Coins]

I would have to go back and watch it again but I have been watching the On Demand reruns of "Breaking Bad." There's a scene in maybe the second, third episode where Walt and Jesse (is that his name, the squirrely meth cooker teenager?) flip a coin to decide which of them has to kill the captive drug dealer in the basement. Now, this is a modern series, right? But that sure looked like a silver Washington quarter to me! Is anybody else that A-R that they have hit rewind to check it out already?

[Conder101]

Just watched Rio Bravo again this weekend and there are four coin references in it. On two occasions a silver dollar is tossed into a spittoon for the drunken deputy (Dean Martin) to go after. When the outlaw that shoots the sheriff's friend after he offer to help is killed he is found to be carrying a "brand new fifty dollar gold piece, about what Nathen Burdette would figure a man's life is worth." (A large round golden disk is briefly shown.) And later when the outlaws try to take the sheriff by surprise four of them are killed. John Wayne tells the undertaker to bury them and send in his bill for payment the says "No need, each of them had two new fifty dollar gold pieces on them" (Holds up two large golden disks) Wayne says "Price has gone up."

[DWLange]

I posted the following a few days ago in a separate thread, but it seems to have flown under the radar. I believe it's interesting enough to repeat here:

 

 

There was another thread about coin sightings in old movies, but here's a new twist: TCM showed several silent Laurel and Hardy short comedies the other night, including one titled Putting Pants on Philip (1927). This was early in the L&H partnership, and their familiar characters were not yet established. Thus was Ollie playing an American who has to meet his Scottish nephew, played by Stan, who is arriving aboard a ship. Philip arrives dressed in kilts, and this causes so much embarrassment to Ollie that the rest of the movie consists of his attempts to get Philip to wear long pants.

 

The introductory title card of the movie reads "The story of a Scotch lad who came to America to hunt for a Columbian half-dollar --- his grandfather lost it in 1893." It's no secret that the unsold Columbian halves were dumped into general circulation, where they wore down just like any other coins, but it's fascinating to learn that they were so familiar to movie audiences of the 1920s that viewers would be expected to understand this comic reference. I always believed that the general public of that time was oblivious to the coins they received in change, but this evidently was not the case.

 

[johnny9434]

one learns something new every day dwlange, thanks for sharing. best wishes

[Conder101]

but it's fascinating to learn that they were so familiar to movie audiences of the 1920s that viewers would be expected to understand this comic reference. I always believed that the general public of that time was oblivious to the coins they received in change, but this evidently was not the case.

It might be just the opposite. They were common enough that people would know of them, but may have never seen one allowing them to believe that a Columbian half could be rare. How many people today think any Morgan dollar is rare and valuable. A reference to a true rare coin would have gone right over their heads. A reference they can relate to works much better.

[DWLange]

In the movie "Drag Me To Hell", which is both very scary and funny at the same time, a Standing Liberty Quarter plays a very prominent role.

 

I tried to watch that movie last night, but it was just too silly, and I couldn't make it to the end. I did note, however, that the SLQ was a cleaned 1929 (wasn't able to see a mintmark).