Steve D'Ippolito

I ran into R.W. at CSNS (I was campaigning for the ANA Board of Governors). It's been my privilege to see him at many different shows over the past 10-15 years. And get a brain dump on many occasions. When Bob Julian starts talking, just forget about anything else you had planned for however long it runs!

Five stone?

I too suffered a theft of my childhood collection (started in 1970) in 1989. It got me back into coin collecting.

It wasn't misplaced, it was just behind a lot of stuff. Anyhow here's what the label says: Lydia, Kroisos AR 1/6th Stater 560-546 BC. Bob: Foreparts of lion and bull, facing, rev. punch divided into 2 squares (Sardis mint). Next step is to drag out the camera, and do the setup necessary to photograph this and other coins. Perhaps this coming weekend.

The difficulty lies in having that coin somewhere. I'd have to do some serious digging to get to it.

Yet more evidence, if you want old stuff handed to you by a cashier, go to Switzerland.

I have somewhere a stater of Croesus, which is about as far back as one can go without being protomoney (to use Scottishmoney's term).

I do tend to make a distinction between circulation and roll searches, as follows: circulation is what you get just going about your daily business and is pretty spontaneous; going through rolls is deliberately filtering thousands of coins for the sake of seeking the coins. When I collected state quarters from circulation (as well as buying the annual sets and attending the colorado release ceremony and buying ten rolls there) I wouldn't even let friendly cashiers who knew what I was doing pick through the quarter "bucket" in their cash drawers, it had to be completely random and by happenstance. This 1926 find was utterly astonishing to me simply because it was so staggeringly unlikely that one would turn up in change at some sort of convenience market. (Go to Hallenbeck's Coin Gallery downtown, though, and you will get coins of marginal numismatic value [not worth the trouble of working up and putting out for sale] in your change, but there obviously it's because people go out of their way to bring them in. He'd probably not have given out the 1926 cent.) Both are indications a coin is available at face value however, so in spite of my differing mental images I suppose I'd have to reluctantly agree that a roll search--provided the roll came from a bank--are legitimate here (though I'd still like to see people say they are doing so, which Scottishmoney did).

Scottishmoney, did you find that in circulation or did you search rolls or...?

Whereas I heard "sickle" and was thinking of the agricultural implement and wondered where the hammer was.

It looks like I got out of this area just in time. I would like to encourage the creation of an easily accessible resource of some type though (not particular about what it is)--preferably something that can be called up on a mobile device.

You had me going there for a second. It's a crescent moon and star, not a sickle.

As a kid I think the oldest thing I ever got in change was a 1919 cent, quite badly worn. Of course it was the early 70s then so I can only claim that coin was 50+ years old. On the other hand just today I noticed one of the cents I had in my pocket yesterday was a 1926 and it is in VF-30 to boot. That sucker is 87 years old. Not as valuable as the 1944 quarter I got in change a couple of years ago, though. It's a bit more common to get nickels from the 1940s (not the silver ones though) in change here as that design has not changed since 1938. I was picking through a dealer's junk and found at least one Swiss piece from the late 1800s as well, and not in noticeably bad condition, confirming what Jazinta said earlier.

Indeed. I like how the color is different in different areas of the design. (In fact it's so nice I am more than a bit suspicious of it.)

This morning I was looking through the change I had dumped on the bathroom vanity last night, checking for solid copper cents. I looked at a chocolate brown coin, and was pleased to see it was a 1976. *doubletake* No, it was 1926. And it looks to be about VF-30, which makes it worth about a buck.

This morning I was looking through the change I had dumped on the bathroom vanity last night, checking for solid copper cents. I looked at a chocolate brown coin, and was pleased to see it was a 1976. *doubletake* No, it was 1926. And it looks to be about VF-30, which makes it worth about a buck.

Congrats, I did not have one myself, though I think I had most of the other mint marks.

And it has arrived and it is good. The photos don't do it justice, not in the slightest. http://steveoncoins.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/1800-half-dime/

It's holed. So no one will encapsulate it.

I don't know how many here remember that a Sacajawea dollar got out a couple of weeks early by mistake, and people bid simply stupid money on it, despite the fact that waiting two weeks would render it butt-common.

To clarify, Group 4 is apparently 1801-1900

Well I am finally going to be receiving something I've had on layaway for six months.... sometime next week.

In 1991 I rode a bicycle from Brunssum (NL) to a town in Germany that I don't even recall the name of (found it on Google maps: Hillensberg), primarily because I could. There was a customs booth basically in the middle of a field (this was very much a back road), and all that happened was the man inside nodded at me when I slowed down and glanced through the window to see if anyone was actually there. (And looking at it from street view this simply doesn't match my recollection of the trip so I may be confusing two different trips or something.) Anyhow I note this thread is about a 1760 piatak, not a Nicholas II minor coin or European travel... so I guess I've just participated in the hijacking of an already hijacked thread.

It took me until the middle of last year to get an Arizona from the Philadelphia mint. And it was butt ugly too.

On that note, the reason you'd often see 4 rendered as IIII but never 9 as VIIII, is that IV (the rendering you'd use to be consistent with the rules) just happens happens to be the first two letters of IUVPITER, (Jupiter, ultimately deriving from Zeus Pater--he really was the same guy as Zeus!), the supreme god of the Roman pantheon. Not wanting any sort of bad attention from a god for appropriating their name... they went with IIII.