just carl

So lots of members are adding thier occupations, educations, etc. Should have been on the original poll. Could have condensed the ages to 1 to 50, 50 to 1,000. Shoe sizes, a wig, do you pick your nose and other classic important things. There are usually posts that do ask for some of those such as education or occupation. Saw one like that on the PCGS web site once. Problem there is with over 20,000 members, such a poll vanishes to page 72 within an hour of posting. slight exageration. It would be interesting to see how many members are male, female or other. Collectors only or also a dealer or and occational seller of coins. Add in what other hobbies, what town/state and/or country, even been in jail or plan on it soon, ever cheat on your wife/husband/etc. Since it's all in fun, why not? Since I go to a massive amount of coin shows, gun shows, knife shows, camera shows, computer shows and on and on and on, there is one thing I've noticed over the years. Coin shows the average age is well over 50. Usually only 1 to 100 women buyers to men. Usually only 1 to 1,000 women dealers versus men. Only 1 in maybe 500 kids to grownups. I see possibly 1 teenager per 10,000 people at such shows. Gun and or knife shows naturally are close to coin shows but much less females and very, very few kids. And the females at those sort of look like the men. Computer, camera, dog, cat type shows are usually about 50/50 around here anyway. By that I mean you can find kids both boys and girls, teenagers, mid life people and some, but not lots of older people. Of course all such statistics are based on the area you live.

Also, the guy that has that site www.coppercoins.com also has two books out and they too are full of photos and information similar to the web site.

I doubt the government ever has to recall coins. They purposely produce coins that people will hoard, save or just destroy. It would never be necessary to recall a coin and the expense to have someone inspecting coins for wear is just not thier thing. People buy and hoard coins every day by the millions. Others just pull out of change what they need for a collection. Others buy them from shops, shows or that little, dirty, odd dressed person that approaches us in parking lots and alleys. More coins are destroyed by people melting them down for the metal, thrown in rivers, lakes, oceans for the fun of it. Then naturally many people throw some in a vat of wet concrete since it is supposed to be good luck. Some coins are just lost in forest, parks, beaches, deserts. Although the Mint continuously produces millions and billions of coins each year, not to many survive our system of coin elimination. Meanwhile back to my smelter.

One more thing about flea markets for coins. Try to remember that many things at flea markets just vanish so many dealers will not put coins out. If you ask, they may have some hidden away in a case but are just to afraid to display them. I've noticed over the years a certain person that walks up to every dealers and says "any old watches, pens, coins, cameras?" One time I asked him about why he does that instead of just looking. I'm nosey that way. He was nice and said he had an antique store and sells so much stuff he aquires by just asking, it makes it worth while. So now I do the same.

LostDuctchman: You and your Dad could have had some fun back then. You could have had your Dad go back there with you and he would pretend to want to buy something for thousands and then you would loudly say to your Dad, hey Dad, this is the guy that threw me out. Lets go. And then your Dad and you walk out.

Sort of used to be that way around here with the average coin collector being an old man. Coin stores, shops, flea market coin dealers and especially coin shows. Recently with the massive growth of coin collectors due to the Mints amount of various types of coins, the type of collector making appearances has also changed. I go to a lot of coin shows and have now noticed a large increase in kids, younger people, women and even what appears as a couple on a date. Now also women dealers or women with their husbands at coin shows. I would suspect the State Quarters started an entire new concept of coin collecting which includes real young kids, younger people in general and women.

No problem. Some flea markets are the best place to find coins. At one flea market near me there was from 5 to 7 coin dealers or at least people that sold coins. Closed now due to building bought by another company. One dealer there was so rude it was almost a joke. If you started to look at his coins, he would say are you just looking or do you really want to buy something. Other dealers used to try to tell him that is the reason he never sells anything. At another flea market, still open all year long, there is guy that sells coins but really had no idea of what is what. All coins are dumped, and I mean dumped, into a few bins. US coins in one or two and foreign in another. All Mercury Dimes are $1 but if you buy more the price goes down. I've found a 26S, 42D/41, 16S, 18S and many, many others in that bin. These are not junk coins. A 38D Merc was FSB's and also for less than a buck. Flea markets can be great.

Everything Mark says it true as far as I'm concerned. If a person gets treated like garbage because they don't spend a fortune is just not good buisness. All to well at a certain coin shop when I wanted to look at lesser priced coins I've had people just walk away. Noted on another post. At many coin shows there are a group of people that are supposed to have a coin store not to far but since they are at most of the coin shows, I keep forgetting to ask for an address. At the coin shows they will talk to you, discuss just about anything, go down in prices if you ask and sometimes just go down in prices if they think they know you. They are for the most part seamingly nice people. One coin dealer closed up his place and went to work for another coin shop. He is a great guy and I've known him for many years. I wonder if he will be the same working for someone else. My greatest and most fantastic coin place ever, was a coin/stamp/etc counter on the 5th Floor of Carson's downtown Chicago. The sales people were absolutely the nicest and would give you the best deals possible. Sure wonder where they went when they closed that store. I basically don't like coin stores, shops, hobby stores that carry coins. For the most part nothing good lately.

I really hate to remember this but not lost, but I think I would have preferred loosing a coin compared to this. At a coin show I found a 1921S Lincoln Cent in the most perfect condition any coin was ever in. It was raw but well could have been a MS-66. Regardless I knew the dealer and he said for me I could have it for $100, not sure but I think that was the price. Naturally I purchased it. At home I wanted to take it out of the 2x2 which was stapled together and put it in an album. I had a bad habit of usuing a sharp screwdriver to lift the staples up. The screwdriver slipped. Ran accross the face of Lincoln leaving a scratch that may as well been a foot deep.

There are numerous methods of finding a coin show. For one thing you just go to Google and type in Coin Shows and your state. This will give you all the coin shows in your state. Then there are links on some dealer web sites to coin shows such as jmscoins on the far left side of the screen. Supposed to be a coin show listing on the CoinWorld web site also. I've always found the one via Google to be 100% correct for my state anyway.

As already noted the best thing to do is leave well enough alone. If you are not familiar with soldering, brazing, welding, etc. the only thing you may accomplish is totally ruining the coin.

I suggest not using anything with heat like the soldering iron. If your coin is made of anything like Copper, Nickel, Silver, etc. the Solder will spread across the coin if in fact it is Lead or a Lead derivitive. Note that is the method used on copper piping where the metal is heated and the Lead is touched to the pipe and it spreads into the joints. If you've ever installed Copper piping you'ld see that. As to liquids for cleaning gun barrels, they do not remove the buildup of Lead, Copper, Brass, etc., they just help when a wire brush is utilized when scrubbing down the barrels. Even then a harsh buildup off Lead is difficult to remove. I've spent way to many hours trying to remove Lead buildups in gun cylindars. As to a soldering iron remember there are numerous types. Some will heat up in seconds and get red hot while others used in jewlry making are well pointed and usually very slow in heat build up for material spreading control. I've done lots of Silver Solders on jewlry and it spreads fast if not carefull. Again, so much depends on the material of the coin and the type of solder. I still would leave well enough alone. If you are determined to have it removed, I would suggest sending it to a grading service such as PCGS, NGC, etc. They will charge you but the coin will not be ruined.

Blow torch or arc welder but then the coin will go with it naturall. Question is how do you know it's solder? What type of coin is it. solder sticks to metals depending on what type of metal it is. Very soft metals will adhear to solder well again pending on which metals and which solders. There are just as many types of solder as there is types of metals to make it with. Some don't even have Lead in the mixture and some are pure Lead. The so called lead may just be glued in place if part of the original jewlery. If this is a valuable coin, leave it alone. If it is just an average coin, try removing it with a soldering iron and only at the location of the contaminate. However, if a very soft type of solder and a soft metal coin, the solder will spread when heated so make sure it is not a valuable coin. Further you may try just putting solder on the rest of the coin to make it all even.

I have to agree with that. Since I'm really up there in age some of the coins people find in the last 40 years were commonly used in change when I was a kid. Heck, there wasn't even a Red Book, Roosevelt Dimes weren't invented and I remember people complaining about those new Quarters that came out recently called Washington Quarters.

Just out of curiousity how do you know that the substance you are referring to is caused by PVC? What is the chemical composition of the greenish discoloration? On man coin forums lately it has become a standard to say PVC caused this. I think without a chemical analysis of the compound it would be impossible to tell what the substance actually is composed of. Further, it is true that a substance is added to Vinyl products to make them more flexible. These are normally called Phthalate Plasticizers. They actually do leak Gases and usually of the Chlorine compound variety. However, eventually there is very little left to leak out of the product and it becomes less flexible but more stable. This leakage does not go on for ever since there is a limited quantity present. The PVC itself can not even start to melt until 413F (212C) indicating that the PVC itself can not do damage under normal temperature conditions. So again out of curiousity how would a person be able to identify so called PVC damage? An example of other damage would be the reaction of the Copper in the coin with normal elements present in the air. If the coins Copper becomes exposed to just plain air the greenish discoloration would occur naturally. As is common with Copper when exposed to air the Oxygen attacks the Copper to form (CuO2). This is the mormal darkening of Copper. Then if moisture and Carbon Dioxide is present they attack the (CuO2) and form the greenish layer of Copper Carbonate [CuCO3-Cu(OH)2]. In some areas of the country where there are or were Sulfur rich Coal burning factories or power stations, the general area has SO or SO2 in the air. This will combine with the Copper Carbonate to form Copper Sulfite or Sulfate. Highly greenish crystaline formations on anything that is Copper. So not to be repititious but how do you know that the contamination you show is PVC?

Actually most dealers at coin shows I go to also flatten the staples. I never thought of the possible scratch on another coin though. I do it for the reason they won't get hung up on each other in those big red cardboard boxes. However, there are pliers on the market that have a large flat end and are great for just that reason. The ones I use are hindged so they go straight up and down, not on an agngle like most pliers.

There is a place in the downtown area of Chicago called Hrlan J. Berk that sells all kinds of that really old stuff. Thier store looks like a museum.

Nice view point. However, if you read pages 395 to 403 in the latest edition of the Red Book, that sort of make me feel it is to late for the biggies.

Every year I order 10 to 15 Red Books for Christmas presents. I usually get the cheapest version though for others. I use a ringed edition for the basement and same for my computer room. I have all Red Book Editions from 8 to present in Hard Cover and never opened in my library.

So many people use those gel packs to dehumidify coin storage. For a small confined area they may be great but if you have a large amount of coins in a large amount of albums, 2x2's, rolls, etc., they are a waste of money and time. I keep all my coins in my basement. I keep the door to the basement closed mostly but it is not an air tight invironment. Some years back I continued to hear so much about those silica gel packs that so many organizations use for shipping items. So I purchased a large quantity of them. I normally use a more modern thing called an electric dehumidifier. With the use of a hygrometer I monitor the humidity level in the basement and keep it at below 30%. In the Chicago area that is really, really low. It runs a good deal of the time but also makes the entire house a better place to live. Now with those gel packs I turned off the dehumidfier and left about 12 of the large gel packs around the entire basement. Withing on day the humidity jumped up to 45%. The next day it hit 50%. Turned the dehumidifier back on as fast as I could. Within 2 days and with the gel packs still here, the humidity dropped back to the 30% level. So if you want to use those, fine. I'll stick to my proven method. I've had coins here for well over 60 years now and no signs of deterioration yet. Let you know if there is any change in the next hundred years of so. By the way, I do keep all Whitman Classic Albums in large freezer bags with as much air pushed out as possible.

I agree that there are web sites out there where you can crop, scale down or up, invert, etc. and they are free. Also, there are many out there that cost only about $15 or so. I have many of them. I save all photographs in .jpg and with the most basic photo program I can crop, reduce, enlarge, etc any photo. I have actually thousands of photos on one of my computers that were shot with about 2 megapixels. I also have thousands shot at 3, 6 megapixels. I usually back them all up on a CD. With 2 hard drives in computer #2 and one with 200gigs I don't worry about space. I have tried changing photos from .bmp to .jpg or to .gif or many of the other options available but can not see any reason to do this. With a decent photo program you can crop any .jpg to the smallest spot on a coin if that is something you want to do. Since the greatest amount of digital cameras use the .jpg format, I can not see any reason to modify those. As the old saying goes, let sleeping dogs lie.

I just had to print this story out. One of these days I'm going to put together a book of allthis type of educational coin stories and it will sell for millions and everyone that contributed with stories liek this will be saying "now why didn't I do that"?

You may want to also check out web sites like bhphotvideo.com. B&H are one of the largest suppliers of camera equipment around. There are also other alternatives in the lower price ranges. For example check to see if you camera has a threaded filter ring in the front of the lens. If so check camera web sites for supplies or go to a camera store and look into enlarging filters. Vivitar makes a +1, +2, +3 set in numerous mm sizes for cameras. These added to your front lenses will also give you an enlargement. Also, if you check out magnifying web sites you'll find some with a builtin light and a small area that magnifies about 8X and the main one is about 3X. If your camera is not a thing of beauty why not just tape a magnifier to the front of the camera. One more thing you may want to do is check out on the internet if there are any camera shows in your area. Here in Illinois there is at least one a month. At such shows you can usually acquire a decent digital camera for a really cheap price. I have 5 of them and the cost was less than if I bought just one in a store. Also, at such shows you will meet manyh professional photographers that really know what they are talking about.