Back in October I posted a story by a fellow coin collector, Tim Mayberry, about a purchase he had made and how it affected him when he realized it represented a lifetime of enjoyment for the previous owner. Shortly after Tim revealed this story on the forums at pcgs.com, another member added a second chapter. Thanks Jeff, for your kind permission to reprint what follows.

“And now for the rest of the story …

Imagine my surprise when I read Tim’s story about this set of coins, since I was the person that handled the consignment of these coins along with the grading and lotting of all of the coins in this particular auction. I contacted Tim after seeing this post and told him that I would be updating the story.

The owner of the coins was a gentleman that passed away earlier this year at age 77. I was contacted by an older brother of his whom I know well about liquidating his collection, of which the auction items were just a portion. After seeing Tim’s post, I printed a copy for his brother who was obviously moved by it. I then asked if I could respond with a brief synopsis of his life as well.

Bobby was born in 1930 in Minnesota where he attended school through high school until joining the Navy. During his stint in the Navy, he fell off the wing of a Corsair and suffered head trauma that affected him for the rest of his life. Later on, he ran delivery routes for a local food manufacturing plant until he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, which ended his days making deliveries. He moved into the plant and ended up as the head purchaser before retirement.

He and his wife lived in an apartment above a dairy that ended up burning down in 1974. (Several of the coin lots in the auction were fire-damaged.) His wife divorced him shortly after the fire and he never had any children. The MS eventually took its toll, and he spent many years in a wheelchair. He also had many heart problems and heart attacks over the years.

I had the pleasure of meeting Bobby, but never really got to know him. His coin collection was very eclectic, ranging from over 6,000 wheat cents to bags of common coins, silver & gold bullion, gifts that were given to him over the years, and other strange items that always seem to be found in collections. He was also taken advantage of by some very unscrupulous dealers over the years as there was a large collection of key date coins that were all fake or altered dates/mintmarks. We have been unable to locate any sales records to determine where he got the coins from, unfortunately.

Of all the items in the collection, the collection of cents that Tim refers to was the only thing that I would describe as something that was worked on for a long time, so it was probably where he started and he continued over time, even when he could afford better items for his collection. The cent set was actually split into two parts – the one Tim has and another collection of proof-only cents from 1938-1990 which I bought out of the auction. It was in an old black binder that was falling apart, so I put both halves into two binders for the auction. If I kept the old binder, I’ll send it to Tim if he wants to keep it all together.

By the way, there was no ’55 Double Die in the set (I suppose he kept the place holder just in case), but there was a 72DD #1 in there. It was sold as a separate lot in the auction. He did have two 55DD’s but they were part of the counterfeit coins.

Hope this helps to put some perspective behind the story.”

Bobby derived a lot of pleasure from this hobby. It was the one constant in his life. And chances are he never knew he had been taken advantage of. Those key dates in his collection, even though many were altered or counterfeit, were no doubt the basis of many a happy conversation with friends and family. Unknowingly, Bobby passed on his legacy to another generation that will enjoy it as much as he did.

With the schedule I have to keep as an assistant manager for a large retail chain, my “me” time is generally from midnight to 2 or 3 A.M. since I pull a lot of closing shifts. One of my favorite things to do is socialize a little with my coin collecting brethren (who are also apparently insomniacs) in a message forum on pcgs.com. A few nights ago I came across this story by Tim Mayberry, a fellow collector out of Tennessee. After contacting him, he is graciously allowing me to recount these events from a couple of years ago. The fact that Tim’s story is a topic of conversation on these busy forums years after initially posting them should tell you something about the story AND the writer. Thanks, Tim, for allowing me to share this wonderful story.

“This past weekend I had noticed a link on the message board to an auction on Proxybid. Out of curiosity I went to the site, registered for the auction and started to browse the listings. After a while I noticed a set of BU / Proof Lincoln Cents, 1937 to 1998. The description said it was mostly complete. The picture in the auction showed a blue three ring binder full of pennies in 2×2 holders. I went ahead and bid on the auction, winning it for $81.00, plus the 15% buyers fee and shipping.

Today I got the set in the mail and started to look through it. What I found I never expected.

As I opened the folder I could see bright red pennies, starting with the 1937 Philadelphia strike. Going along, each and every spot was filled with the regular issue P, D &S that you would expect. As I turned to the next page I could see more bright red pennies, and the gleaming Steel Cents of 1943. I noticed a spot next to the 1955 where a coin had been. Was it the 1955 Doubled Die? I will never know. Someone had removed it. Turning the pages I found the same empty spot next to the 1972.

Still I thought, “What a set!”, and I began looking closer. This was no ordinary set. Someone had taken a lifetime to collect these pennies. I looked closer and found the clean crisp writing of the dates and mint marks in the earlier years. I noticed that over the years the staples had changed type. For a few years in the late forties and early fifties he used a date stamp made for collectors that had the mintmarks on them. I saw that he had carefully marked the 44’s and 45’s as Shell Case cents. In the 60’s he started to include the Proof cents for each year.

Then in the mid 80’s I noticed that the writing was not as crisp, his hand was a little more shaky, the dates written on the coins not as smooth as previous years, each year getting a little more distorted. Once in a while I would notice in the early 90’s a fingerprint here and there. 1997 was missing all together, then 1998, you could barely read the writing on the holder, his hand no longer able to write clearly. And the set ends. He had included some extras on the last page, a nice BU 34, and a few others.

Over the next hour I started to realize just how much work he had put into this set, always trying to put together the best he could get. I began to wonder about this person, and how he must have treasured his set of pennies. I would imagine that he passed not too long after putting in his last cent and wondered if there was anyone that would ever appreciate his work.

Well sir, I never met you, but as I write this the hair on the back of my neck is standing on end, my eyes are beginning to water, and I want you to know, I appreciate your set, and I will never sell it. I can only hope that when I go someone will get this set and feel the way I do about it. I will pick up where you left off, and keep each coin together in the set. Your work was not in vain.

Lot 403…Is not for sale.”

It’s been a while since I’ve written an educational post but some recent reading has inspired me to revisit that style. So I thought it might be interesting to look at the early days of  collecting U.S. coins. United States coin collectors can trace the birth of our hobby as we know it today to February 21, 1857. On this date the Coinage Act came into effect which abolished the production of the copper half cent and large cent and also revoked the legal tender status of many foreign gold and silver coins.

The Act also provided for the production of a new small size cent made of 88% copper and 12% nickel, the Flying Eagle cent.

On May 25 the first new cents were made available to the public at the Philadelphia Mint in exchange for the old heavy coppers and Spanish silver. Rick Snow reprints a contemporary newspaper account from the Philadelphia Bulletin in his “A Guide Book of Flying Eagle and Indian Head Cents“. The wave of nostalgia for the old copper cents of everyone’s childhood gave birth to a passion for coin collecting that had been the pursuit of only a few Americans previously.

The events of 1857 and the economic hardships that arose as a result served to fuel the cent collecting fire even further. In August the Ohio Life Insurance & Trust Co., a real estate investment and lending firm, closed its doors. The demise of so venerable a company caused some banks to begin suspending specie payments (exchanging hard coinage for paper money). Newspapers spread the economic jitters and soon the Panic of 1857 was on. By October, the public found themselves holding a lot of worthless paper money and, because of the hoarding of silver and gold that resulted, the lowly cent would soon be the only hard currency readily found in circulation! If you were bitten by the collecting bug in May, chances are by October cents were all you could afford to sock away.

Today we can hardly imagine a time when $2.00 was the daily wage for the average man, when our senators physically attacked each other in debates over the morality of slavery. Newspapers of the day carried stories such as the sinking of the S.S. Central America (Sept. 12) with its cargo of gold from San Francisco, and the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to allow fugitive slave Dred Scott the opportunity to plead his case for freedom. But with the passing of the large cent a new fascination with “the good old days” arose to become the hobby we know today, even in those uncertain economic times, or perhaps because of them.

It”s not often that hobbies overlap in such a way that you are consumed by an urge to research all aspects of the overlap for several months. But after numerous trips to the library and endless hours combing the internet, here is the story of what I’ve been doing since my last update to this site.

As you can tell from my previous posts, not only do I enjoy coin collecting but I also have quite a love of history. I’ve found genealogy can make that love of history come alive in a personal way and so it has been a pursuit of mine as well. But all of these interests crashed together one day while I was looking at a dealer website that specializes in obsolete currency.

Obsolete currency is a term used to describe paper money issued primarily by banks and local governments prior to 1866 when the U.S. government took over the job. Q. David Bowers wrote an excellent reference book, Obsolete Paper Money, that deals with the topic exhaustively. Being a fan of the author I decided to give the book a try even though it wasn’t really a collecting interest of mine. Having read many of  Bowers’ books before, I knew it would be entertaining nonetheless. Many fascinating hours later, I was hooked.

I began looking for sources online about the topic and ran across a couple of dealer sites. The two best I have found as far as price, variety, and quality of illustrations are donckelly.com and vernpotter.com. I couldn’t believe how reasonable the prices were on some of these notes! Like ancient coins, collectors of obsolete currency enjoy a hobby where the general collecting public isn’t well educated on the topic. How many of your friends are even aware that these bills exist, not to mention how affordable they are?

While looking through the inventory on these sites I noticed that banks of Easton, Pennsylvania were represented frequently. From my genealogy research I knew that my family, the Yohes, had settled in Northampton County shortly after arriving in America from Germany in the mid 1700′s. Off to the library.

After burying myself in the Pennsylvania Archives, Census’, and tax records I found Michael. Michael Yohe was born July 25, 1782 in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania. It was his father, Johann Michael (Michael Sr.), who came to America in 1749 as a child. Around 1824 Michael Jr. moved his family to Stark County, Ohio. His father and mother came to Ohio shortly after but his uncle Adam apparently remained in Easton continuing to run the family business, shoemaking. I am descended from them in a direct line through my father.

Knowing this I thought it might be fun to have a few notes from Easton just so I could imagine they may have passed through the hands of one of my ancestors. Then I made an amazing discovery. While shopping around I found a couple of notes printed by the American Bank Note Co. for the Borough of Easton. They were in the denominations of 10 cents and 15 cents issued Dec.1, 1862 to be receivable as payment for Borough taxes. Then I looked at the signatures, handwritten in ink. A man by the name of Sam Yohe had signed his name on the line reserved for the president of the issuing establishment! Could Sam be a descendant of Michael’s uncle Adam?

That’s where I am now. Back to the library!

Last Sunday night I had one of those moments with my 7 year old son that, when it happens, you know the memory will last a lifetime. Like most people my day ends when I throw my change in a big pickle jar on my dresser and get undressed for bed. Sunday night I took the pickle jar into the living room and gave it a shake to see if it was worth hauling down to the Coinstar kiosk. My son, Ethan, remarked on how many pennies I had and stated that pennies were his favorite.

Just like that I was reminded of all the times I sat at the kitchen table in my grandparents’  house and fed pennies into Grandad’s Accu-View magnifier. Grandad would get his Whitman penny albums out and we would sit for hours looking for that elusive 1909-S VDB, the holy grail of Lincoln pennies. Almost 40 years later I look back on that experience as one of the happiest times of my life.

So I dug around and found two H.E. Harris Lincoln Memorial Cent albums and grabbed a magnifying glass. I showed Ethan how to look at the dates and explained the D’s and the occasional S’s that followed. Pretty soon Ethan was armed with the magnifying glass, calling out the dates and mintmarks or lack thereof. When we exhausted all the pennies I showed him how to look at them and pick which ones had more eye appeal.

When he found a new date or a better example we would high five. “I’ve got good eyes, don’t I Dad?” We came close to filling those books and I managed to occupy a 7 year old for several hours. Ethan never got to meet my grandad but they have a connection. Grandad still lives on in the gift he gave to me, a gift I can pass on to Ethan.

The Half Cent is a fascinating little piece of early American history. This particular coin is an 1804 Draped Bust Half Cent, all of which were struck in Philadelphia. The Draped Bust variety was minted from 1800 to 1808. Many die varieties exist for the 1804 – a common date – and many collectors make a specialty of it.

In 1804 the Half Cent had about the same value as the modern day dime, but you would have seen very little U.S. currency on the streets of Philadelphia during this time. It was much more likely that your pocket change consisted of coins from England, Spain, or France. To compete with the denominations in use from these other countries, it made sense for the U.S. to issue the Half Cent.

For example, the British not only had the halfpenny but the farthing, or 1/4 cent, as well. But by far the most popular coin in use at the time was the Spanish 8 Reales, a dollar sized coin made of high grade silver. Because fractional coinage of this series (1 reale, 2 reale, 4 reale) was not nearly as available, the 8 Reale was often cut into pieces to make small change (pieces of eight). Since a single piece (1 reale)  had a value of  12 & 1/2 U.S. cents, the Half Cent denomination made it handy for transactions involving the coinage of these other countries.

Many events transpired in and around Philadelphia in 1804. Thomas Jefferson wins a landslide victory in his bid for his second term as President. Jefferson’s vice president from his first term, Aaron Burr, must flee New York and eventually settles in Philadelphia after he shoots and kills Alexander Hamilton, former Treasury Secretary,  in a duel on July 12. The previous year, the size of the United States is more than doubled by the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15,000,000. From 1804 through 1806 the Lewis & Clark expedition explores much of the territory and continues to the Pacific Ocean.

I love this coin because it saw America’s infancy. So many national legends arose during this period and have become an integral part of our culture. This well used representative of the smallest denomination our country ever produced saw it all. For a definitive book about Half Cents, Roger S. Cohen’s American Half Cents: The Little Half Sisters is a must. To get really technical, Ronald Manley’s “The Half Cent Die State Book: 1793 – 1857″ is a specialists’ dream.

I believe everyone has coins in their collection that are only there for sentimental reasons. How many of us became interested in numismatics because of a gift from a grandparent, an obsolete coin in our change, or a chance find while exploring an old barn?

My grandma’s house was full of things that an 8 year old would find fascinating. The best thing was a china cabinet full of old glassware. At any given time this collection of candy dishes and punch bowls would hold any interesting change that had come across the counter at the post office or hardware store where my grandparents worked. Because I had shown an interest in my grandad’s coin collection, I had free reign to dig through the cabinet to my heart’s content.

One day Grandma showed me a change purse her mother had given her when Grandma was a little girl. My great-grandma got it from her grandfather, Thomas Mayes. Inside were coins like I had never seen before: pennies the size of half dollars, dimes and quarters with funny designs.

Many years later, Grandad’s coin collection passed on to me along with the change purse from the china cabinet and its contents. The oldest of those coins, two Braided Hair Large Cents dated 1847 and 1851, have been in my family now for six generations. The Barber dimes and quarter were a later addition to the change purse by my great-grandma. A dealer might give me 30 or 40 dollars for the whole lot. I wouldn’t take a million. These coins and my family are tied together in my mind. My grandparents passed on a lifetime of enjoyment and curiosity with this little stack of mementos from a bygone era.

You can’t buy that in a coin shop.

NumiStories is the result of a flame war that I inadvertently caused on a collector forum I used to frequent online. One of the old graybeard collector/dealers was crowing about some new purchase he had made for his registry set and asked for opinions. He posted a photo of his acquisition in its ridiculously high mint state grade and the other members oohed and aahed as was to be expected.

I scanned and posted a Morgan dollar my Grandad had carried around in his pocket for umpteen years and said, “I like mine better.” The furor that erupted from those four words is what gave birth to this website.

Mr. Graybeard ranted and raved about my lowbrow collecting habits. How could anyone prefer my VF at best widget to his profoundly preserved pristine product??

My response was as simple as Grandad’s dollar. That scratched and beaten and polished dollar made its way from 1883 San Francisco to 1950 Illinois hand to hand. It served people’s needs. It bought food for a supper table. It was given as a birthday gift to a child. My Grandad found the old coin in the post office change drawer and carried it around for 20 some years, looking at it, thinking about where it had been.

Mr. Graybeard’s coin sat in a vault for 120 years.

I like mine better.

This site is about coins with stories. It’s about history. It’s about the role these coins played in everyday life, where they were used and what was happening at the time.

Mr. Graybeard can keep his high grade, never been touched slabbed stuff. I like dirt, tone, honesty and a good story.