I am what you could call an amateur coin enthusiast. And ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by what you could find just in your change.
I know my mother used to still find Indian Head Pennies when she was still a young girl. (I’ll save you the trouble of doing the math. She was born in 1927–and had me when she was 40. There. I admitted it.) And we still have her collection to this day. Most of them aren’t worth much. But, hey, one or two are and were worth the trouble of her years of searching.
Enter wheat stalk pennies and bicentennial quarters. I still find them in my change. And I often hold on them. Why not?
I know presently they are not worth much. But if I live to be a hundred, and leave them to my family in my will…
What do the rest of you think? Are they worth the time and effort? Or should I find better ways of spending my time?
Hell, if your grandkids can one day turn a penny into $4.83, I say go for it.
If it’s fun, then it’s worth your time and effort. I enjoy finding coins with an especially old date on them, despite there being no more than face value. I used to love Eisenhower dollars but never held onto one- I’d be happy to have one now despite the fact that it wouldn’t mean much at all to a serious collector. I also always loved Kennedy half dollars, which (looking at Wiki) are apparently still current- though I haven’t seen one in years.
So, yeah, if you’re having fun that’s all that matters. I would advise, though, that were you to strike up a conversation about it at a party, should your interlocutor’s eyes glaze over, you might choose to change the subject.
I still save wheat pennies because I find their age and perceived rarity to be intriguing. Bicentennial quarters are too common to be interesting to me. They were intended to be collectable and there are too many of them stashed away to ever be worth anything.
They’ll probably still be worth face value or maybe even a bit more.
Where the comparison with Indian head pennies fails is that on average, they were minted in far smaller quantities than Lincoln wheat cents or bicenntennial quarters. And common Indian head dates still have little premium value.
I seriously wonder whether someone decades in the future will have difficulty trading in pennies that are no longer accepted in commerce (look at the trouble stamp collectors who hoarded sheets of postage stamps are having in getting even face value back).
You should be able to get them, at face value, by going into a bank and asking. You might have to wait a moment for the teller to walk back to the vault, rather than just pulling them from the drawer, but I do this a few times a year (so I can carry and spend them) and every bank has had some rolls available when I happened by.
When I was a kid and teenager whenever I would get a Bicentennial Quarter I would throw it in an old can I had, eventually it ended up pretty full. My mother thought it was just normal change and took the can with her to Atlantic City one day with intentions of paying me back with cash, so with one fell swoop it was all gone.
I was mad at the time but got over it pretty quickly. She felt horrible once I told her what it really was and I would be sure to bring it up whenever I needed to needle her a little bit
They’ll never be worth anything unless there are more collectors wanting them than there are those types of coins available and they’re willing to pay more than they’re worth to get them.
And almost always, collectors aren’t willing to pay a premium unless they’re in mint or near-mint condition.
So, if you’re finding them as spare change rather than having had squirreled them away from the time they were first issued, then they’ll never be worth the effort of holding on to.
I’ve seen people hoard wheatbacks, $2 bills, and silver certificates for 40 years and they still pop up in general circulation as people get tired of holding on to them or die. And as long as people can still run across them, they’ll never pay premium.
As long as we’re on the subject of “collectible” recent coins -
Is it just me, or are the “America the Beautiful” quarters very rare? Unlike the state quarters, which I see plenty of, I don’t think I’ve seen more than a dozen of the America the Beautiful ones, and this is already the fourth year of that program.
It took more than four years for the state quarters to start dominating among circulating quarters.
But it looks like the state ones were indeed minted in much larger numbers.
Two-dollar bills are available from banks on request, like the aforementioned half-dollar coins. They’re a current, ongoing currency issue.
They’re certainly not rare in San Francisco. The container that I use to drop them in when I find one in change is overflowing, and I keep thinking that I need to go through and save only up to a limit for each design. Of course, I use cash almost exclusively for my purchases, and when I was collecting the state quarters I got into the habit of checking every quarter I received, so I’m examining a lot of quarters. But I do see an “America the Beautiful” one almost every day.
Here in New Jersey, I simply never see any. I watch every quarter I get in change and have managed to accumulate all of the state quarters and a couple of the territory quarters, but the National Park quarters are just nonexistent. I’d love to put together a set, but it’s not an obsession to the point where I’m willing to buy them as collectibles. With the state quarters, they would be hard to find when they first came out but then would turn up after a while. But the territory and national park quarters are just never to be seen.
Collecting circulating coins is a fun hobby, but please don’t do it as a form of investment.
Putting your money into (boring) equities is a far, far better investment than circulated coints.
However, I do it because it’s fun and interesting. The treasure hunting/finding aspect is fun and the idea of a circulating coin lasting 40, 50, 60 years is fun to speculate about. Where has it been? What has it seen? What events has it ‘lived’ through? It’s fun to imagine.
I’ve found the National Park Quarters extreme rare as well for whatever reason. I typically set aside the first instance of a design I encounter (I don’t go to any special length for them)… so far I have exactly three.
Back when I was apartment living and laundry required a weekly ration of quarters (and the complex didn’t have a change machine) I planned my weekly lunch rotation on what would get me two or three quarters in change per day. Still, I got into a habit of setting aside the Bicentennials, not that I have any allusions of that being worth anything but a bunch of $.25 pieces.
I’ve been told that if pennies are ever demonitized, you’ll be able to sell them for the copper value, by weight. And that the copper in the old wheatbacks is worth more than a penny. So there’s that possibility.
What you need to do is go back to 1963/4 and start collecting the silver coins. Not sure how they fared vs inflation, but against the stamped value they went up nicely.
It’s not very wide-spread, even among Irish-Americans, but there is a tradition (I guess? How old can it be, right?) to always carry a Kennedy half-dollar in your wallet as a lucky coin. I still do it because I think it’s a fun tradition (not so much because I think I would have bad luck if I didn’t).
I’m curious about the America the Beautiful quarters, too. I hardly ever come across them, and I’m the kind of person who will usually look at my change out of curiosity. Hey, I got a steel penny that way!
The problem is when people accumulate large numbers of common stamps and expect to be able to sell them for a premium.
“Mint with original gum US postage stamps printed in the last 70 years are, with a few exceptions, worth less than their face value and can be used for postage without worry…Unfortunately, many collections have so many modern mint stamps that there is no chance to actually use them all even in a few lifetimes! This is why people routinely sell stamps at far below face value (many stamp dealers offer 50-70% depending on their customer base, how much postage they already have in inventory, and what denominations are included). They will then either use it for postage or resell it at 75-90% of the face value to buyers that use it on mailings.”
