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FeedAfterthoughts: Mint Condition
A stash of old coins may not be worth much, but still feels precious.
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Our building has a coin-operated laundry system, so our wash cycles officially start with a trip to the bank for a roll of quarters. I recently took home a little paper pack, and was delighted to find inside a quarter that was minted in 1940.
It had been handled so much that the perimeter ridge was flattened and the coin almost completely smooth. George Washington’s features are blurry, rather than crisply embossed, his chin softened, the waves in his wig long gone.
I took out the next coin, which read 1943. And the next, 1941. The whole roll, it turned out, was a currency time capsule. I couldn’t possibly spend these quarters.
I was intrigued, though, and called First Hawaiian Bank. Were the coins being set aside for some purpose, perhaps to take out of circulation? No, said Gary Caulfield, the bank’s vice chairman, IT and operations group. As long as the weight of the coin is correct, it is still legal tender, even if it’s hard to read the face of the coin. As far as the bank is concerned, it doesn’t matter what year a coin was minted.
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the average coin lasts about 30 years. In Caulfield’s experience, coins are pretty sturdy. “They’re very rarely damaged, unless, say, a coin was left in the bottom of a boat and sat in seawater for a month.” If a coin is too mangled to use, the bank returns it to the nearest Federal Reserve Bank; in our case, it’s in San Francisco. The feds send it to the U.S. Mint, which melts down old coins to create new ones.
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More than 20 billion coins pass through Federal Reserve Banks each year. So how did I get a stash of 70-year-old quarters? “It was just a coincidence that you got them; some customer had probably brought them in,” says Caulfield.
I started thinking of all the places these quarters have been, all the people that have touched them, and began making up little histories. The 1944 quarter, for example, bought a five-pound bag of flour for a Wisconsin housewife named Hazel. She made amazing apple pies and put a wedge of cheddar under the pie while it was still hot—it came to the table all melty. She’s gone now, but her kids are still talking about those pies, and I’m still staring at her quarter.
The 1941 quarter was spent carefully, after the attack on Pearl Harbor; 25 cents then was worth about $3.80 in today’s money. A 1948 quarter bought two cans of franks and beans for a curly-haired folk singer, who ate them onboard a train.
In 70 years, these quarters were flipped thousands of times to settle thousands of disputes. They slid through hundreds of vending machines, and were slipped under the pillows of dozens of 6-year-olds who had recently lost teeth. These quarters were bet on horses, and helped buy polio shots and Elvis records. There’s one in there that paid for milk shakes on a first date—a date that led to a second date, and eventually marriage and grandkids for one couple. Wouldn’t they like to have that quarter, the one that started it all?
Then a hush must have fallen over these busy coins. They were put aside and forgotten. Until one day, someone found a tin filled with old change and thought, “Eh, I should take this to the bank.”
I’m happy they found me, these quarters. I’m not a collector, but old coins fill me with glee. I love the idea that you’re having a normal moment, such as buying a coffee, and then you look down in your hand and realize you’re holding a little piece of history.
Maybe that’s why it’s called change.
See more Afterthoughts from Kathryn Drury Wagner.
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Reader Comments:
What a wonderful essay! I love it. I just opened a box of my mother's that was taped shut and labelled SILVER DIMES. I was thinking, how do I get these evaluated? But on opening it I found that they were, well, not silver. They were not-very-old composites. Her eyesight wasn't too good in her last years. But her hopes were still high!
Thanks for writing this one.
Alison
would like to get my grubby little hands on all the pre-64 quarters that i can. I love silver and silver loves me.
Yeah, old coins may not be worth much. I'd pretty much thumb my nose at $120.00 in silver too. I'd even write a little sappy story about it.
When common people wake up to the idea (because you almost had it - little concerned article writer) that the coinage of yesteryear actually had monetary value, and wasn't made from copper and nickel, you'd have so much disrespect for the way the Fed has pulled the wool over your eyes, you'd see that those dumb worn out old coins did in fact hold their value.
If you could advance time another 40 or 50 years and find some old state quarters in a roll that you were going to do your laundry with, you could wax poetic and tell tall tales to anyone around about how those worthless coins languished in a car's ashtray, or a kid's piggy bank and NEVER did they hold their intrinsic value above what was marked on them. On that story you'd be right.
But sorry to say, you have your priorities all wrong on this one.
your quarters are 90% silver any quarters, dimes and half dollars minted before 1964 contain 90% silver. at current silver prices your roll of quarters is worth $121.
I'd have run back to that same bank, showed them the roll, and asked them to give me any and every paper roll of quarters and/or dimes they have that looks somewhat oldish like the roll you got. You can't lose on that one - maybe you'd get more silver, or if not, just re-exchange the modern coins back again.
Yes, many people still don't understand there is a difference between the face value and the true metallic value of coins.
Based upon the silver content, that pre-65 quarter will still buy a loaf of fresh bread from someone who understands the true value of the coin. The value of these "junk silver" coins is currently at least 12x their face value, and it likely to continue going up. Even copper pennies (82 and prior) have a metal value of 2.2x their face value. Nickels (all years from 46 to present) have just surpassed their face value based on the spot price of their metal content. Hang onto your coins folks. As our friends at the private banking cartel (aka the Federal Reserve) continue to debase our paper currency, many metal coins will retain their purchasing power. That green paper junk they call legal tender will be loosing purchasing power rapidly in months and years ahead. The most important thing to realize is that the price of goods isn't really going up, it's the value of the Federal Reserve Notes that is dropping like a rock due to the reckless monetary policies of private FED banks and your "elected" representatives.
You are being taxed to death right under your nose. That's why inflation is often called the hidden tax.
i ENJOYED YOUR STORY.
"at current silver prices your roll of quarters is worth $121."
This is correct. $121.20 to be precise. A 1,100% return is not bad for just going to the bank. But she didn't even mention the silver value in the article. The history lesson here is that our government has sold us out and debased the currency so much that our "coins" are now just cupro-nickel tokens.
thats gr8 i often go 2 the bank looking 4 treasures !!!
Thanks for the article..... I enjoyed it.
When you noted "25 cents then was worth about $3.80 in today’s money", you bumped into a hidden truth. Silver coinage protects people from inflation. Right now even with the market price of silver down, each or your silver quarters contains over $3 worth of silver...... likely still enough to buy a curly haired folk singer a couple cans of franks and beans.
The monetary policy of the Federal Reserve is based on the concept of encouraging people to spend their money instead of save (called hoarding) it. It uses the policy of continuous inflation to encourages spending, and punishes those who work hard and simply try to put aside a little of their money for the future without having to gamble with it in the stock market.
Faced with a monetary policy based on punishing people for holding onto their hard earned dollars, is it any wonder our society has been transformed from the frugal one that survived the depression into the consumer society today that promotes going into debt and stock speculation? Should we not have expected such an unhealthy monetary view would eventually do to the economy?
The silver and gold were removed from our money exactly because the system was spending more than was sustainable. A currency that's stable over the long term punishes those who overspend. Just as the amount of money you have in your bank account limits our overspending, a silver backed currency placed a limit on government spending. The removal of silver from our coinage was like the government pulling out it's credit card when it's bank account was overdrawn instead of cutting back..... this policy isn't sustainable.
It's the American people that will have to pay the bill once it comes due, and that moment may have finally arrived. God help us.