Guide to silver coins

Silver is popular because it is

• Common: Vast quantities of silver have been found in various parts of the world, including the United States, Mexico, and South America. Because it is common, silver is the perfect metal for creating lower-value coins for use by the general public.
• A naturally occurring element: Found deep within the Earth, silver is usually mixed with another great coinage metal — gold. Although native silver is perfectly good for casting into ingots and making into coins, most of it is processed to purify the silver and to separate out the more valuable gold.
• Beautiful: Pure silver has a bright, white luster and a deep brilliance. As it tarnishes, silver can acquire some lovely colors, including blues, reds, and purples; this is especially true for coins that have been stored near a source of sulfur, such as paper albums.

A guide to Gold Coins

Look at the history of coins and you’ll notice two metals that have played a critical part in the development of money: gold and silver. These two metals formed the basis for most great civilizations’ systems of money. Greece, Rome, Egypt, Spain, England, the United States, and other countries all based their monetary systems on gold and silver at one time or another. When you hear of the great treasures of the world, you imagine piles of gold and silver, not piles of tin and copper. Why have people throughout the ages been so in love with gold and silver when there are plenty of other metals from which to choose?
Gold is popular because it is

• Rare: Gold is one of those metals that has been recognized as being rare and desirable for over 6,000 years, but it isn’t so rare that it’s impossible to find.
• A naturally occurring element: Gold is found in nature as flakes or nuggets on the surface of the Earth, in rivers, or in thin veins buried deep within the Earth. The purity of natural gold may vary from one location to the next, but it requires little processing to achieve a uniform quality. There is gold to be found on every continent of the world except Antarctica.
• Malleable: Pure gold is soft and can be beaten into extremely thin sheets or pulled into long wires or strips. Because it’s so soft, gold takes good impressions from dies (the steel cylinders used to strike coins) and it won’t wear them out as fast as a harder metal may. Or it can be alloyed with other metals and made as hard as you want.
• Reasonably inert: In nature or in normal use, gold won’t react with moisture, oxygen, or human skin, which means that jewelry and coins made of gold will last virtually forever.
• Beautiful: Pure gold has a soft yellow color and a gorgeous sheen that has appealed to people’s visual senses since we lived in caves.

Mix gold with silver or copper, and you’ll come up with an interesting range of color; the colors that come up most frequently on U.S. gold coins are pale reds, light greens, softer pinks, and white. Many collectors prefer coins that are white and untarnished; other collectors will pay huge premiums for coins with natural, bright, rainbow-colored tarnish known to collectors as toning. Be aware that toning is not always natural and can — whether it’s natural or not — often hide flaws and defects that could dramatically lower the value of the coin.

What makes a collection complete?

Completion is in the eye of the beholder. Many years ago, coin collectors were interested only in collecting by date. Therefore, in order to be complete, a collection had to include one coin from every year that the coin was minted. Later, collectors developed an interest in mintmarks (the tiny letters that indicate where a coin was minted). Suddenly, to be complete, a collection had to include a coin from every year and from every mint. Then came collecting by variety (major or minor changes in the design of a coin), and the definition of completion expanded even further. Obviously, completion is an ever-changing standard. Taken to the extreme, the only complete collection of coins is one that includes every coin ever made! Striving for completion will drive you nuts. Instead, decide on your own goals and set your own standards for completion. When you’ve completed that collection, consider a new definition of completion and go for it! Remember: There is no “correct” way to collect.

Differences between Coin Collecting and Coin Accumulating

The collecting instinct is a common trait among people; it shows up in many ways. You’ll discover that many of your friends are collectors of something Who do you know who collects baseball cards, Hummel figurines, beer cans, Coca-Cola memorabilia, books, or dolls? Even people who claim to collect nothing probably have accumulations of some thing they haven’t even realized they’re accumulating — tools, newspapers, shoes, you name it. There’s a special comfort in collecting, in surrounding yourself with familiar objects and building a store of assets — perhaps in response to some primeval instinct that prepares you for a rainy day.
The allure of money is especially strong. Coins represent real value. Coins can be exchanged for other objects we desire. Coins travel throughout the world and through time itself, representing and absorbing history as they pass from one person to the next. Oh, the stories coins could tell if they only had voices! And they’re everywhere, because no one anywhere ever throws away old money.
Pull a dime out of your pocket and what do you see? If all you see is 10¢ to spend, we’ve got a lot of work to do. But if you look at your dime and wonder at the artistic work of the engraver and the meaning of the symbols and the words, or if you see Franklin Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, man, you’re hooked. You’re going to make a great coin collector and, perhaps, one day, a numismatist!
We make the distinction in this book between numismatists (those who study coins) and coin collectors (those who collect coins). You can be a numismatist without being a coin collector, you can be a coin collector without being a numismatist, or you can be both.
Not sure whether you have that collecting instinct? Here’s a great way to find out whether you’re an accumulator or whether you have the potential to become a coin collector:

1. Visit your local coin store and purchase a folder made for the pennies from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. A folder is a cardboard holder with holes for every different date.
2. Raid your change jar or go to the bank and buy $20 worth of pennies.
3. Sort out the coins and fill as many different holes as you can. If possible, find the best-looking coin to place in the folder.
4. After you’ve gone through all the coins, sit back and take a look at your work. Do you wonder why some coins were harder to find than others? Do you wonder why you couldn’t find even a single example of some coins? Are you interested in completing the set? Did you have fun searching through the coins?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ve discovered the difference between being a collector and an accumulator — and in case you’re wondering, you’re a collector.

How Cool Coin Collecting Can Be?

People love money. People love other people who have money. Coin collectors collect money. Therefore, people love coin collectors. Don’t believe us? Try this test. Go down to your local coin store and buy a common Morgan silver dollar dated anywhere from 1878 to 1921. Pick out a nice one, but don’t pay more than $20 for it. Put it in your pocket the next time you go to a party. At the party, casually pull the coin from your pocket and show it to your friends. You’ll probably get comments like

• “Where in the world did you get that?”
• “I haven’t seen one of those for years.”
• “My grandpa used to give me one of those every year for my birthday.”
• “Is that a real silver dollar?”
• “Can you get me one?”

Return the coin to your pocket and pull out a picture of your kid or your dog. Everyone has a kid or a dog. The party returns to normal — boring! Face it: Collecting coins is cool.

Understanding Numismatics

We bet you have a jar at home into which you throw your loose change at the end of each day. At some point, the jar gets so full that you have to empty it, roll up the coins, take them to the bank, and exchange them for paper money. As you separate the coins, are you ever distracted for a short moment by the coins themselves? Do you see details that you previously didn’t notice? All the different types of coins, cents with wheat backs, the different types of nickels, and so forth? Are you suddenly intrigued by the very fact that these small pieces of metal represent value, history, and your hard labor? Have you ever had the desire to sort the coins by the different types and dates, trying to see how many different ones you can find? Have you ever picked through the coins, trying to find the best looking one? If you have, you’ve experienced a delicious taste of what it is to be a coin collector.
Coin collecting refines a person’s natural desire to accumulate things. Coin collecting teaches about organization, classification, preservation, authentication, verification, and pride in ownership. Coins humble collectors with their ancient stories. The coin you hold in your hand may have witnessed the fall of Rome, been carried by a king, endured the Black Plague, been carried by a GI on D-day, or it may simply be a brand-new coin just about to begin its own journey.
The fact that you’re reading this book is a good sign that you’ve already been bitten by the collecting bug. Coin collecting is a great “disease” whose treatment is to find out as much as you can about the hobby and make yourself feel better with an occasional addition to your growing collection. This chapter helps you get started.
Numismatics (new-miz-mat-ics) is the systematic study of coins, medals, tokens, currency, and the like. Therefore, a numismatist (new-miz-ma-tist) is someone who seriously studies coins. Collecting coins is the first step to becoming a numismatist.
No, you don’t have to know how to pronounce or spell these words to be a coin collector, but sooner or later you’ll be wearing them like badges of honor. After all, you’ll be joining a rich company of kings and queens, presidents, industrialists, robber barons, brewers, and tens of millions of other folks who have been proud to be known as numismatists.