There are three kinds of coin collectors: investors, collectors, and hoarders. Generally, my articles are directed to those who build collections for the thrill of putting together a set of coins of some type. This article is about coin hoarders, and the joy they bring to collectors when a collector runs into a hoard!
Coin hoarders, just like those folks on the TV show “Hoarders” who accumulate various odds and ends, indiscriminately accumulate coins. Here are a couple of local examples. A few years ago, someone showed me her stash from her bank deposit box of the 2,600 silver quarters she had inherited. This was just the quarters from the hoard! At today’s silver price, that’s nearly $8,400. Another club member recently went through another person’s inherited hoard. Among many other coins, he found 1,800 Walking Liberty halves, with a minimum value of over $12,600.
I will share two of the most famous American hoards, the Redfield hoard and the New York Subway hoard. Maybe my story will entice you to dig into that hoard you or your grandparent have stored away from many years ago.
LaVere Redfield moved to Reno, Nevada in the 1930’s. He had made some money through various enterprises, but he didn’t like banks and he didn’t like paper money. He was definitely eccentric and lived somewhat as a cheapskate, but was known to lose thousands of silver dollars at a time at the gaming tables. He loved him some silver dollars, though! His friends in the banking business would call him when they gathered up thousand dollar bags of silver, mostly Morgan, dollars. He would trade cash for them and bring them home. Did he go through them carefully and lovingly put them into coin albums? No, he was a hoarder! Instead, he dumped the bags down his coal chute in his basement and pretty much forgot about them. When he died in 1974, they weren’t sure how to settle his estate. The judge ordered his hoard sold at auction. A-Mark Coin Company paid $7,200,000 for his 500,000 to 650,000 silver dollars! Complete details about the number of dollars, dates, and mintmarks were never released. A-Mark marketed these coins in plastic holders that indicated they were Redfield coins. Although not graded, these plastic holders might have been the precursor to the plastic slabs that are so common today. From time to time, both coin dealers and eBay have these Redfield coins for sale today.
Morris Shaw was another famous coin hoarder. From the 1940’s through the 1960’s, he faithfully sat in his booth inside the New York Subway system. He sold tokens for the customer to ride the subway. As he worked, he searched the change for rare coins. Many of these he sold as he pulled them. However, when he died in 1996, he still had a vast fortune in rare coins collected from circulation. Here are few of the rare coins he still possessed at his death, and today’s value in parentheses next to the count:
- 160 1912 S Liberty nickels ($48,000)
- 29 1918 over 17 Buffalo nickels ($43,500)
- 241 1916 D Mercury dimes, nearly 10% of the total mintage ($362,000)
- 166 1942 over 41 Mercury dimes ($132,000)
- 19 of the 52,000 mintage of the 1916 Standing Liberty quarter ($114,000)
- 20 of the 40,000 mintage of the 1913 S Barber quarter ($40,000)
- 8 1901 S Barber quarters ($80,000)
This was only his estate. There is no way to imagine what he sold as he found coins earlier.
Do you want to start hoarding coins? Right now, the only coins in circulation worth holding onto for an increase in value are pre-1982 cents. Each of these is worth 2.1 cents in copper value alone. During 1982, most of the copper was removed from the cent. Another choice is nickels. The price of nickel is down right now, but recently each nickel was worth nearly 5 cents for nickel content. All of your other currently circulated coins have no metal value at all. As copper and nickel go up in value, so will your hoard of these two coins!
So, break out that hoard and watch a coin collector’s eyes light up by showing it off!
I encourage you to come visit our club meetings. The Brown County Coin Club will meet on Tuesday, October 14, at 6:30 at Principally Coins & Metal Detectors, 3002 Early Blvd, in Early. This is 3 miles east of Early, across from East Lawn Cemetery. For more information, contact Bill Cooper at 325-642-2128 or Bob Turner at 325-217-4129.
