Having forgotten an item at the store my wife and I decided to bring her parents home first and then stop by the c-store near our home to get the item. While searching for the item I heard the distinct sound silver coins striking each other. Of course I followed the sound to its source and saw the cashier holding a double handful of Morgan and Piece dollars that he just purchased for face value....a dollar each!

We drove past the C-store to bring the In-laws home, if we would have only stopped first I'd would have been willing to pay a few cents above face value for those coins!

I was even foolish enough to tell the cashier what they were worth.

On a magical note, I did take out my own coins and show him a little of what they could do.

Bet they're hot.

That's what I told the cashier.

Or Chinese.

No, they were definitely silver. They were of various conditions. They looked like what the coin dealer dumps out on his mat when I go in looking for coins.

Recently a friend of mine was at a Bank asking for Ike dollars and the teller said she didn't have any but had 5 1921 Morgan Silver dollars someone cashed in for $5.
She sold them to him for $5. Now that was pretty lucky.

TC

A long, long time ago (1970's) in a land far, far away (Iowa) I was a school teacher with summers off. I bought a commercial building from my brother and opened a recreation center with a coin operated pinball machine, foosball table and pool table. One night as I was collecting the quarters, I started noticing some old liberty quarters. I started putting them aside and discovered after awhile the dates/mint marks were all different. One of the customers was apparently a kid who got into a parents coin collection books and emptied them a little at a time. I ended up with an almost complete set of silver quarters from 1916 through 1964. I never did determine who was using the silver quarters. I guess it was too bad I didn't have machines that took half dollars!

Although it doesn't happen near as often as it used too but "Back in the day" (yeah I'm old like dhouck ) I could hear a silver coin counted back in change from several feet away!

Toward the end of the 60's my Uncle and Grandfather started grabbing up all the silver coins they could find and at one point I remember my Uncle having about 25 large coffee cans FULL of dimes, qtrs, halves and dollars. He also had a slew of Buffalo nickles and Mercury dimes! These were suppose to go to his sons but when he died his ex wife cashed em in on a boob job!

MMc

What a heart warming story, Mick. Thanks for sharing!

Sammy

Dhouck

If you had said Pennsylvania I might have thought it was me putting the silver quarters in the machines. I had swiped a big bunch of silver quarters from a box in my grandma's storage room. Just played pinball with them. The store owner noted that I was coming in each day and spending silver quarters. Told my grandma and she got her quarters back. Me - I got in trouble.

John

John, your grandma was lucky to get her quarters back. I would have done the same thing if I had figured out who was using them. Anyway, it gave you a great memory. You were a Pinball Wizard, but had to pay the price!

Pennsylvania is a great state. It takes a looooooooong time to drive across it though.

Yeah, I used to have a POS car like that once, too.

TW

Last time I drove across PA was back when they had the lower speed limits. If I'd had a muscle car or sports car, I'm afraid I might have contributed significantly to the State Treasury Dept. from tickets. It seemed like there was a patrolman every ten miles or so. Maybe a POS car was the safest way for me to travel back then.