Batch of Old U.S. Coins from 1800s

Oh man, I had a KILLER time last night meeting up with a fellow coin collector for a few hours. There’s nothing like chatting about coins over some warm coffee towards the end of the week, I’ll tell you what… Except for maybe then COMING HOME with some afterwards – what what!

Turns out my friend was helping another collector liquidate some of her collection (yes – a woman collector, sexy! ;)), and he knew I had a soft spot for the 1800s. So he kindly let me have first go at what I wanted before moving on to other buyers. And it was awesome because I got to pick up a few more “odd” denominations for my collection which are my favorite! (Remember my new 2 cent piece from the other week?)

I spent a total of $130ish, and here’s what I picked up:

• 1835 “Capped Bust” Dime @ $47.00 (probably worth $55ish)
• 1845 “Seated Liberty” Dime @ $28.00 (probably worth $35ish)
• 1872 “Seated Liberty” Half Dime @ $12.00 (probably worth $16ish, and not to be confused with a nickel which my wife likes to poke my buttons with :))
• 1865 Three Cent Piece (non-silver) @ $22.00 (probably worth $28ish)
• 1852 Three Cent “Trime” (silver) @ $20.00 (probably worth $27ish) The smallest of all U.S. silver coins! It’s teeny tiny – look at that pic of it in my hands down below!

All with silver bullion in them too, with the only exception of the 1865 3 cent piece (which is made of nickel). So at the very least I have some silver on my hands in case of that apocalypse happening, right Len? ;)

Here are what the reverse sides of them look like:

So three awesome odd denominations (two 3 cent pieces, and one 1/2 dime), one older dime I never owned (the “Capped Bust”) and then a much nicer “Seated Dime” that I already had, but in much worse condition. So that’ll now go into my “trading binder” to help get future coins down the road as to keep my main collection stocked with only my faves!

And the beautiful part is that the $140 I spent was simply from selling crap around the house on Craigslist or at yard sales throughout this past year :) I keep a can of money from that stuff in one place that’s allowed to be spent however I damn well please. And this time around I damn well pleased to blow it on coins! Haha…

Closeup of the 1845 “Seated Liberty” Dime:

It was hard to capture the true beauty of a couple of these, so played with the lighting to show my two favorites which have a nice rainbow toning going on in them – not rust which it kinda looked like at first glance to me (and probably in those above pics too).

Look at that outer rim of rainbow! My first nicely toned coin!

Here’s a Closeup of the 1835 “Capped Bust” Dime:

This one’s not *as* toned as the liberty dime, but it still a nice quality about it. At least to me (toning stuff is subjective). I didn’t take another pic of the reverse (back) mainly cuz it just wasn’t as nice as the obverse (front). But for $47 it’s kinda hard to complain :) The nicer gradings go well into the hundreds, and then into the lower thousands!!

(Same w/ that 1/2 dime too, only that one stops in the hundreds fortunately. I’ll def. need to replace that one in the future as it’s not the best quality coin as you can see.)

And then here are all five of the coins in relation to my hand – to better give you a sense of how tiny they actually are:

Look at that 1/2 dime (upper right) and trime! (lower right). Teeny tiny, and way smaller than our modern day dimes even… I should have placed one there actually, oh well.

So there are my 5 new coins! 3 I’ve never owned before, and two others that are now upgraded. I’ve still got a ways to go on this upgrading strategy, but we do the best we can with what we’ve got, right? The fun is in all the wheelin’ and dealin’.