Attack of The Silver Dimes!

I was over at my mother-in-law’s this weekend, and it turns out her sister (my aunt-in-law?) has had a hoard of silver dimes at her bank for decades. I asked if she wanted me to take a look at them and value them for her, and she was thrilled by it, as was I :)

The story goes that she had been given a loan from her father back in the early 60’s for something, and when she went to pay him back – all in dimes (hah!) – he told her just to keep it. So she did. For years, and years, and YEARS!

Turns out they were all pre-1965 too, which of course means they were full of silver-silver-SILVER, baby! WOO! To say I was in heaven looking through these is an understatement…

Here’s what the pile of envelopes containing these dimes looked like:

She had separated them out into years, and then added an extra envelope somewhere along the way with other older coins as well. My favorite types to go through :)

After two hours of sorting and looking through every single coin – over 460 of them! – the results were as follows:

The silver values were as of June 5th @ $16.11/oz. No rarities in there, but she did have over $550 worth of silver alone (!). And then double it in terms of total coin value (per the Red Book). But to get that would be a stretch, so you’d prob be looking somewhere in the middle of that range there, and skewing more to the silver values if you were to try and cash out. It would take a lot of time to try and offload over 400 dimes to non-bullion hoarders, haha…

Still, a nice increase from the $40.00 back in the day. 13.7 x better actually! :)

Here’s a nice shot at the non-dimes in the collection:

One Morgan dollar (1891), one Barber Quarter (??), One Buffalo Nickel (??), and two V-Nickels (1909 and 1911). Not in the best condition, but always fun to come across.

And here’s a bunch of other pictures of the dimes and coins:

These will better put in perspective just HOW MANY of them there were! And I got pretty creative with the shots too – esp with the magnifying glass :) (Did you know it works well with cameras?? I had no idea!)

Their new home in empty jelly jars :)

Empty jars are my favorite place to store tons of coins like these (silver/poor ones). It feels so good to throw away old nasty envelopes and boxes and other kinds of decrepit containers and to just slim down to a jar or two. Plus, it makes it much easier to store and transport! (Also – paper is usually bad for coins over time)

Here’s my stash of empty baby jars and pasta/jelly jars for such occasions… They fit nicely into old beer boxes too! (I wouldn’t recommend storing coins in beer bottles though ;))

And that was my random coin adventure for the weekend :)

Never know what you’re going to come across as a collector! And yet another reason to make sure that all your friends and family know that YOU’RE the guy/gal for the coin job. Stuff just appears out of the woodwork when they find out!