Thanksgiving

This weekend was a nice long four day holiday weekend. My wife made a fabulous feast for both sides of the family at our new house. Others brought dishes, wine, appetizers and desserts. It all came together well. Our only mishap was our sink clogged and then the drain pipe under the sink broke! Chamfer, my father, was able to fix it the next day in under 3 hours (most of the time was spent at Home Depot). I wasn't much help, but I think I'll be able to do better next time. It's been awhile since I've helped him do home repairs. It's got to all come back to me fast!

We also did some leaf raking and bagging (more next weekend), reading, relaxing, and of course coin business! Well to be honest there wasn't much "we" in the coins.

Over the weekend I searched 11,400 pennies (four boxes and some hand rolled) pushing me over the 500,000 mark for the year! I found eighty-three Wheats and eighty-nine Canadians. Two of the Wheats were ones I needed, 1911 and 1929D! The varieties were:

1910, 1911, 1926, 1929D, 1939(2), 1940(2), 1941(4), 1942(3), 1944(7), 1945(2), 1946(11), 1946D, 1948(2), 1948D, 1949(2), 1950D, 1951, 1951D(2), 1952(5), 1952D(2), 1953(6), 1954, 1955(4), 1955D, 1956, 1956D(10), 1957(2), 1957D(4), 1958, 1958D(4)

I also searched 2,150 dimes and found one Mercury (1944) and 680 nickels and found two Canadians. All of those were hand rolled.

I went through a big batch of hand rolled quarters, 9,320. They produced one silver quarter (another 1964), three Canadians, and one South Korean 100 Won.

During the weekend I managed two half dollar hunts. I turned up a massive amount and also went through two boxes of halves. In total I looked through 5,148 halves! The two boxes were total skunks, but the bank finds were great! I rounded up seven 90% silver halves (1935D, 6 x 1964), sixty-two 40% silver halves (2 x 1965, 8 x 1966, 18 x 1967, 27 x 1968D, 7 x 1969D), and thirteen mint set halves (2002D, 2003P, 3 x 2003D, 2004P, 2004D, 2005P, 2005D, 2006P, 2006D, 2 x 2007P). That's my second Walker found and the oldest half I've found to date! Plus, the mint set halves were by far my biggest find of those. I needed five of them for my album!

I also made a trip to my local coin store. I picked up a big bunch of Canadian coins. I thought I had discovered all the good buys at the store and was about ready to leave when I got talking to the owner about how hard it was for me to find modern Canadian silver coins. He told me they had some bins that I could go through. I stayed another hour and found a big bunch I needed for my albums for melt value. The bins had about every date I needed, but I picked through them and bought only the better specimens, some were very worn.

On Sunday I went to the Westford Monthly coin show. It was almost twice as big as the Auburn show I went to two weeks back. About half of the dealers were the same. I found a lot of bargains. I've now just about completed my Canadian nickel album and made big progress on some others. Nobody seems that interested in Canadian coins. Oh well, their disinterest is my gain!

I got too many Canadian coins to list, but here are some stock photos of my favorites with some comments:



This is a Newfoundland penny. On the back is the national plant, a carnivorous plant! My specimen isn't as corroded as this one.



Above is a Newfoundland dime. I picked up four of these for cheap.



This is a Prince Edward Island penny from 1871. They only made these for one year. I found one for $1! The three trees on the left symbolize the three counties of PEI and the big tree on the right symbolizes Great Britain.



This is a very old Canadian penny with Queen Victoria on it, made before Confederation. They made so many of these that they didn't need to make more pennies until 1876!



Above is a picture of a silver five cent piece. They made these before nickels. They have half the silver that a dime does and so are very small. This one has Edward VII on it. I don't have an album to put these in just yet.



This is a relatively modern nickel that celebrates the discovery of nickel.







The above three coins, a dime, a quarter and a fifty cent piece, are old Canadian George V coins. I like these a lot. It has so far been a bit challenging to find good examples that are low cost, but aren't too worn (especially on the back, I saw many with barely legible reverse writing, but passed on them).

Found: 3 pennies (1 at Sovereign Bank, 1 at LCU, 1 at WaldenBooks), 2 foreign coins (1 Canadian dime, 1 Canadian quarter, both at Soveriegn Bank)