A Proof!

Last night I did some coin roll hunting.

I searched a partial box of dimes, 2,000 coins. I didn't find anything in the rolls and was a bit bummed. I looked into the box afterwards and noticed an extra dime was in it, laying on the bottom. When I picked it up I noticed it was a 1991S! That's my first proof dime. I was quite pleased. Now I just have to find a proof penny (I've found three proof nickels, one proof time, one silver proof quarter, countless proof halves and a few proof dollars.).

A box of nickels, 2,000 coins, yielded just one Buffalo (1914D) and one Canadian. The Buffalo is a rarer date and a new variety for me, but it is terrible condition. I had to use Nic-A-Date on it three times in order to see the date. I sure wish the mint had decided to design the Buffalo nickel just slighly differently with a recessed date. Searching nickels and finding Buffalos would be so much more fun.

5,000 pennies, a box and some hand rolled coin, turned up twelve Wheats, twenty Canadians and one US dime. The Wheats all came from the hand rolled coin as the box had no pre-1983 coins. I think that's the first time that has happened to me. The Wheats were:

19XX, 1940, 1944(2), 1952D, 1953D, 1956D(3), 1957, 1957D(2)

Found: 1 penny (outside White Hen Pantry)

Zig Zag

On Sunday morning I finished the book Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre. It's the third book of his I've read and was about British double agent who operated during World War II. I enjoyed the book, but the spying done by Eddie Chapman, the main character, wasn't as exciting or movie-like as the book's title implies. I learned most about how both sides turned agents into double agents. As before I enjoyed the journalistic, close to source, writing of Ben Macintyre. I've got one more of his books on order.

In the evening we had a nice family dinner at my sister's house. Afterwards I realized just how different the boys behave when they are in such a crowd. The older boys are a bit crazier and Henry withdraws inward a bit. He's much better at handling the loud noises associated with being with his cousins, but he still seems overwhelmed by the comotion at times.

I searched some coin last night.

Twenty-three small dollars and one half dollar didn't produce anything.

1,560 quarters yielded three Canadian quarters, one UK 10 pence and a US nickel. One of the Canadians was one I needed, the 2008 RCM Snowboarding variety.



The dimes I searche were even better. 1,650 dimes produced two silver Rosies (1952, 1961), four Canadians, one UK 5 pence and one Euro 1¢ (France). That's the first Euro 1¢ I've found in a roll of dimes.



In 600 nickels I found one War Time (1944P), two Canadians (1 Ni) and one nickel I think might be an error coin. I'll have to do so research.

Lastly, the pennis I searched were so-so. 3,100 pennies turned up seven Wheats and seven Canadians. The Wheats were:

1918, 1919D, 1945, 1948, 1952, 1957D(2)

Found: 1 penny (at Sovereign Bank)

Redeemed: $.10

Skunked ... Nope

Today was a good day. We didn't do too much, but it sure felt great to stay close to home. Henry and I went out to do errands, played some and with Meg we went to a sale of kid's stuff at a local middle school. We found a dinosaur playset there for Henry. He seems to like it, but is a bit scared of the sounds it makes.

I picked up my weekly batch of halves this morning. Things didn't look so good as no silvers were showing in any of the boxes. I was guessing I could be totally skunked. It wasn't that bad, however. 8,000 halves produced six 90% silver halves (1942, 1942D, 3 x 1964, 1964D) and nine 40% silver halves (3 x 1966, 4 x 1967, 2 x 1969D).

14 small dollars didn't produce anything. At the bank I was at the tellers let me buy a roll of Martin Van Buren 2008P dollars before their official release date of Thursday.

Found: 2 pennies (1 at Sovereign Bank, 1 at Price Chopper), 1 dime (at Sovereign Bank), 1 quarter (at Sovereign Bank), 1 foreign coin (a Canadian dime at Sovereign Bank), 1 plastic coin (at Sovereign Bank)

Redeemed: $15.65

Clap, Clap

Recently Henry's hit three development "milestones." The first one is clapping. Meg and I have been trying to teach Henry to clap for a couple of days and it has paid off. He now claps when encouraged and sometimes just for the heck of it. It is very cute. He also surprised me yesterday by banging on the bathroom door while I was in there. He wanted me out of there since I just came home. I had to be careful not to knock him over when I exited. Lastly, Henry called me for the first time. He did so by accident, but he still managed to call me on Meg's cell phone somehow.

Last night I searched some coin. I did fairly well.

2,000 quarters produced one silver Washington (1964), two Canadians and two US nickels.

In 3,000 dimes I found two silver Rosies (1959, 1964D) and six Canadians.

2,000 nickels yielded one War Time (1943S) and six Canadians (3 Ni).

I had a pretty good time with the pennies too. I searched 5,000 of them and found twenty Wheats, thirty-four Canadians, eleven US dimes, two Euro 2¢ and one Russian 50 Kopek (worth 2¢). The Russian coin is only the second coin from that country I've found and it is a new variety for me. Strangely after just coming back from California and finding a 1936S there, I found another one! This happened to me before. Two weeks after finding a 1917S in Seattle I found one at home. Oh well, the 1936S I found in CA was in better condition and finding another just makes me think finding the 1936D is possible. The Wheats were:

1926, 1935, 1936S, 1938, 1941, 1942, 1944(4), 1945, 1946, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1955D, 1956, 1957D(2)



Found: 1 dime (at work)

A Silver Lining

Tonight I had a good night coin roll hunting.

1,600 quarters, all hand rolled, turned up one silver Washington (1962), five Canadians and one US nickel. That's a new silver one for me.

I did really well with the dimes I searched. 4,000 dimes produced six silver Rosies (1947, 1957, 1960, 1962D, 1963D, 1964), eleven Canadians, three Bermuda 10¢, one US penny, two UK 5 pence and one British Caribbean Territories 10¢.

The nickels weren't too bad either. In 2,000 nickels I found one War Time (1943S), five Canadians, one Bermuda 5¢ and one Kingdom of Greece 1 Drachma. The Greek coin is a new for me. I have smaller coin from the same era, but not this one.



I had great luck with the pennies I searched. 2,500 pennies produced forty-two Wheats, twenty-two Canadians, one Euro 1¢ and one US dime. One of the Wheats was clipped, but better yet was the number and variety of Wheats I found. I didn't find any new varieties, but I wasn't complaining! The Wheats were:

1910(2), 1911, 1915, 1917, 1919(3), 1920, 1925(3), 1929, 1935(2), 1936, 1938(2), 1939, 1940(2), 1944(4), 1945, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1953(2), 1956D(4), 1957, 1957D(5), 1958D



Found: 1 penny (at Home Depot), 1 dime (at White Hen Pantry)

Back Home

Tonight I did some coin hunting. I miss CA! I didn't find any pre-50 mint marked pennies. Oh well.

I searched fourteen small dollars and found two Canadian Loonies.

1,960 quarters produced four Canadian quarters.

650 dimes turned up one Canadian dime and two Bermuda 10¢. One of my favorite tellers saved me a silver dime (1964D).

120 nickels didn't yield anything.

The pennies were a bit better. In 1,950 pennies I found fourteen Wheats, eighteen Canadians and one Bahamas 1¢. The Wheats were:

1910, 1928, 1938, 1941, 1944(3), 1945, 1953, 1955(2), 1957D(2), 1958D

Found: 1 penny (at Costco), 1 foreign find (a Canadian quarter at Stop & Shop)

Halloween

This past weekend was a great weekend. On Friday Meg and I took Henry trick-or-treating with my sister's family and my parents. The whole experience brought back a lot of good memories and it was definitely something special to take our son out for his first time. We continued the fun on Saturday when we drove out to Meg's alma mater for homecoming. There we met up with some of her college friends, their husbands and their kids (all three, including Henry were born this year). I had a great time talking politics and Dad stuff to the guys. That night Meg and I had a great date dinner while her parents watched Henry.

Before taking off from California I was able to search some more coin. My finger was a bit sore from sorting and my back was tired from hauling pennies, but I decided to press on. I figured any penny searching I do out in CA has a better chance of finding a new variety than my searches back home. Plus there are still a few varieties I found last year, but I haven't found this year. (Keeping track of 2008 vs. 2007 has been a good way to keep things interesting while I wait to find the next variety. Next year I think I'll do this for pre-60 nickels as well.)

I searched 10,100 pennies (four boxes and two rolls) thus surpassing my goal of 50,000 pennies for this trip. I found seventy-nine Wheats, twenty Canadians and one Panama 1¢. The Wheat varieties were:

1919S, 1925, 1941, 1942, 1944(2), 1944D(2), 1944S(2), 1945, 1945D(2), 1945S(2), 1946S, 1947, 1947S(2), 1950D, 1950S, 1951, 1951D, 1951S(2), 1952D(3), 1952S(4), 1953D(2), 1953S(3), 1954D, 1954S, 1955D(3), 1955S, 1956(2), 1956D(8), 1957(4), 1957D(7), 1958D(11)

While putting non-keepers from the above search into the coin counting machine I had the good fortune of crossing paths with a lady turning in a whole bunch of coin. I could tell she had a lot of foreign coins (and hopefully a silver coin or two!), so I asked her if I could buy her rejects. I gave her $30 for a basket of leftovers and twelve rolls of pennies and two rolls of nickels. I definitely made out ahead! The mix had $10.64 in US coins, $34.65 in Canadian and eighteen other foreign coins. Assuming I can get rid of the Canadians at US face value, I came out $15.29 ahead. The coins included one Twoonie, three Loonies, sixty-three Canadian quarters, one hundred one Canadian dimes, thirty-four Canadian nickels (15 Ni), thirty-five Canadian pennies and two Wheats (1945, 1957D). The other foreign coins were three Cayman Islands 1¢, one Australian 2¢, one Ireland 2 pence, one New Zealand 10 pence, one Cayman Islands 25¢, two Cayman Islands 5¢, three UK 5 pence, one Swiss 20 Rappen, one Fiji Islands 2¢, two UK new pennies and two Australian 5¢. No silver, but not too bad I think! There's a few new foreign types in that mix for me, a new Canadian quarter(2008 Alpine Skiing) and one new country, Fiji Islands.














On the first leg of my trip home I finished reading Diana and Michael Preston's Taj Mahal: Passion and Genius at the Heart of the Moghul Empire. About a year ago I went to a book reading and signing session of theirs that they were doing to promote this book. I didn't buy the book until much later, but had always planned on reading it as I've enjoyed other works of Diana Preston's and knew next to nothing about the Taj Mahal. The title of the book is a bit misleading. Only about a third of the book concerns the Taj Mahal itself. The majority of the book covers the Moghul Empire. I found the topic to be pretty interesting. I like Indian food a lot, but other than that don't know much about India. I'd like to know a lot more as on the surface the culture and history seem romantic and exotic to me. The book did a pretty good job of describing the Moghul period, roughly 1500-1700, and had a lot of cultural details throughout that brought the story to life. The lives of those involved were well documented by official historians and by traveling Europeans. As always, Diana Preston did a great job creating a flowing narrative out of these sources. My only complaints are that all of the personalities were tough to keep track off and the book lacks good illustrations. The photographs taken by the authors are not as powerful as they could be as most are reproduced in black and white. I'm definitely going to have to bite the bullet and buy Ebba Koch's The Complete Taj Mahal sometime soon. Now that I've learned so much about the back story of the Taj Mahal I'm anxious to see better drawings and photographs. One of these days I hope Meg and I can travel to India. I think we both would enjoy touring the Taj Mahal and all of the other wonders within the country. Until then I'll have to study from afar and enjoy books like this.

On Saturday morning I searched some local coin.

Twenty small dollars didn't turn up anything.

8,000 half dollars produced ten 90% silver halves (1938, 1942, 1963D, 6 x 1964, 1964D), ten 40% silver halves (6 x 1967, 4 x 1968D), two proof halves (1993S, 2001S), two mint set halves (2006D, 2007P) and one clipped half. That's only the second clipped half I've found. They command quite a premimum on E-Bay too!

Found: 3 pennies (1 at Starbucks at LAX, 1 at LAX, 1 in Williamstown), 1 nickel (at Mollie Stone's), 1 dime (at Mollie Stone's), 1 foreign coin (a Canadian nickel (1 Ni) at Mollie Stone's)