Friday, July 22, 2011

My lucky find! An 1845 Liberty half-cent piece!

A few days ago, I got this old cast metal bank. It's the kind that's a cast head of usually someone important. In this case, it was Thomas Edison.

I was planning on trying to sell it, but it turns out that there are dozens available on eBay, and the bank I had might fetch a whopping $6. So...not a great find.

When I went to get the bank, I noticed that there was something inside it (I didn't notice it when I first got the bank, since it was in a box with a lot of other stuff). So, I broke out my trusty cast head bank key (more commonly known as a screwdriver), pried the bottom open, and emptied the bank out.


Sorry, no gold coins, folded up IBM stock certificates, or bags of diamonds.

But I did find a cool old coin.
I have never seen a half-cent piece before.  I didn't even know they made such coins!  
For a coin with such low monetary value, it's sure big...bigger than a quarter, and a lot heavier, too.

Value-wise, it might be worth $10-$20.  But its coolness factor (at least to me) is off the chart.

This coin was around:
  • for 2 World Wars
  • the birth of just about everyone I know
  • the Civil War
  • almost the entire Victorian Era
  • way too many US Presidents
  • before the birth of the auto
  • before...well...just about all I know.
I thought about selling it for maybe 10 seconds.  But I can't let it go.  I'm far from a numismatist, and I don't think this coin will get me started on that long road of coin collecting, but I just think it's rather...well...too cool to get rid of.





1 comment:

  1. There are a great many fake cast iron banks out there and that may be the reason the price for your bank is so low on Ebay. I'd search out a site that specializes in old banks to see if yours is a valuable old one that has been copied, the Ebay price might not be representative of a real old bank. Some fake bank makers (not many) are often good at giving them an old look and their could be ones like yours might have been made as a fake anytime in the past 60 years or so. And that penny seems to clearly date that bank as being an authentic one and not a fake.

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