Coin News

If it were April Fools’ Day, my email this morning would make sense.

Because it is not, I wondered about a full moon.

That passed Sept. 5.

Well-known public relations professional Donn Pearlman sent me a link this morning.

He said the claim in the story did not pass the smell test.

I have to agree.

Here is the link.

See what you think.

Well, you can’t. In the time it took me to write this, the story has been taken down.

Had it been  true, it would have been front page news.

This story concerned the purported find of another example of the rare and valuable 1894-S dime.

Now it is gone, so you will have to take my word for it.

Another email came from a source that I would have presumed to be reliable, but it claims to have information about a 1934 Plain cent.

I was told to call, and two phone numbers were given.

I did not call.

I responded to the email with one of my own.

I wrote:

“Perhaps it is Monday morning and my brain is not yet switched on, but I do not understand the significance of a 1934 cent.

“There were 219 million made.”

I got a quick reply that the coin was attracted to a magnet.

I am still in the dark.

I would take that as evidence of a counterfeit.

I might not have mentioned either one of these emails if they had arrived separately during the week.

Since they both came together, and it is a Monday morning, I am trying to draw a larger conclusion.

Perhaps the conclusion is that the public is growing interested in coins again.

Perhaps anything and everything about coins is drawing the attention of people who would not ordinarily think about such things.

That would be good news for the organized hobby because the hardest thing to do is to get the attention of a non-collector.

Once this occurs, we have a chance to make some converts.

Perhaps there will be stories of a sixth 1913 Liberty Head nickel found in an old desk.

You can fill in the blank as to whether an old rarity or a new error coin can attract the most notoriety.

Either way, public attention is all to the good.

This is a year Numismatic News has reported the find of the first-known 1983-D cent, as well as the first 1982-D small date copper cent.

They would not have been found had collectors not gone to the bother of searching through huge numbers of the denomination that most of us tend to treat as hopelessly common.

It is nice to see our indifference proved wrong.

If one more person begins searching cents today, then this blog has been worth it.

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