Pocket Change ! The History of American Coins in the US PBS

[Music] hey everybody I know you're gonna love today's show pocket change the history of American coins I promise you're gonna enjoy learning all sorts of fascinating facts and by the end of today's episode if you're not saying to yourself I never knew coins could be so cool I will not have done my job we're gonna begin our journey with the origins in the colonial period then I'm gonna guide you through the latter half of the 18th century on through the changes in the 19th and in the 20th century and then we're gonna wrap it all up in today's modern era you're gonna learn how to identify fine values and some key things plus a little historical perspective you might come out of this a coin expert or just a little geekier than you were yesterday you tell me at the end of this show by leaving your comments below subscribing to my channel and clicking thumbs up okay sound good hey and before you leave maybe go over and check out my last two educational hit shows I like furniture period and the history of silver it's working interesting sound good all right here we go to begin our journey through the numismatic history of the United States I must briefly visit America's colonial period first off when I say numismatic I just mean the study or collection of currency coins tokens paper money and related so let's get back to our early origins I'm talking pre-revolutionary war and the colonial period in the Americas there was some colonial currency at this time but it was non-standardized to say the least most of your English colonists in fact just simply continued to use the common British currency of the period so the pound shilling tense but as the colonies began to break away their commerce from England these radical colonists began to print more of their own currency which was a much better way to support the growth of these new colonies and give the proverbial he old finger to the crown it's also noteworthy that very very few actual coins were minted during this period you know in the thirteen colonies however foreign coins like the Spanish dollar that was widely circulated and he also had coins from Portugal France Denmark etc you get it but America was truly an international marketplace and the colonists were very resourceful almost anything and everything was actually currency you know you have to remember you had the printed money in the notes but wampum one of my favorites was basically Native American trade beads that were comprised of shells and of course you had the good old-fashioned barter system but let's not forget other tradable commodities that were used just like money such as corn we tobacco and fur whatever the local economy accepted as legal tender and I'm sure you can see how issues arose when traveling because what I value in Connecticut may not in Georgia and so on and it remained like that even all the way through the Revolutionary War even when it had officially ended in 1783 it was not until the coinage act of 1792 nine years later that the American United States Mint was established and the rest is history oh wait I'm just getting started the first American coins the Congressional Act created were in the denominations of the half cent half dime don't call me a nickel the dime the quarter the half dollar dollar crater Eagle which was really a two dollar and fifty cent gold piece a half ego I'm going to show you all these five dollar gold coin the Eagle which was a ten dollar gold piece but the first coin that was actually minted is cool 1792 the half dime and there's a legend that the silver in these first printings or minting 's came from martha washington silverware here's the rest of the coins in the order as they were printed in the 1790s and visuals for you the half cent the Lord sent the early dollar the early half dollar the half diamond as we knew it at this period the five Gold five dollar gold piece the ten dollar gold piece the bust quarter the busts dime and the two and a half dollar gold piece this period of pointed from 1792 to 1837 features several design variations as well so you need to know what those are the draped busts design was featured on all copper and silver coins minted between 1796 and 1807 but in 1807 the Catbus began to appear on the silver coins besides the dollar have a look here's an 1807 Catbus half-dollar see the variation and remember in these early days years might go by without a certain denomination ever even being minted at all the dime and half dimes are great examples of this several years would just be skipped because I guess if you don't need it don't mint it it was not until 1829 that the captain of the half dime was even released check it out right there and then in the late 1830s you saw American coinage become become more standardized this is known as the seated liberty era and you'll see why check out the seated Liberty dollar here's the seated Liberty dime the seated Liberty halftime I still haven't called it a nickel if you haven't noticed that the seated Liberty quarter the seated Liberty half dollar which came out in 1839 and then you have nothing until the 1840s which was a really exciting time in at the very end because the gold rush was in full swing so the US Mint introduced the dollar gold eagle Liberty Head and the classic double eagle or the $20 gold piece that we know and love you've probably heard of that one this is also when things got a little crazy in the American coin melting minting world the rest of the 19th century starting in 1851 saw the release of some really odd the nominations let me show you you have the 3 cent silver yeah it's a 3 cent coin a lot of people don't know they exist a three dollar Gold princess known as the Indian princess the short-lived flying eagle cent which was only minted from 1856 to 1858 I just want to mention whenever I come across these I immediately look for the 1856 that's one of those killer dates there are only 2,000 of them minted that year so they can be worth north of $10,000 if you find one so that's quite a lot of pennies and they are out there next was the release of the classic Indian cent or the Indian Head Penny as we know it and they were made from 1859 to 1909 and they've always been a favorite of collectors as there are several key dates look for like you have 1864 1869 1873 and so on if you have a stack of these make sure you visit the price guide link I have on my free resource section on my website it'll take you right to a price guide that you can look them all up now let me give you my two cents yeah that's right the u.s. printed or minted I keep saying printed minted a coin called the two cent piece how about the three cent nickel and yes I called it a nickel but it was three cents at this time 1865 it came out but here's something crazy a year later the shield nickel was released and it was five cents and hence this is what we think of today as a nickel the shield nickel the end of the 1870s saw the release of the US trade dollar it was produced to compete with other countries large silver trade coins that were very popular in East Asia as we began to trade with the Orient today they're quite collectible however I've seen a lot of forgeries so a lot of times if you find these you're gonna want to submit them for testing in 1878 the classic Morgan Silver Dollar was released and remained relatively unchanged until the end of World War one Morgan Dollars were made from 1878 in 1921 and I love Morgan Silver Dollars as there's a lot to know about them but there's also a lot of key dates out there and mint marks and they they're like needles in a haystack and I'm gonna say that again later I'm sure and you know what here's time for me to veer off and talk about mint marks because mint marks are important and they're really it's just a letter and a symbol that identifies the location at which the coin was minted Philadelphia is the oldest mint founded in 1817 93 and it's still in business today coin with this mark have a pee or nothing Sookie for filly or nothing because everyone knows it's the first met New Orleans in Louisiana 1838 to 1909 will have an O Valley long live Georgia was only operational from 38 1838 to 1861 and I'll have addy Charlotte same thing 1837 the 1850s a C and San Francisco began in 1854 and they're still around - and they have an S Carson City has a CC they were in business 1872 1893 more on that Denver opened in 1906 has it D they took over the D and West Point has a W they opened in 1984 and they're still printing minting so did you take note how that Civil War thing had something to do with the southern mints closing actually they didn't close but became under the control of the Confederacy so they were no longer printing minting legal tender but indulge me for a second I want to talk about the Carson City mint Nevada it opened in 1870 and operated until 1893 there was a three-year hiatus in 1886 - 1888 and if you know the area Carson City would seem very odd for a place for a minute it's not a major metropolis that's for sure however it opened to take advantage of the local precious mineral deposits that were there namely silver read more about the Comstock Lode and the silver rush of 1859 it's not as popular as the gold rush but just as cool in its twenty three-year run this mint did produce some gold coins but never the base metal coins are those denominations silver was their thing for obvious reasons so now that you get mint marks let me talk about the term key date or dates I mentioned this a lot but you need to know what I'm talking about and what I'm talking about is a key date versus the Commons and this typically means a date of low mintage or production in other words there's not a lot of these babies out there and that's what gives them the numismatic value it's why knowing your dates and mint marks becomes so important I personally know a lot of them off the top of my head from learning them but I often refer back to the blue books by the way a Blue Book is the old term we use now it's a laptop I pad there's so many great websites out there so you can have the numbers right at your fingertips and yes I'm gonna share all these below in my links plus like I said I have a free resource section on my website so before I get back to the new group of coins one more thing when you find Morgan Silver Dollars remember any Carson City is a find and generally considered a key date the fact is they just didn't produce the sheer numbers of the other men's so you know they were a small mint a small town but you find that CC and I'm gonna show you where that's located the CC and there must the most cherished and sought-after of the Morgans so let's get back to coins and here's some really strange where I told you the latter half of the 19th century was crazy a 20 cent piece came out in 1875 it proved to be a failure though due to its confusion with the quarter and you know they're very similar but this is a lesson that the mint later repeats about a hundred years later and we'll talk about that how they officially minted until 1878 they were only minted for the general circulation for the first two years eighteen seventy five seventy six because nobody wanted them now for a super rear bird and a super cool story 1879 is the four dollar gold Stella less than five hundred of these were ever made and today they're about 75,000 to a quarter million if you find one yeah that'd be a nice fine so why they make this four dollar coin because some Congress members were thinking of the u.s. joining the LMU which was the Latin monetary union and that would have been like America joining and making the Americas making a Europe the point of prospect of this happening was rejected by Congress but not before several had been produced and offered to the congressman at cost they later became scandalized when several Stella's ended up in the possession of proprietors of Washington's most infamous brothels now on to 1883 and the release of the Liberty nickel oh yes I said the nickel this is the nickel as we really know it it's the V nickel to collectors it was released due to production problems with the shield nickel and there's a couple key dates with these babies but a lot of them were made due to the commercial demand you have to remember this is when coin-operated machines really started to become popular and don't forget the fixed price of cocoa the beginning in 1886 was five cents another key date key dates not strong enough is a 1913 V nickel only five are known to exist and if you find one two million plus that's not bad now on in the 1890s and the barbers named after Charles E barber oh yeah he's the guy that designed that nickel he was the chief engraver of the United States Mint from 1879 until his death in 1917 thirty-eight years later now that well thirty-eight years there that was a commitment so during his time there he designed most of these coins a rare feat he also designed 30 medals during his life have a look here's some of his others you have the barber quarter the barber dime that came out in 1892 and the barber half dollar okay so then you didn't have anything new really until seven years into the turn of the century and we had some redesigns first in gold coins you have the ten dollar Indian that was released in 1907 the twenty dollars Saint Gaudens in gold you had the two and a half dollar gold Indian the five dollar gold Indian and now a big change in change is the 1909 Lincoln Cent that was introduced this is known as the wheat penny due to the design on the reverse it has the wheat all right and I call these the scratch off lottery tickets of the coin collector world and the reason why is there's a lot of valuable needles in the haystack and there's some that are easy to find why I say easy it's not super easy often you'll see estates and auction selling a ton of these and they'll call them unsearched like a nun search lot of wheat pennies and what that's supposed to mean is they look for these goodies so in 1909 the San Francisco version is about an $80 penny so in 1909 s put a 1909 s BDB with those initials that can be an $800 plus penny depending on condition the 1914 G Denver they're about 200 bucks these days and then 19:22 plane has a few variations that can be $1,000 plus so you see how it can be fun sitting in front of a stack of these at the kitchen table just grab a plate a price guide or have your laptop or iPad there and flip through them all right let's keep moving through the 20th century designed by James Earle Fraser a well known artist and sculptor and he designed the classic buffalo nickel these were minted from 1913 to 1938 and there are another favorite acquaintance ters as there are a few popular errors to look for and we'll talk about errors later it's the 1936 and 37 three legged Buffalo those are the most famous there are some others but it's about a $500 nickel if you find one in good shape that's not bad also to know James Fraser is the guy that did the end of the trail bronze you've probably seen these before okay so now let me show you Queens released just prior to entering the Great War in 1916 the US Mint released the Mercury dime The Walking Liberty half dollar and the Standing Liberty quarter these were all part of a major redesign that had been in the works for some time next was the silver dollar because it had been a Morgan for some time this was a great story in December 1921 the piece dollar was finally released commemorating the end of wars the war to end all wars and it was actually the winning design of Anthony defriend CC and kind of cooled they took eight prominent sculptors of the day and they competed to see who would create the most emblematic design of piece on a coin today I think it would have been a reality show like piece off or last sculptor standing a piece dollar was minted from 1921 to 1935 and when looking through these I was looked for a 1921 because they only printed them and minted them in December and the 1928 Philadelphia specifically and that's about a two hundred dollar dollar not bad for a buck okay let's keep moving deep into the heart of the Great Depression the Washington Quarter first appeared and was released in 1932 it's really unchanged for the most part with the exception of some commemoratives but to note the 1964 is the last year of silver competent composition and what I mean by that is 90% silver 10% copper and one hunting through these I use this rule of thumb for every dollar of them you find 1964 and earlier you have 15 dollars so a dollar for 15 dollars that changes a little bit with the price of silver but it's never steered me wrong so let's talk pennies again the weak penny is done and in 1934 the Lincoln Memorial cent appears and it's basically just a redesign of the back which has the Lincoln Memorial during World War two due to a shortage of copper the 1943 Lincoln Memorial was struck in zinc coated steel and this continued until 1946 in fact 1944 to 46 they're made from spent cartridge cases from the war okay here's another Holy Grail the 1943 bronze penny they were supposed to all be steel at this time but legend tells us a small number of 1943 cents were struck on a few left over bronze coin blanks a few years ago in fact one sold for 1.7 million dollar so guess what happened now there's a lot of forgeries out there but there are a few in existence okay let me jump back a little bit the 1938 I skipped over the Jefferson nickel this one hasn't changed much in design either but also during World War two it switched to a composition of 56 percent copper to 35% 35% silver and nine percent magnesium whereas pre-war and post-war they're 75% copper 25 percent again the save copper for the war effort the silver in these more nickels makes them worth a dollar or two so they're just look out for him anything between 1942 and 45 there's also a lot of errors in there too all right weird war 2 is done and Nellie Taylor Ross the director of the mint wants to see a Benjamin Franklin coin and she gets what she wants 1948 the Franklin half-dollar here's another great historical footnote now a tale Oh Ross was not only the first female director of the mint where she was the director for 20 years but prior to that she was the first female governor of why Oh completely ahead of her time read about her not to skip over another post-war design I forgot about the 1946 Roosevelt nine that was released just a year after the president's death and light the quarter it's 90% silver 10% copper all the way up until 1964 and including 1964 since 1965 it's been ninety-one percent copper eight or nine percent nickel I am bid on these historical footnote so I want to talk about this those last two coins John our cynic was our the he was the sculptor engraver and he had his initials on them and this was during the second Red Scare and some believed his initials JR s secretly stood for Joseph Stalin's initials and of course they did not see they in real fake news back then too and it was a lot easier to pull off like the 1938 radio broadcasts of War of the Worlds look that up that's some good fake news anyway nothing new to show you until 1964 a month after the assassination of JFK Congress authorized the Kennedy half-dollar released in 1964 that year it was 90% silver 10% copper after that from 65 to 70 it was 40% silver 60% copper and then by 1971 they were the same as the dime with the ninety-one percent copper and eight or nine percent nickel another presidents death brings us another new coin it's the Eisenhower dollar released in 1971 most of these are that copper nickel alloy like the Roosevelt diamond Kennedy's but a few were released as commemoratives and they were 40% silver 60% people call them the clads they have a little more value might be 15 bucks or so you know and they were compromised because everybody wanted them the congressman wanted them to be 40% 60% but they said for general circulation will do this and it's good they did because they were never really popular other than being sold as keepsakes the Nevada casinos were the only other people that liked them because they could use them for their slot machines so what replaced it a woman in 1979 finally graced our currency it was the susan b anthony dollar but it was a disaster just like the 20 cent piece from a hundred years earlier it was confused with the quarter due to its size and color the bending machine Lobby hated it didn't work in the slot machines or the vending machine here's a crazy fact one and a half billion of these were minted over the span of them and the government was stuck with a pile of about a billion dollars and maybe that's where our stimulus checks are coming from awesome anyway they learned their lesson sort of the next two are known as the golden dollars and they're a bit smaller they're quarter sized as well but that gold color easily distinguishes them the Sacagawea came out first in 2000 and then the presidential dollars in 2007 they came out they're kind of a commemorative but they're also dollar etc etc in 2010 the Lincoln penny gets a facelift and a new shield back have a look and that's pretty much all the US coins I am gonna talk about but I still have more for you I didn't talk about commemoratives like the state quarters or the silver or gold commemoratives mints or sets that kind of thing but they're all in the online price guides so if you find us that you can look it up just as easy my favorite site for this is Nunez mediacom and their collector fair market value guide it's free and always updated make sure you click the collector fair market value they don't try to make you log in or sign anything also the USA coin book.com is just as good I just know my way around the other side better they're a little older so now I want to briefly explain the grading system to you it's very important in coin valuation when it comes to resale especially with those key dates the key is knowing when is it worth paying the fees to a coin grading service to certify and place they're independent and unbiased grade upon your coin and what I mean by that is have a look if the higher grade is going to prove your coin to be worth more than the cost of the grading service it could be worth it remember a collector will generally not go by your opinion of grade we're even there's it's like that with coins comic books baseball cards stamps now even action figures everyone's got an opinion and no one's good condition opinions are the same enter this standardization system the the pendant third party takes the personal opinion out of it again it's got to be worth it to do it you know when they slab these things it they can change the price or what they charge you on the value of the coin because of their exposure if they were wrong or sued or whatever when you see a big grade value jump on a coin ask an expert if you're not sure most coin shops will give you their opinion for free they'll say yes and then integrating or don't I always did PCGS has a grading chart with amazing visuals I'm gonna give you some visuals here but it's nothing like a lot of sites out there what they have NGC also is a big grading company as well I'm gonna have links for those here are the standard grades you have poor kind of obvious you have fair and which still is worn you have good which is also still worn but you can make out what the coin is pretty easily yuvigi eight or very good again worn but most of the design elements can be made out you have fine which you know most the elements stand out clearly you have very fine and I always say to look for the readable letters if you can really make out the motto and Liberty and all that it's probably very fine then you have extremely fine again this is where it starts getting like very important because the price can really change now you have au fifty that's about uncirculated okay they can have dings and scrapes but again the coin is a really good looking point here's where they can you really need to have an expert here I had a customer once bring us a rare twenty dollar gold piece and I thought it was a you 58 which would have been a quarter million dollars but when it came back graded au fifty and therefore worth $30,000 that was a big difference now the client was thrilled to death because it was better than three thousand dollar coin but it still it was disappointing so yeah au 58 because is like everything but mint now you have mint state ms 60 range is from ms sixty-two ms70 and that meant and again mints have bad days just like with baseball cards where you can open it up in brand-new and it's never seen the light of day but that day they had a bad day minting you know so ms70 is the holy grail it is the perfect coin even under eight Lieut microscope or whatever it is it's flawless and even the mint right out of right off the mint that's a rare find it really is so again there's all these different levels and with the really early coins obviously that if they've been circulated this doesn't come into play but with the new collectors this is where you really want to know these charts so I hope that helps oh I want to talk a little bit about errors so I want to finish the show off with this it's a brief explanation because no errors are like their own animal but it's something because there's a whole world of collectors out there I could probably do a show just on errors it's a coin that was actually produced incorrectly by the mint itself and there are specific people that specialize just in error coins and they come in all shapes and sizes probably what makes them super fun have a look at all the variations and I'm sorry this isn't even all of them but this is the most popular my personal favorites are the double and triple strike errors and the off centers check out this penny and quarter see what I mean areas and bow errors and the values of errors can be quite broad also there's a lot of fakes or just plain old damage coins out there you know the quarters that we used to put on the train tracks when we were kids and stuff that's not an error so the degree of the error also plays a factor like if it's a Miss strike how bad is it you know I've actually found these in rolls of quarters before like a Miss strike it's kind of a cool thing when you find one because you know a quarter could be 50 bucks you know so and it's brand-new like the three legged Buffalo's I talked about that is a known error it happened all the time the books will have Aires and what I mean it's the ones referenced in the price guides because it was an issue that happened over and over again at a certain year or a certain mint had an a quality control issue again I just want to say this all seems like a lot to know but if you have any interest at all and you just watch this so far so you must there you know there's so much available to you online if you watch this video a few times I think you'll know more than 95% of the antique collectors out there you know and I just I want this to be like my last two videos just a deep dive but a quick overview introduction to the genre I call them the history of stuff but it's like really to immerse you a little bit I want you to be armed with enough knowledge to be dangerous and have a broad view because it's how you learn and maybe get excited about collecting perhaps you want to be a coin collector or you just want to look at a collection you inherited it competently and I hope this helps maybe you want to be a personal property appraiser or an auctioneer or you're dabbling and just making a few extra bucks you're buying and selling storage units then this and my other videos are probably for you make sure you check out Josh Levine speaks comm look at my past blogs there's a lot of information in there I'm gonna make this into a blog free resource section that has links to all these things so you can look them up easier the best sites to do that hey just subscribe to my youtube channel click like leave a comment good bad or ugly because it all helps me and helps me with my next video inspiration until next time thank you so much [Music]

Channel: Josh Levine Speaks

Views: 36,360

Keywords: coin collecting, coin collecting for beginners, coin collecting tips, coin collecting 101, coin collecting advice, coin collecting documentary, silver picker, coin hunting, silver dollar city, history, american, coins, pbs, pocket change, history channel, investing, investment, coin collection, silver coins, graded coins, old coins, silver bullion, half dime, early dollar, capped bust, us mint, history of the united states of america, stella liberty, colonial coinage

Id: f9xinH_HdMY

Length: 29min 21sec (1761 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020