TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Coin Collectors Exchange Pieces Of History

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

President of the Ridge Coin Club of Sebring Ronald Deehr Jr. currently owns a collection of about 250 coins ranging from 1821 to 1964.

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARC VALERO

Highlands Today

Published: February 10, 2009

SEBRING - Searching an 1857-1873 Ohio fairgrounds site with a metal detector, Ron Deehr found dozens of old coins and a new hobby - coin collecting.

"Most of the public don't have a clue of what they've got in their little shoebox that great grandpa left to the kids," Deehr said. "Sometimes it's junk; sometimes it's good stuff."

Deehr is president of the Ridge Coin Club of Sebring, which has 22 members.

The club's third annual coin show, with 20 coin dealers, will be held 9 a.m. - 3 p.m., Saturday at the Lions Club, 3400 Sebring Parkway. The event is open to the public and refreshments will be served. Admission is free.

"Dealers are coming all the way from Michigan down here," he said. People come in to buy coins, exchange coins, sell coins, get information, join the club, have food and everything."

As a dealer/collector, Deehr has owned a wide variety of American coins and currently owns several hundred coins.

"I go through everything," he said. "I've had expensive coins; I've even had coins from 1798 that George Washington could have had in his pocket."

Deehr, and club vice president Barry Radawiec, both credit increased interest in coin collecting with the minting of the state quarters. Starting in 1999, five new quarters were released each year through 2008, representing each of the 50 states.

Radawiec said it has been the hottest thing going in coin collecting in the past 50 years.

"Everybody and their grandma are saving state quarters," he said.

How does one learn the value of a coin they got from grandpa years ago?

Deehr said coin dealers use a "gray sheet" of wholesale coin prices that is published weekly to determine buying and selling prices,

If someone brings in a Morgan dollar and the gray sheet shows it's worth $15, the customer would be paid $14 so the dealer can make a 10 percent to 20 percent profit selling it to another dealer. Then that dealer would sell it to a customer for a retail price of $20.

A valued find among American coins is the 1877 Indian head cent, which is worth about $1,600 in poor condition, but about $8,000 in good condition.

"It's date and condition ... that's how we buy," he said.

To start collecting coins, Deehr recommends going to the bank to exchange cash for rolls of half-dollars.

There are still some silver half-dollars out there, so start putting them in a coin album, he said.

Radawiec started collecting coins 60 years ago when he was about 7 years old and his aunt gave him half a dozen Indian head pennies.

"I actually went into the coin business because I had too many duplicate coins," he said.

Owning a coin store in Michigan from 1983 until his retirement in 2002, Radawiec specialized in error coins.

Sometimes in the minting of coins, the die will become loose, causing a double image or "double die."

The most famous is probably the 1955 Lincoln penny double die, which is worth many thousands of dollars, Radawiec said. The mint in Philadelphia was aware of the error and shouldn't have released them, but as a hurricane moved up the east coast the coins were boxed up and shipped out.

There are a lot of stories in coins and it's the history behind them, which fascinates dealers and collectors, he said. "I always found it a very interesting hobby."

To start collecting, get a Whitman blue book (coin album) and start putting pennies in it and then graduate to nickels, dimes and quarters, Radawiec suggested. Go to the bank and pick up a couple of rolls of pennies and start filling your books.

For more information about the coin club, contact Deehr at 873-3372.

Highlands Today reporter Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT