This was done as part of a 365 photo project of which a sub project was My Firsts.
a half inch of round metal history
I've mentioned before that i'm a collector of things. Many things. There is no specific group of things i collect. They fit into all sorts of categories. Overall, anything old or historic appeals to me. Most of the time they are items that were found or given or purchased at a cut-rate price. Seldom do i pay market value for something. Of the things i collect, pieces of currency would be a subgroup. I'm feeling that some of these 'my firsts' posts are being misunderstood as a bragging of my possessions. While they may be representative of that in a small way, they are more a tale of a place in time (mostly from my childhood, as it were) of when these items came into my life and a small view into how they affected who i am present day. One of the great things i get from coins and paper currency is the wonder of where they have been and who might have held them in their fingers. If you think about it, a coin could literally change hands a thousand times a day. Yeah, i'd be lying if i said they don't hold any monetary value for me. But really it's the ability to hold a small piece of history in my fingers.
My earliest touches with coin collecting were from my father who had a Lincoln cent collection housed in one of those blue Whitman folder books. He had been saving them from an early age and had quite a few of the "key" dates saved. He passed this on to me, thus starting my zest for collecting. My mother would save silver Kennedy half dollars. Their first year of minting was 1964 and were done in nearly 90% silver, reduced to 40% the following year and the silver content eliminated completely by 1971. Due to the value of silver, a lot of the coins are worth far more than the .50 cent face value. To my recall she had a couple hundred put away. I believe my bro got these. I started to save coins, mostly pennies at first. I remember saving a coin from each year that passed so as to fill the open holes in the folders. When i was older i started saving nickels, dimes and quarters in those folder books. Along the way i would purchase different proof sets and take advantage of multiple introductory offers, that local coin dealers would mail out in an effort to try and hook you into becoming a constant customer. I never became constant, but found most of the introductory offers to be at such a tremendous bargain price, that it was an offer i couldn't refuse. Most times they were free, but for a small shipping charge. For a time, i purchased various pieces of paper money, also. But again, i guess i'm cheap, i wouldn't pay market value. I have amassed a nice collection over time and would put the value close to $2500. I learned of the very cyclical nature of the values of coins (and a lot of other items) over time. Nowadays, unless i find a coin or am offered it for next to nothing, i do not procure them.
My first job was on a local vegetable farm. I was mid-teens. It was hard, dirty work and not all that much pay. I gained a strong value for the rewards of a hard day's work out in the fresh air and sunshine. Working under the skin of mother earth has its own merits, also. To this day i enjoy gardening, digging in the dirt, planting and growing things. My respect for just being out in the atmosphere that surrounds this great big ball we live upon is extensive. On the farm there were many rituals they adhered to year after year, in the process of producing produce. This farm was a few generations old and they had been farming some of their fields for a hundred years, if not more. In the spring, the earth is plowed so the top layer is furrowed under and the richness underneath brought up to the top. It also breaks the crust and makes the soil more workable. The next step is to harrow the fields. Multiple discs set up on a pull behind attachment are run over the field several times. This cuts up the chunks and makes the soil of a finer texture; easier for the roots of tender young plants to wend their way through. I still live in the same house i grew up in a as child (spoiler alert!) and have witnessed this farm go through its yearly cycle close to 50 times now. They grow many different types of crop on this farm. Some were sold through a vegetable stand they used to pull by tractor up to the street corner across from my house; today they have a store on their property. Some are taken to local markets. The farm has grown over time and modern changes adapted, where their cost per acre became of value. Everything on a farm is about $$$ per acre. Some of the processes haven't changed, there is no modern day equivalent to the way its been done from the beginning. One of their cash crops is cabbage. they plant acres and acres of it. One of the advantages, is the harvest comes late in the year when a lot of other crops have passed their yield season. Early in the spring after preparing the soil, they plant thousands of seeds. They are planted very close and when the plants grow out, they are very densely packed to each other. They would never produce a fully developed head in this manner due to overcrowding. What is done is that once the plants are several weeks old, established and firm, they are hand pulled in bunches, shaken till most of the soil is removed then packed into crates. Later they are planted in a larger field in rows and spaced far enough apart to allow a very fruitful, happy head of cabbage to develop. The process of planting involves an attachment that is pulled behind a tractor. It has six seats. They are set up in pairs and each pair has a big metal disc with fingers on it, between them. The disc spins between the two seats and as it does the occupants of the seats take turns placing a plant in each set of fingers as they come round. The disc is big enough to enter into the ground. A special set of blades opens a furrow in the soil that this disc spins into and releases the plants in the ground. Then another set of blades closes the furrow. Viola! The plants are planted in three nice even spaced rows, as long as the field. At times the fingers enter the ground without a plant, called a skip, or with a weak plant or one that didn't get set just right into the ground. To correct this, one person walks along behind the planter with a handful of plants. Weak looking plants are pulled and replaced. Skips are obviously planted in and any that didn't make it in correctly, are corrected. There was a rotation of the seven people involved such that everybody served as a walker. It's a bit mindless, and tedious. Sometimes the people on the planter would intentionally skip several to bust the walker's chops. They would skip several and then watch to see how long it took the walker to look up with a disparaging glare. It was a good natured group and camaraderie was built amongst us. This process was done for about three weeks. By then your back hurts and you're glad to move onto the next crop.
So at this point everybody is wondering 'what the Hell does this have to do with collecting coins?'. Well here it comes. One day the rotation brought up my turn to be the walker, again. I was just strolling along planting skips as required. Smelling the richness of the soil. Enjoying being out in the fresh air. Listening to the steady drone of the tractor and to the muffled conversations going on up the field from me. I bent down to plug a plant into the ground, where one was missing and something caught my eye. It wasn't the one of the usual thousands of pebbles that dotted the soil. It had a different color than the soil. It looked like half a coin. I picked it up. It was a coin! Unlike anything i had ever seen in my life. It was tiny. Much smaller than a dime, the smallest coin i had encountered in my life until then. Upon further investigation i discovered it was a half dime. What the what?? I had never ever heard of such a thing. The date was 1857. OMG! This is thing is wicked old, i thought. A little further inspection showed a tiny hole had been put through it. How, why? At the end of the row i eagerly showed everyone of my find and all were met with fascination. One of the farm owner's older sons (one of 3 brothers and one sister that worked the farm) said, "Oh, hey that's mine. I lost it a couple of years ago. Thanks for finding it." Everybody laughed. He was a ball buster and went a long way to keeping the job uplifting, as much as it could be. Anyway i put my find in my pocket and started wondering of all the circumstances surrounding my discovery. Who might have had this in their hands? How did it make it into the field? The odds that i would be walking there at that time and just happen to look and see it. It could be likened to finding a needle in a haystack. Of all the years that the field had been plowed and harrowed and planted and harvested, it surfaced then. I was entranced.
It became one of my prize coins. I've since looked up the value and it's probably not worth much more than a couple of dollars, due to the hole. Maybe five. But to me it's nearly priceless. 47/365
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Seated_Liberty_coinage" rel="nofollow">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Seated_Liberty_coinage</a>
