Who were they? What were they like?

What is the "process" by which BU coins, over
a hundred years old, stay in mint condition
for all these years? What type of person decides
that he's going to sit on a roll of coins for
decades?

I know that the answer for silver dollars staying
so nice is because "they" spent 70+ years locked
up in their original mint bag, but what is the
story for the rest of the coins out there that
survive untouched?

On Sep 3, 2:53*pm, george pearl wrote:
What is the "process" by which BU coins, over
a hundred years old, stay in mint condition
for all these years? What type of person decides
that he's going to sit on a roll of coins for
decades?

I know that the answer for silver dollars staying
so nice is because "they" spent 70+ years locked
up in their original mint bag, but what is the
story for the rest of the coins out there that
survive untouched?

How about a couple of speculative answers? Say someone living in a
large, plantation-style or Victorian house after the Civil War got a
new two-cent piece and put it in a dresser drawer. It slides under
the base of the drawer and ends up under the drawer. Since great-
great grandma never removed the drawer, the two-cent piece stayed
where it was. The house passes on to great-grandma, grandma, mom, and
eventually you. Since the dresser is solid and still in great shape,
you decide to clean it up, maybe even refinish it. Now you remove the
drawers and, Lo! A BU two-cent piece!

My own house was originally built in the 1840s. Some additions and
upgrades, but not much in the way of decent remodeling. Now that I
live here I decide to tear out the old beaver-board that was used on
the original walls. I tear it out and inside the wall I find a BU
Young Head Large Cent that was lost shortly after the house was
completed.

Finally, when grandma passed away in the 1940s, her daughter got her
couch. Grandma had the couch for over 50 years, and it was still in
decent shape. Daughter used it for about 20 years, then moved it to
the attic where it stayed until recently. I get a phone call to clean
out the attic and throw everything away. Knowing couches and chairs
are a repository for coins, I take the couch to my own house and break
it up. Sure enough, there are coins, including a BU "V" nickel. This
story is true, except the "V" nickel was a 1901 that graded VF-20.

So it is possible, even with coins as old as 100 years.

Jerry

On Sep 3, 1:53*pm, george pearl wrote:
What is the "process" by which BU coins, over
a hundred years old, stay in mint condition
for all these years? What type of person decides
that he's going to sit on a roll of coins for
decades?

I know that the answer for silver dollars staying
so nice is because "they" spent 70+ years locked
up in their original mint bag, but what is the
story for the rest of the coins out there that
survive untouched?

It's simply an example of "the law of large numbers" in action.

Coin collectors tend to forget that coins are massed produced objects.

If four million one dollar gold pieces in 1853 (that sounds about
right), it's not really surprising that 3,000 to 5,000 really nice
examples exists today. Nobody had to do anything special. A very
small percentage of the really huge original mintage skirted by the
ravages of time - no special effort required. You can come up with
any specific explaination that you want for any single coin.

The really amazing things are the 1882-CC, 1883-CC and the 1884-CC
Morgan dollars - 30% or more of the original mintages surviving in
pretty decent shape to high end BU.

oly