Old money has big value at Perry coin show

PERRY -- When Sandy Harris was growing up in Butler in the 1950s, he made money by selling boiled peanuts on the streets.

He started paying attention to the coins he received for payment, and noticed some looked different from others. The young entrepreneur soon began studying coins and learned which ones in circulation might be valuable.

"I started looking for Indian head pennies and V nickels," he said. "That's what got me started."

Now retired from teaching and sales, he was among 85 vendors from around the Southeast at the annual Middle Georgia Coin Club's Coin and Currency Show on Sunday. The show, held annually at the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter, drew more than 1,000 people from Friday to Sunday.

Harris has been a member of the club since he was a student at Mercer in 1963, but he said some others have been in it even longer.

Chip Davis, chairman of the show, specializes in collecting paper currency from the Macon area. About a century ago each national bank had its own currency, with the bank's name printed on the bill.

Davis had a near-perfect 1902 $10 bill from the Fourth National Bank of Macon that he had priced at $525.

While banks would accept bills from other banks, the problem was that if a bank went out of business its bills would be worthless. For that reason, Davis said, most of the currency floating around Macon at the time was from Macon banks and it all tended to stay in the area.

"You knew it was good if it was a local bank because you knew the bank was still in business," Davis said.

He also had several Confederate bills, including a $500 bill that he had priced at $1,125. When the Civil War ended, Confederate money was so worthless that it was being used to fuel fires. The few people who stashed some away in air-tight containers were doing their descendants a tremendous favor.

Although coins and currency were the main items for sale at the show, it featured a wide variety of collectible items, ranging from stamps to meteorites and fossils.

Bill Lane, of Gray, had a large and varied collection that included coins, Masonic awards and antique straight razors.

The trouble with most any hobby is that it can quickly turn into a money vacuum, but Lane said coin collecting can be the opposite.

"It's one of the hobbies that if you are intelligent with it, over time you will make money," he said.

Many people find themselves in possession of old coins when family members die. If people don't know anything about coins, Lane said, it's impossible to know what those coins might be worth. Sometimes coins that appear to be old, rare and unusual aren't really all that valuable. But also he often finds people with coins that are quite a bit more valuable than they imagined.

He said people can bring a few coins to a show or a coin club and collectors will give them a free evaluation, but if it's a large collection there would be an appraisal fee.

About once every month or two Lane appraises an estate collection so that the coins can be evenly distributed among multiple heirs.

The Middle Georgia Coin Club meets the first and third Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the cafeteria at the Navicent Health Rehabilitation Hospital on Northside Drive. The public is invited.

Like many hobbies that don't involve things that whirl and beep, it can be difficult to get young people interested in coin and currency collecting, Davis said. But the club does have some young members, and he thinks there is a good reason for youths to get involved.

"It's a great way to learn a lot about the history of the country," he said.

For more information on the club, go to middlegeorgiacoinclub.com

To contact writer Wayne Crenshaw, call 256-9725.

This story was originally published January 31, 2016 at 8:43 PM with the headline "Old money has big value at Perry coin show ."