Easy Money & the Magic Money Chair
Nowadays most folks know not to throw away some old junk until you check it out with an expert, someone like the “Antiques Road Show” guys. You know, just to make sure your old Teddy Bear or vintage comic book isn’t worth six figures. Stories abound of the amazing and valuable treasures people find stashed in their attics or buy for a few bucks at a yard sale. And, I bet everyone has heard some horror story of a fortune that was lost when a valuable collectible was tossed out or sold at a yard sale for a song.
I myself recently had the disturbing sensation that I probably piddled away a small….or possibly even a large fortune during my own feckless youth. This rather horrifying realization came to me just before Christmas last year. I was out on the prowl for unique and unusual gifts when I was attracted by the funky old stuff on display in the window of the pawn shop in Presque Isle. I popped in to have a look around and struck up a conversation with the proprietor as I was looking at old coins.
Over the years as I have worked in restaurants and pubs I’ve occasionally come across old silver coins. Well, they’re 90% pure silver anyway, and were made that way up until 1965 in the US. These coins make a distinctive sound when they hit the counter…a silvery clink as opposed to the leaden sounding clunk of an alloy coin so they are easy to hear even if a few coins are dropped at the same time.
The pawn shop guy proceeded to tell me that his mother had also been a waitress for many years and that she had saved all the old and unusual coins she ever received as tips in a cigar box. He had inherited that box and the coins it contained turned out to be worth over $300,000! In fact, he’d used that money to buy the corner building where his pawn shop is….the very building we were standing in.
Well, that was certainly a great story and I was very happy for him but inside me I felt a sinking feeling as my brain took a little trip down memory lane.
Back in 1961 our family lived in Washington, DC for a year or so. DC was our dad’s home town, and while we lived there he’d occasionally take us kids to visit his old pal Pop who ran “Pop’s Pool Hall” …a dim and smoky emporium that attracted a fascinating collection of hustlers, sharks, scroungers, gamblers, service men, students and other assorted lost souls.
Dad used to hang out in Pop’s pool hall back when he himself was a teenager, just before he went into the service during WWII. We kids loved the slightly forbidden atmosphere of the place but we were especially impressed by the money Pop would generously give us.
Pop’s customers would sometimes pay him with the kinds of old coins that were no longer being minted, and that were being replaced by newer designs. Coins like Liberty Dollars and half dollars, Mercury Head dimes, and so on, coins that could now be worth several thousand dollars each. Pop would keep these coins off to the side and when we kids would show up he’d give us a little collection of them. Pop was kind of like an honorary granddad to us.
It is with poignant regret that I must report that we spent all of this windfall on the Good Humor Truck and the little Sno-Cone stand which was just around the corner. Just frittered it away, a nickel and a dime at a time every time the ice cream truck came along, singing its siren song. Sigh. As I recall, the blue Sno-Cones were my favorite.
Our next home was in Jamestown, NY, where we moved into this big, old and spooky Victorian manse. It was full of funky antique furniture and came with a tragic story. The owner had moved out and gone abroad for a while after losing his family in an auto accident. The house was at least 100 years old,( this was in 1962) and the attic was full of cobwebs, pigeon nests and most likely some fabulous treasures had we only known! This house had three stories and we all had our choice of bedrooms. I picked the one with its very own balcony, which I thought was beyond cool.
But for us kids the most awesome thing about this fantastic house was the Money Chair. Down in the den there was what must have been one of the original Easy Boy Recliners, covered with well worn black leather We were given to understand that it had been the granddad’s favorite lounger, and our own father immediately claimed it for his own. But when he wasn’t hogging it we kids thought it was a hoot to play on and that’s how we discovered that it was a veritable treasure trove of lost coins.
Over the years as the previous owners had kicked back in this lounger coins had slipped out of their pockets and slithered down into the bowels of the chair. I don’t remember how we found the first coin…maybe we were looking for something we ourselves had lost. But we soon found that by probing with our little hands we could find coin after coin. Even after it appeared that we must surely have found all the money, if our dad turned the chair upside down and shook it you could hear more lost treasure clinking around inside.
Over the course of our residence in that house we scavenged well over fifty bucks in face value out of that chair. And since this was 1962 all of it was old and silver, with the exception of a few pennies. Naturally, we squandered all this booty as well. Ah, easy come easy go as they say! Along with the other terrific aphorism about how the road to hell is paved with regret and all….
One seated Liberty half dollar I distinctly remember spending was at the very first McDonald’s that had just recently opened in Jamestown. I got a burger and a chocolate shake, and even had a few cents change left over! Nowadays, of course, you could not pay me enough to eat at a McD’s, but that was then and this is now!
Stephanie Kelley
