South Streator, Illinois
I am shipping today a brass coin stamped with the words, "Entergy Safety Award 2005". On one side it bears a hard hat painted white in enamel paint. On the flip side, the year 2005 appears in a burst of sun. The coin hit me on the side of my head, tossed by a masqued krewe member who probably had a bag of the tokens. I left the corner of Julia and Saint Charles laden with beads around my neck, astounded by the parade that had marched in by for hours. Three more parades passed by that corner before the day was through.
It ships today to a man in Arkansas who paid two dollars plus shipping on eBay. Weeks passed before the token caught a buyer. I want to ask him if he worked for Entergy, an electrical power company that operates Nuclear Power plants. The great bazaar called eBay is an ocean where a fish awaits for every bait. Talking to buyers makes the game of selling on eBay fun. The buyers will teach you everything, even how to ship an item or discover the true value of a collectible.
A token hit my head and I won a story. It cost me nothing but made me four dollars for my trouble. I could pack and ship tokens all day for four dollars a package. People tried to tell me that dollars could be made in very simple ways. My Uncle Gerald tried to get me started in stamp collecting. He sent me a stamp collecting book. He sent me stamps. I failed because I needed help putting the stamps in the book. I needed to learn how to put valuable items away. Mom definitely tried but she was so busy. I could have caught on quicker.
Mom even helped me start in coin collecting. She bought a blue book to hold coins from the year of my birth. She bought me a blue book to hold pennies from all the mints of the United States treasury. A round slot awaited for every coin that came off the press for a hundred years.
She went to banks to get pennies, hoping to fill in the slots. She traded in rolls of pennies for rolls of pennies. Banks won't do these trades now but banks would in the Seventies. She would search the rolls for pennies to collect. She filled many, many slots with good and very good coins. The coins didn't show signs of wear and that's why they were graded good and very good. She let me pop the coins into the slots. She kept the coin books up in her kitchen cabinet. I hope she cashed them in when she retired from her business.
I could have caught on earlier. In the Seventies, old coins from earlier times were still in circulation. You could find wheat stock pennies in your change. Mercury dimes still circulated. The wheat stock pennies had a head of wheat on the back side. The front side showed a side profile of Abraham Lincoln, who I believed looked like my father, Edward William. I have often said I could be rich and retired on what I have overlooked or thrown away.
By BrandonBigheart for the photograph; Adolph Weinman for the coin design. - Actual coin., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27568820
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