The 1950 nickel illustrated is a coin that obviously spent several years in circulation, but it did finally find its way into a coin folder and was there for some decades before I bought the set for an Italian friend.
As collectors, of course, we talk a lot about the stories our coins could tell. We speculate about what our small favorites have done, and where they have been. We wonder, sometimes, what events they may have survived, or what catastrophe they perhaps avoided.
The photo is of the little jewelry store where I bought this particular 1950 nickel, on Main Street in Joplin, less than two months before the building was destroyed by the outer edge of an EF-5 tornado.
As collectors we know that our coins are usually very tight-lipped about their experiences, and I expect that in a decade or two, at most, no one will have any idea of this 1950 nickel’s close call.
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