I have two three cent nickels minted in 1885 and 1887.
When I was a kid my dad owned a building that had at one time been a rogue hospital in our town. When he bought them they were existing as apartments, the tiny waiting rooms made for a comfortable $80/month "studios". It wasn't the official hospital of the town, that was down the street a bit, but it was a hospital of some sort. Amongst the glass pill bottles and jars of decomposed cotton in the basement of the main building was a stash of coins.
I remember when my dad brought them home and poured them on the counter, I didn't even believe them to be real American coins. I'd never seen anything more exotic than a Susan B. Anthony or a WWII era dime. In addition to the three cent nickels, there are silver dollars and half dollars, pennies, buffalo head nickels, and mercury dimes.
I remember having my mom buy me a book that would help me appraise the value of the coins, and it turned out the sum total of the coins to a collector would be about the price of the book.
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