An old coin

I was walking with my camera one morning in the garden of my mother-in-law. It was always fun to walk in her garden because she collected many things. At first glance it looked like she didn`t use any of the items and that they were lying there forgotten. I was wrong, she used them all the time. That I discovered by accident one morning when I was looking for something that I photographed the previous day.

My story today is about something different. Her garden is quite big and she has two houses on the property. One house she lives in and the other house is currently not in use. It has been falling apart over the years and she often hints that we should come and live there and have it fixed.

Every day I went over to the chickens to say hello and then I started to scout the area in search of something interesting. I was photographing close to the house when I saw a coin. Yes, a coin! It was covered in cement and looked really old.

My eyes started to see Dollars and I thought we hit the jackpot! I took the coin and ran towards the house.

“I found a coin”, I shouted.
“Where?”,Andrey asked.
“By the chickens, in the wall”, I explained excitedly. “Let`s go and show Mom!”
“Is it worth something”, I said. “It looks really old”, I blabbered.

You could see the excitement written all over my face and I had so many questions. I was like a child at Christmas. Andrey gave the coin one look and told me it is a 50 Roubles coin dating back to the days of the Soviet Union. Then it must be old I thought to myself.

We found Mom and showed her the coin. She asked me where I got it and I told her. No, it is not worth anything and they had a good chuckle. Mom had a story to tell and it had nothing to do with the coin. My excitement died immediately when I realized this coin was not going to make us rich. Mom took the coin and put it in a pot next to her chair. I asked her if I could have it and she gave it to me. I want to keep it as a souvenir. Why? Because it is my lucky coin.

After some days Mom called Andrey and gave him a coin. This coin is valuable and belonged to his grandfather. It dated back to the 1920`s. She wanted him to have it and told him that maybe one day it will be worth a lot of money. The reason why this coin is worth something is because it is made from pure silver. It was made in England for Russia and it has the name of the person who made it engraved on the coin.

Later that evening we Googled coin collections and found a man on Ebay selling the exact same coin. He wanted 250 USD for his coin. We were reading about the values of coins at www.goldeneaglecoin.com and decided to hang on to ours because it is not about the money but the sentimental value.

Have you ever found something valuable?

Where: Kaliningrad,Russia
When: 4 June 2012