Adam Bottner - The 1943 S Double Dye

 

So, when my son Sam was about 11 years old, he got very into coins, more specifically into metallurgy, the chemistry of around coins. He was fascinated with the metals. He would do all these things with these coins, just change around the house. He would shine them up using chemicals. He would bake them in the oven to make them look older. He would clean them with chemicals to make them look brighter and shinier. He would electroplate one coin's metal onto the other coin. He was just like this little mad scientist. It was very fun to watch this kid. He was very into everything he did. He was a bright little kid. 

 

So, that led to his desire to be a coin collector, because he was so into the coins themselves. He knew that I had a coin collection when I was a kid. So, he asked me if he could start. I said, “Sure, I'll do what my dad did for me. I'll give you some of my coins to get you started. But you got to promise me you don't clean any of the coins, because that devalues the coins. No matter what you do-- If you want to make them look better, it just makes them less valuable or valueless.” So, he's like, “Cool.” So, we start collecting coins. 

 

I gave him some of mine. He starts going on cointalk.com at night and talking to these 60-year-old coin collectors. [audience laughter] It's hysterical to watch this little kid. He's just so into it. We would go to these coin shows every month down in Lamont, Illinois, and I would just basically follow him around and he would take his allowance or his birthday money and he would buy a couple coins, he'd talk to the other exhibitors. He was really knowledgeable, because he was always reading about it. So, it's just fun to watch him at work. 

 

So, one time, we're down there and he says to one of the coin exhibitors, he says, “If I had a 1943-S doubled die, would that be valuable?” And the coin exhibitor says-- He looks up with a very dramatic pause and he takes off his glasses he goes, “If that's true, you may have just put yourself through college.” [audience laughter] So, I'm standing behind him. At that time, I was a government lawyer and I had no money in the bank. I was putting away $25 with each paycheck for a bond, a savings bond. And on that savings plan, it would have taken about 400 years to put him through college. [audience laughter] 

 

I was a cartoon character. The dollar signs in my eyes bugged in and out. [audience laughter] Boing, boing, boing. I was just so excited, because nothing like this would ever happen to somebody in my family. So, it was very exciting. We said, “What's the next step?” And the guy goes, “Take a picture of it tonight when you get home and send it to me and I'll tell you what I think.” So, we go home. Sam was also into the photography of coins, these really accurate pictures of coins. And then he sends it to this guy. And the guy immediately emails back. He says, “I think you got something here.” 

 

So, I'm thinking like, in excess of $100,000. That's what university of Illinois at that time was $120,000, something like that. [audience laughter] So, that's what I'm thinking, you know? And so, I'm so excited. We're going crazy in the house. We're running around, and we're like, “Oh, what do we do with the pennies?” So, we hid it in between his box spring and the mattress. [audience laughter] God forbid the house gets robbed. They won't be able to find the penny in the bed. [audience laughter] And then, we asked the guy, “What's the next step?” This guy's like the MS. Like, he knows everything. You know, he's like Moses or something. We just met him at this thing. [audience laughter] 

 

So he says, “You got to take it. You have to get it graded, like, officially assessed by these national grading companies. One of them was coming to the Rosemont Convention Center for a big convention in the next month.” So, we waited, guarded the house. [audience laughter] We were on constant vigil. And so, we go to this coin show a month later, and I walk in. I'm making sure nobody's following me, because I've got the coin of the century. And I walk in, and we go up to the booth and I tell the guy, I go, “What do we want to do?” And he goes, “Yeah, let me see it. So, I give it to him, and in two seconds, he says, “Has this been cleaned?” And I looked at Sam. And Sam, he's a little man, and he bows his head, and the energy just goes out of his body. I realized he had cleaned it and it's now worth nothing. So, we went from this to this. 

 

And so, at that time, I had to stop being his financial planner and be his father, [audience laughter] you know? So, I said, “Come on, let's take a walk.” And so, we go. We went on the stairwell. I remember we sat down. I go, “Did you really clean that coin?” And he said, “Ah, maybe.” [audience laughter] Maybe. Of course, man. He, for sure, did. And so, now, again, I can't be his financial planner. I have to be his father. I said, “Listen, you know what? We never had this money. It wasn't ours. Things like that. That's just crazy fortune.” I said, “Don't worry about it. We're going to be fine. You know, the best things in life are the ones you have to work for.” 

 

] And as I'm saying this, I'm making myself actually believe it too. And so, he started feeling better. I said, “Do you want to go back in the show or you want to go home? And he said, “Let's go back in the show. I love coins.” I'm like, “Okay, cool. He got over it, and I was over it. We're walking around, and I come up with the brilliant idea of, “Hey, do you want to find out what it would have been worth if we didn't clean it?” [audience booing] Really, really stupid idea, right? [audience laughter] So, we go back to the grading guy, and I walk up to him, I said, “What would this coin have been worth if we didn't clean it?” He goes, “Eh, 20, 25 bucks?” And I go, “No, no, if we didn't clean it.” [audience laughter] And he goes, “Yeah, 20, 25 bucks.” I go, wait, “It's a 1943-S double die, right? It was stamped twice by the San Francisco Mint in 1943 by mistake. Only a few got it to circulation, right?” 

 

He goes, “No, it's something.” He goes, “It's not what you're talking about. He goes, it's worth 20 or 25 bucks whether you cleaned it or not.” So, we realized, you know what-- I was thinking, like, we had won the golden ticket, that this was like the Willy Wonka episode where we want to go and we never had it in the first place. So, all of a sudden, we're jumping up and down [audience laughter] like we had just found the 1943-S double die, you know? I realized, coins, when they're flawed, sometimes are very valuable. But when we're flawed as people, we really learn some valuable lessons. Thank you.