Silver and Gold

 

Over the almost 35 years of living in our house, we have like most people accumulated a lot of “stuff”.  Over the past year, I’ve been going through it and either tossing it or selling it.  I’ve sold a surprising number of items on eBay (that’s a topic for another blog post). 

While listening to a financial podcast, I was reminded of the high price of silver right now. It’s the highest price it’s ever been.  I remembered my old coin collection that I had stashed in the closet.  I also had stored away the remains of my dad’s collection after he passed away in 2013.   I used to collect coins when I was a kid.  I remember eagerly going to Hoskins coin shop downtown and buying coins.  I lost interest when I got older (like happens with a lot of things). 

I pulled out the tote I had stored the collection in.  There were quite a few silver coins in it.  My dad had sold all his gold coins before he passed away.  There were some silver coins and some yearly proof sets.  There also were some collector books of pennies and nickels.  I messaged with the new Hoskins coin shop (now run by Mr. Hoskins son and grandson) and they told me to bring it in.  I took it in and they looked through it.  I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of money I got for it. 

If you have any loose silver or gold or an old coin collection, this is an excellent time to sell it.  I’ll throw out a few basic tips to check your items.  To see if your jewelry is gold, test it with a magnet.  If it attracts, it isn’t gold.  Gold also will sink rapidly in a glass of water.  The magnet trick also works on silver. If it sticks, it isn’t silver.  As far as coins, dimes, quarters and half dollars, those made in 1964 or before are 90% silver.  Half dollars from 1965 to 1970 are 40% silver.  Anything after these has little or no silver and doesn’t have any value above face value. 

I would highly recommend Hoskins.  They treated me well.  I’ve known Ronnie Hoskins since my USEC days.  The shop is in the Southside area of Paducah near Kroger and Wal-Mart.  They are in the shopping center with Penn Station Subs.  They will be busy.  Brent Hoskins told me with the current prices of gold and silver, they have a lot of people coming in.  You shouldn’t let that stop you though.  It could be worth the wait (it certainly was for me).

Retirement (Revisited)

 

So, I’m going to try this blogging thing again.  I’ve tried to decide what I should blog about first.  I
finally decided to talk about my tenth anniversary of being retired.

It seems almost impossible that it’s been ten years since I retired in September of 2015.  I read my blog post about it to remind myself of what I was thinking then.  I remember how stressful my work had become and that convincing me to leave earlier than I’d planned.  I was concerned about our finances.  We’ve done just fine since then.  We’ve done everything we wanted to do.

Not that my life hasn’t been without stress.  I had a bizarre health scare in 2016.  I served as an elder in our congregation at Central.  It was very stressful.  I had pretty much jumped from one stressful responsibility to another one.  I finally had to resign.  I admire the men who can handle the most important of roles so well.   We went through a huge family issue largely because of the reaction of some people to a bad situation.  Donna’s mom had health issues and passed away much sooner than we’d ever thought.   And that’s not even touching COVID.

I’d planned to travel and I’ve done that.  I got to see two of the places I’d mentioned in my original retirement blog post (Hershey Pennsylvania and the Grand Canyon).   I went to London to see the Cardinals play with a side trip to Paris.    I thought I’d be spending a lot of time at St Louis Cardinal and Kentucky Wildcat playoff games and that hasn’t happened.  I did make a trip to Toronto to see the Wildcats play and got to meet my favorite UK player – Jack Givens.  I did however get to see my Denver Nuggets win their first Western Conference Championship in Los Angeles and then win their first NBA Championship at Denver.   Josh and I made a trip to Abu Dhabi to see the Nuggets play.  Donna and I have made several trips to the Cardinal’s Spring Training in Jupiter Florida and to the Smoky Mountains. 

But the best part is the family things that have happened.  Lucy was born in November of 2016.  Being a grandparent is wonderful.  Since I’m retired, we can make just about any event she participates in.  If she needs anyone to watch her, we are always available.  She is the joy of my life.  Josh also married a wonderful young lady and she’s a great daughter-in-law.

So, I’m sometimes asked what I’ve learned about retirement to give advice to others.  The thing I worried about (money) went fine.  What I didn’t think about was what I’d retire to.  You can only watch so much TV and go to so many places.  At first, being an elder was what I thought I’d do.  That didn’t work out.  I then had a brother of mine at Central (where we go to church) convince me to participate in the McCracken County jail ministry.    I never dreamed I’d be able to teach other men the Gospel and give them hope.  It’s the first real evangelism I’ve ever done in my life.  I’ve been doing that for over seven years now and I really enjoy it.  With that and being the “doting Granddad”, I have purpose in my life.

Oh, and how did Donna handle it?  We’ve grown closer.  I’ve taken over some household responsibilities (shopping and running errands).  We’ll be married forty years in March, so we must be doing something right. 

In retrospect, I’m glad I went ahead and retired.