JUNE 29
1973•Dallas Collector Discovers Missing Coin Collection
1976•Final Silver Bicentennial Coin Strikes Reported
A Dallas Collector Discovers a Missing Coin Collection
A contemporary theft report preserves a revealing inventory of American collecting, from familiar small denominations to celebrated die varieties.
◆
American Coin History Calendar · Article 180 · June 29
On June 29, 1973, Dallas collector Lewis Ring discovered coins missing from his home. Coin World subsequently reported an estimated loss of $3,500 to $4,000, chiefly in United States silver coins. The contemporary account appears on page 26 of its July 18, 1973 issue, indexed by the Newman Numismatic Portal.[1]
The report named complete or nearly complete sets across several familiar series, along with rolls and particular varieties. Its inventory connected the loss to the everyday material of American collecting, rather than to one internationally famous auction trophy.
June 29 is the date of discovery reported in the account. It is not a demonstrated time of entry into the house, and July 18 is the newspaper’s publication date. No identified recovery or criminal outcome is established by the source reviewed for this article.
What the contemporary report actually preserves
The named holdings included Buffalo and Liberty nickels, Mercury dimes, Indian and Lincoln cents, Washington quarters, and Liberty quarters. The master calendar identifies the latter as Standing Liberty quarters. The report also singled out a 1942/41 dime and a 1955 doubled die cent.[1]
Rolls of cents, nickels, dimes, and silver halves broadened the inventory, with several rolls of 1939-D nickels specifically mentioned. The account referred as well to some gold and foreign material, although the accessible indexed passage does not supply a complete itemized list.[1]
Those details establish the collection’s breadth without establishing a precise coin count. “Thousands of dollars” describes the estimated monetary loss, not thousands of individually cataloged coins. The distinction matters when reconstructing a private collection from a short newspaper notice.
A collection can be more than its total price
A price estimate offers one way to describe a theft, but it does not fully describe what a collector assembled. A near-complete set reflects many separate choices: which dates to pursue, what condition to accept, and how to balance scarce pieces against a limited budget.
The loss of that arrangement can be different from the loss of an equal dollar amount in unrelated property. A completed sequence carries information about the owner’s interests and the effort invested in finding appropriate specimens. That is an interpretation of collecting, not a claim about Ring’s private feelings.
The report’s series names allow a reader to see that structure even without photographs. They suggest a collection organized around the continuity and variation of American small denominations, supplemented by rolls and recognized die varieties.
Indian Head and Lincoln cents provided two distinct chapters of one denomination. James Barton Longacre’s nineteenth-century design used an allegorical Liberty in a feathered headdress; Victor David Brenner’s 1909 Lincoln cent introduced a recognizable presidential portrait.[2][8]
The change is historically substantial even though both coins carry a one-cent value. An allegory presents an ideal; a portrait invokes a named life and its public memory. Placing the two series together turns the cent into a record of changing national imagery.
Small face values also made cents approachable collecting material. Many examples could be studied without acquiring gold or large silver coins. That accessibility should not be confused with uniform market value: a scarce date or important variety could command much more than its denomination.
Brenner’s wheat reverse and a later replacement
The early Lincoln cent paired the portrait with wheat ears on the reverse. In 1959, the Lincoln Memorial replaced that arrangement, marking another important visual transition within a denomination that retained its familiar obverse.[8]
A collection formed by 1973 could consequently span two reverse eras within the Lincoln series as well as the preceding Indian Head type. The burglary report does not establish exactly which years or mint marks Ring owned, so a reconstructed checklist would exceed its evidence.
What can be said is that “Lincoln cents” was a broad category, not a single design detail or condition level. The separate mention of a 1955 doubled die indicates that at least one named specimen had an identity beyond an ordinary date-and-mint listing.
The celebrated 1955 variety shows strong doubling in the obverse date and lettering. Jaime Hernandez’s PCGS study describes the feature as originating when a working die received misaligned hub impressions. Coins struck from that die inherited the duplicated design.[7]
That mechanism differs from a coin simply being struck twice. A doubled die is a tool carrying a duplicated image; a double-struck coin receives more than one striking event. The familiar names can sound similar while describing different histories.
The variety’s inclusion in the report gives the lost collection a technical dimension. Someone assembling ordinary Lincoln dates could also seek a specimen that illustrated how the Mint made its dies. The newspaper’s older “Double Die” wording is best normalized in explanatory prose to “doubled die,” without changing the underlying reported object.
Charles E. Barber’s Liberty Head nickel began in 1883. The portrait and reverse Roman numeral V supplied the design’s familiar identity. The earliest version omitted CENTS, while the revised version made the denomination explicit.[3]
That history helps explain why a nickel collection could contain meaningful design differences within a single year. A sequence of dates is not always a sequence of identical coins. Changes in wording can record a response to how the public interpreted the object.
The report does not identify Ring’s specific Liberty nickel varieties. Its significance here lies in naming the series alongside the later Buffalo design, preserving evidence that the lost collection reached across successive eras of five-cent coinage.
Fraser’s Buffalo design
James Earle Fraser’s Buffalo nickel appeared in 1913. Its Native American portrait and bison reverse created an exceptionally recognizable American coin, different in character from Barber’s classical Liberty portrait.[4]
The design’s fame later led the Mint to reuse its imagery on precious-metal collector coins. Those later issues are useful official references for the artist and motifs, but they are not the objects described in a 1973 burglary report.
A Buffalo nickel set illustrates a period when ordinary money served as a small national sculpture. Its worn dates and fading details also remind collectors that circulating coins were working objects. A specimen’s condition can reflect years of use without diminishing the interest of its design history.
The report’s mention of rolls distinguishes another way of organizing coins. A set usually emphasizes difference: one example of each required date, mint, or type. A roll emphasizes quantity, potentially preserving multiple specimens of the same issue.
Those formats answer different questions. A set can display a chronological sequence, while a roll can offer opportunities to study variation in strike, surfaces, or die features among similar coins. A collector might maintain both without regarding them as duplicate interests.
Several rolls of 1939-D nickels were specifically noted in the contemporary account. PCGS identifies that Denver Jefferson issue as a relatively low-mintage date within its series. The mention is consequently more informative than a generic statement that some nickels disappeared.[1][11]
The Mercury dime’s familiar misnomer
The Mercury dime actually depicts Liberty wearing a winged cap. Its resemblance to the Roman god Mercury supplied the popular nickname. Adolph A. Weinman designed the coin, placing a fasces and olive branch on the reverse.[5]
The Mint interprets those reverse elements as military readiness and a desire for peace. Together, they give the dime a political vocabulary beyond a portrait and denomination. A collector can read the series as art and national symbolism as well as an arrangement of dates.
The nickname illustrates how public use can shape numismatic language. “Mercury dime” is an effective identifying term, but an article should explain that the figure is Liberty. Correcting the subject makes the design more understandable without discarding the name collectors recognize.
The overdate named in the loss report is conventionally cataloged as 1942/1. PCGS’s production discussion explains that working dies received impressions from hubs bearing different years during the preparation of 1941 and 1942 coinage.[6]
Both Philadelphia and Denver varieties exist. The accessible burglary account does not securely establish which mint produced Ring’s specimen, so this article does not add a mint mark to the reported loss.
The date anomaly is another example of a coin preserving the history of a tool. A viewer sees traces of two years, but the explanation concerns the preparation of the die rather than a coin being physically issued in two years. The object makes an otherwise hidden manufacturing step visible.
Hermon A. MacNeil’s Standing Liberty quarter presents the figure holding a shield and olive branch, with an eagle in flight on the reverse. The design combines protection and peace through objects carried by the allegorical figure.[9]
Those motifs echo themes on Weinman’s dime without duplicating its artistic solution. A group of both series allows comparison between a close portrait and a full standing figure, and between an emblematic fasces and an eagle in motion.
The calendar’s expanded identification of the newspaper’s Liberty quarters is consistent with that familiar collecting series. It should not be stretched into claims that every key date, overdate, or high-grade specimen was present. “Complete or nearly complete” does not tell us which spaces, if any, remained unfilled.
Washington quarters and the silver boundary
The Washington quarter began in 1932 with John Flanagan’s portrait. Its regular silver-era issues through 1964 used a ninety-percent-silver alloy, before the transition to clad circulation coinage.[10]
By 1973, collectors could look back on that earlier silver group as a defined period within a continuing denomination. A quarter still had the same face value, but its composition had become a major distinction between older pieces and contemporary change.
The burglary notice’s emphasis on United States silver places the collection within that broader context. Yet it does not authorize a precise bullion calculation: the quantities, dates, wear, and complete range of missing silver objects are not supplied in the accessible account.
Face value, metal value, and collector value should be kept separate. A dime is denominated at ten cents; a silver dime contains precious metal; a scarce overdate may carry a premium driven by recognition, rarity, and condition.
The contemporary estimate of $3,500 to $4,000 is a reported loss valuation. It is not identified here as an exact face-value total, a melt calculation, or a modern appraisal. Converting it casually into one of those categories would change what the source says.
The named cent variety makes the difference particularly clear. Its importance did not come from precious-metal content. Its appeal came from an unusual die and the collecting tradition surrounding it. A mixed collection can draw value from several mechanisms at once.
A report naming a series establishes less than a photograph of every specimen and a complete purchase ledger would establish. It preserves categories and selected highlights, but it cannot tell us the exact surfaces, grades, or die states of all the missing coins.
That limitation affects later identification. An ordinary date may resemble thousands of other specimens, while a distinctive scratch, photograph, or prior catalog record could provide a stronger connection to an individual object. The article offers that general observation without claiming that such records existed for Ring’s collection.
The available account also does not identify the offender or show how the collection was removed. Leaving those questions unanswered is more useful than adding an invented dramatic scene. A documented loss deserves a careful history even when it does not provide a complete crime narrative.
A small notice with a broad numismatic reach
Major auctions often preserve lavish photographs and extensive pedigrees. A newspaper theft notice preserves a different part of the hobby: a private collector’s range of interests and the material that could be assembled across ordinary American denominations.
Ring’s reported collection included designs by Longacre, Barber, Brenner, Fraser, Weinman, MacNeil, and Flanagan. That combination reaches from nineteenth-century allegory to twentieth-century portraiture and from die anomalies to precious-metal change. The connection emerges from the named series and their established authorship.
The notice is therefore more than a statistic about stolen property. It offers a dated glimpse of what collectors valued enough to organize into sets and rolls. Its usefulness grows when the categories are explained, while its limits remain visible.
The primary milestone is the discovery of the Dallas loss on June 29, 1973, as reported by Coin World the following month. No secondary event is listed in the master row, and none has been substituted for the selected subject.
The story broadens a coin-history calendar beyond laws and Mint releases. Coins continue to acquire histories after manufacture, through collection, transfer, study, loss, and sometimes recovery. Here, the surviving record establishes the loss while leaving the later outcome unresolved.
The particular inventory gives the date its substance. Familiar cents, nickels, dimes, and quarters carried artistic changes, manufacturing evidence, and collecting effort into one private collection. The contemporary report preserves part of that history even though the objects themselves are not presented here.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1976 — Final Silver Bicentennial Coin Strikes Reported — The U.S. Mint issued its press release reporting the final strikes of the 40% silver Bicentennial coins.