Continue the Search:

• Inflation Station: So your great uncle Marvin spent 6K on his first house? Use the inflation calculator at < www.westegg.com/inflation> to see what that would cost you today.

• Currency Culture: Find out what your ancestors’ nations valued. Check out these sites to see actual images of current and historical currencies: <www. frbsf.org/currency/index.html>, <www.mintsofthe-world.com/index.html>, or even check eBay.

The other side of the coin:

Standardized money may have developed from a need to satisfy the coincidence of wants, but it functions in other ways too. Says British Museum curator Catherine Eagleton, “Money is a photograph of history, it tells a story, it reflects an identity.

“My favorite piece right now is actually rather ordinary. It’s a [one penny coin—Britain’s small-est] from 1903. A bit worn, made of copper. But there’s something extraordinary about it. Someone had stamped across the head of the king ‘Vote for Women.’ It was a way of getting the message out [during the Women’s Suffrage Movement]. The government couldn’t go pick out every 1p coin, so women were able to raise awareness [by printing their message on money]. I love things like that—coins that have a story to tell. There are bigger subjects, bigger stories and issues.”

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not to ever trust a bank because it would take her money.

After William’s death in 1954, the farm was sold to a developer. Linda thinks her surviving family got all the hidden cash, but what she really speculates about is just how much some of those coins, like the Walking Liberty half dollars, would be worth today.

Is Old Money Always Big Money?

So if Linda found that fishbowl full of coins, would she be set for life? Not necessarily. According to Claudia Dickens at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP), the official worth of those half dollars is exactly what they were when little Linda first stuck her hand in the fishbowl 54 years ago—

50 cents.

“The BEP does not recognize increased value because of age,” says Dickens. “Whether it’s paper or coin, as far as the Treasury is concerned it’s just face value. If it’s very old it may not be recognizable to a teller in a modern financial institution, but anyone can send that old note to the BEP to redeem it, and the BEP can send the person a check for face value.”

Professional numismatists, or experts on money, are likely to agree.

Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum and author of All the Money in the

World: The Art and History of Paper

Money and Coins from Antiquity to the 21st Century, says stories of people finding money in attics or in other hiding places around old houses is becoming less and