FINNEY’S FINDS

Collectible Coins & Jewelry was featured in Michael Finney’s book Finney’s Finds.

“When you arrive at this address you find a gray building that has seen better days. At the door there’s a button you push to be buzzed in. You walk inside and there’s a glass counter display case with jewelry and coins. Behind it is the proprietor, Carter Collins, with his scales and huge safe. This looks like a gold-buying and selling operation out of Western movie. I sent an undercover production assistant into this store when I was researching a TV report on buying and selling gold. I didn’t know what to expect. What we got was a friendly, well intentioned offer that came out exactly as it should have. Since then I’ve spoken with several other customers, all of them happy with their transactions.”

MARIN COIN COLLECTORS HIDE TREASURE FOR NATIONWIDE HUNT

Meandering through a Mill Valley supermarket on Monday, Carter Collins shovels a slice of pizza from the hot food bar into a to-go container and then, when nobody is looking, slips a 1952 half-dollar coin between packs of organic corn tortillas.

He hides another, from 1964, behind a hunk of cheese, and a third, from that same year, on a shelf among cartons of lactose-free milk. He wends his way to the checkout line and pays for his dinner with a wad of bills that has been around since Harry Truman was in the Oval Office.

If they’re paying attention, a few lucky shoppers will stumble upon the rare, old money and walk away from their grocery outings with a sense of excitement — or so Collins hopes.