Surprise

In almost every collection there is usually atleast one item that will remain in a collector's memory for a life time due to the unusual way in which it was acquired. The story behind my most memorable item starts back in June 1963 when my parents took me to Germany to visit family and the ancestral homeland. While visiting my aunt on the family farm in Lower Bavaria, not to far from Passau, my interest in old coins became well known. Since my aunt was the housekeeper for the local parish priest, he also quickly learned of my interest in old coins. One day my aunt came home with a cigar box full of old German coins for me from the priest. The obsolete coins were thrown into the collection basket during the hard times after the war when the poor parishioners had nothing else to give. After I started sorting the old pfennig coins by denomination, date and mint I suddenly struck gold! Buried in the the box was the gold class Mothers Cross illustrated below.Someone must have thought it was real gold and valuable. Even though it is only gold plated it is one of the most attractive decorations of the Nazi regime and one of the few Third Reich items in my collection.