Travel - Visit Tourist Holiday Vacation Destinations around the World

Remember when our pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars had purchasing power. The nickel could purchase a candy bar, ice cream cone or soft drink, and a penny could purchase bubble gum or hard candy. If a kid could collect 5 discarded soft drink bottles from a construction site, the 2 cents deposit on the returnable bottles was enough for the Saturday afternoon movie. Gasoline was 27 cents a gallon. A dollar’s worth was enough for a Saturday night date. It is not easy to find items to purchase with today’s US coins, but the silver coins of the same face value still have purchasing power. The 10 cent piece of our youth contains $1.42 worth of silver at today’s silver price. The quarter is worth $3.55, and the half dollar contains $7.10 of silver. The silver dollar is worth 15.2 times its face value. These are just the silver values of coins that might be worth far more depending on condition and rarity. The silver in the wartime nickel is worth $1.10, which is 22 times the coin’s face value. Even the copper penny is worth 2.5 cents. Gold was $35 an ounce. Today one ounce gold bullion coins, such as the Canadian Maple Leaf, cost more than $1,000. Our silver coinage was 90 per cent silver. People sometimes melted coins in order to make silver spoons, known as coin silver, which can still be found in antique shops. Except for the reduced silver (40 per cent) Kennedy half dollar which continued until 1970, 1964 was the last year of America’s silver coinage. The copper penny departed in 1982.

Back in the days before the NY State Thruway and super highways...were the days of 2 lane highways....just like this one....so why not hop into the back of the family car...with all your brothers & sisters thier friends and neighbors...and aunts...uncles...cousins...grandma & grandpa and family dog "Chief"....scramble for a seat by the window...and enjoy an afternoon drive back to the 1960s on the roads of Western NY

Western New York Memories

This website is about all the familar places we looked foward to seeing from the back seat of our family car as we were out on Family outings back in the 50s & 60s