People who have not spent much time in Skokie sometimes have an outdated picture of the community. Skokie has a long and fascinating history, but the Skokie we see every day is extraordinarily multicultural. Spend enough time working with the public here and it becomes difficult to describe the village as belonging to any one culture, religion, or ethnic background.
At a coin and precious-metals shop, we probably get a slightly unusual view of the community. People bring us things their families have owned for decades, and sometimes for generations. Coins, jewelry, paper money, watches, silver, and other objects have often traveled just as far as the people who eventually brought them to Skokie.
During an ordinary week, we may meet families with roots in Poland, Mexico, Korea, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Russia, other parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. We also meet plenty of people from families that have been in Chicago or the Midwest for generations. Polish and Spanish are spoken in our shop, and it is common to hear several other languages from customers during the course of a week.
What Is Skokie?
Skokie is a village in Cook County, Illinois, located immediately north of Chicago. It borders Chicago neighborhoods on the south and communities including Evanston, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove, and Niles. Downtown Chicago is roughly 15 miles away, making Skokie part of the inner ring of suburbs closely connected to the city.
Today, Skokie is home to roughly 65,000 residents and is known for its diverse population, established residential neighborhoods, local businesses, parks, schools, and easy access to both Chicago and the North Shore. The CTA Yellow Line connects Skokie with the Chicago rapid-transit system, while major roads including Dempster Street, Touhy Avenue, and Skokie Boulevard connect the village with surrounding communities.
Skokie has also been shaped by generations of immigration. Different communities have arrived at different times, adding new languages, businesses, foods, religious traditions, and family histories to the village. That continuing mixture is a large part of what modern Skokie is today.
Family History Sometimes Arrives in a Jewelry Box
Some of the most interesting reminders of Skokie’s international character come in the form of jewelry.
We have seen high-karat gold jewelry from South Asia and the Middle East that was connected to weddings and family events many decades ago. Occasionally, a customer will bring in a piece that belonged to a grandmother or great-grandmother and was originally acquired in India, Afghanistan, or another part of the world nearly a century ago.
These pieces can be very different from the 10K and 14K jewelry commonly sold in the United States. Gold jewelry from other parts of the world is frequently 18K, 21K, 22K, or even higher purity. Designs, construction methods, hallmarks, and traditions surrounding jewelry can also vary tremendously from country to country.
For us, identifying and testing these pieces is simply part of the job. At Oakton Coins & Collectibles, we regularly evaluate American and foreign gold in many different forms and purities. But some of the pieces also provide a small glimpse into the history of the family that owned them.
Coins Travel Too
Coins can have equally surprising histories.
One example is the British gold sovereign. It is a European coin, but after years of working with the public, we have learned not to associate sovereigns with any particular ethnic background. They turn up in collections belonging to families from all over the world.
That makes sense when you consider how widely gold coins circulated historically. Sovereigns and other European gold coins moved through international trade, migration, banking, colonial systems, gifts, savings, and family inheritances. A coin struck thousands of miles away may eventually spend generations in a family before arriving at a foreign coin dealer in Skokie.
The same counter that sees a century-old foreign gold coin might see a completely different collection ten minutes later: Lincoln cents saved by a Chicago grandfather, Morgan dollars inherited from an uncle, Mexican coins, old Polish currency, Korean coins, Chinese coins, American silver certificates, or a box of ordinary coins accumulated over many years.
There is no single “typical Skokie collection.”
Objects Don’t Always Stay Where They Started
One of the interesting things about coins and precious metals is how easily they cross borders and generations.
A piece of jewelry may have started as a wedding gift in Asia or the Middle East. A European gold coin may have been used as family savings. An American coin collection might have been assembled by someone who immigrated to Chicago fifty years ago. Sometimes the current owner knows the entire story. Sometimes all that remains is, “This belonged to my grandmother.”
Eventually circumstances change. Families inherit things. People move. Estates are settled. Jewelry stops being worn. Collections sit untouched for decades. Children and grandchildren may have completely different interests from the person who originally saved the items.
That is one reason a business dealing with old coins, gold, jewelry, and estates encounters so many different pieces of personal history. Our main job is determining what an item is and what it is worth, but you cannot do this work for very long without noticing where some of these objects have been.
For anyone curious about how these items are evaluated, Oakton Coins has also put together a large collection of coin, gold, jewelry, bullion, and estate selling guides based on items and situations encountered in the shop.
Skokie Is Hard to Put in One Box
Older perceptions of Skokie do not always match the community that exists today. Like many parts of the Chicago area, Skokie has changed repeatedly as different generations and immigrant communities have made the area home.
What stands out to us is not one particular group. It is the mixture.
There are recent immigrants and families who arrived generations ago. There are people with roots in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere. There are old Chicago families and people who moved here from other parts of the United States. Some households continue traditions from another country while their children and grandchildren are completely at home in Chicago.
They all shop at the same stores, drive the same streets, wait at the same traffic lights, eat at the same restaurants, and occasionally walk through the same coin-shop door.
A Small Window Into a Very International Community
A coin shop is certainly not a scientific survey of Skokie. The people who visit us represent only one small slice of the community, and our observations are simply that: observations from years of talking with customers.
But it is a fascinating window.
On some days, the objects on our counter may have originated on three or four continents. A piece of high-karat wedding jewelry from South Asia can sit a few feet from a British sovereign, an American coin collection, and jewelry purchased decades ago at a Chicago department store.
All of them somehow arrived at the same place.
That may be one of the best ways to describe modern Skokie. It is a relatively small Chicago suburb, but an extraordinary number of different histories, cultures, languages, and family stories intersect here.
For us, that is simply part of what makes doing business in Skokie interesting.
SkokieCoins.com is a local informational site associated with Oakton Coins & Collectibles, located on Oakton Street in Skokie, Illinois. We buy and evaluate U.S. and world coins, gold and silver, bullion, jewelry, paper money, sterling silver, and many types of inherited and estate collections.