The first Olympic coins were struck for the 1952 games in Helsinki.

Now, if the smog clears, it's almost time for Beijing to play host. And it should be no surprise that, to mark the moment, China has come up with a coin like no other. It is bigger than any Olympic coin so far, pizza sized, 22 inches (56 centimetres) around.

It weighs as much as a toddler, 22 pounds (about 1o kilograms), chock full of 99.99 per cent pure gold. There are only 29. Most will stay in China, but a U.S. vendor does have one available for $1 million.

I never collected coins. Can't think of a single friend who did. But thanks to Olympic coins and my late great-uncle Dan, I've been watching old money at work lately.

The Olympics came to Montreal in 1976. Our family lived there, and my dad bought some sets of coins then let them age a few decades.

Not many years ago, he started handing out these coins to me, my two brothers and my sister at Christmas.

They're silver, $5 and $10, 32 to a set. Not sure what they're worth, Dad told us, but you can sell them or you can keep them. We've all held on to our Olympic '76 mementoes.

Dad had kept a few Olympic coins himself but decided not long ago that he may as well turn them into cash.

He picked up the 2008 Charlton Coin Guide, which told him his four $100 1976 22-karat Olympic gold coins should fetch $280 each at a dealer. And of course, the price of gold was climbing.

Dad had my son Chris put them on eBay, one at a time. The bidding was lively, and buyers in Ontario, British Columbia, New Jersey and Florida paid about $450 for each, plus shipping.

Dad has another treasure, one passed along to him from his uncle Dan, who lived on the Wilson family farm, on Lakeshore Road where Oakville's Coronation Park is today.

Dan had a $1 bill that goes back to the year after the first modern games, the 1896 Olympics in Athens.

It does have athletes on it -- sturdy Canadians in suspenders, plaid shirts and high boots, wrestling mighty logs into a river.

For the past 73 years, all bills in Canada have come from the Bank of Canada. But before that, the central issuer was called the "Dominion of Canada."

It was mostly $1 and $2 bills back then. Consider that in 1897, a $1 bill was like $25 today.

Those loggers were on the first bill made for Canada by the American Bank Note Company. The bill is in a nice shade of green, but that colour lasted just one year. Then they changed it to light brown so people wouldn't confuse it with the $2 bill.

And staring out from that bill are the governor general and his wife, the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen. According to that Charlton guide, a dealer might pay $300 for that bill.

I stopped by Beaver Coin, on King East near Victoria. Rudolf Oster, 77, has been in business for 4o years.

It can be a dangerous job. A few months ago, a thug burst into the shop in the middle of the afternoon and stabbed him six times with a box cutter.

He looks fit but pulls up his shirt: six nasty red scars, all right.

"Sometimes I look over my shoulder now," he says. "But why should I give in to some scum?"

The phone rings. "I'm sorry, it's quite common," he tells the caller. "I have 20 or 30 of them here." It was somebody with a 1976 $2 bill.

But surely he'll be impressed by these loggers. He pulls it from the envelope, swings out the 16-power magnifier that dangles from his neck, holds the bill to the light. Checking for pinpricks, he says. (Apparently people used to pin their bills together with a needle.)

It's a nice bill, he says, but he doesn't like the way the notemaker trimmed the border too close across the top.

"People like them perfect," he said. Due to that flaw, he'd only go $200.

There's a fellow in Moncton, N.B., who has the 1897 loggers bill posted on eBay. It looks a good deal rattier than Uncle Dan's. He's asking $1,350, but no one seems to be nibbling, so we've got more homework to do.

Meanwhile, if you find some Bank of Hamilton bills (1872 to 1923) in that old suit jacket, Oster would encourage you to drop by. He says they could be worth thousands.

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com

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