What started you collecting coins stories.
PennyPincher57
Posts: 34 ✭
Mine started when I was about eight years old and I would go thru my grandmothers penny jar. She lived thru the depression and never threw anything away. I would go thru it trying to find the oldest ones. I remember vividly finding a 1909-S VDB. I thought it was cool because it had the VDB on it. But at eight and in the 60's I had no ideal of its value and would put them all back in the jar when I was finished playing with them. Anyway after she passed on all that disappeared and I ended up with all her family pictures since I was the only one that was interested in family history and the stories she would tell about her growing up. I've been looking for that coin ever since and is the only one missing out of my book.
My maternal grandmother kept silver dollars in a bag under her mattress. I would go thru them just to look at them. Her house burned down and all the coins melted together and all she got for them was face value for the silver in the late 60's. But it was enough to get me interested in coins and I've been collecting on and off ever since then.
Whats your story?
Comments
My father brought home rolls of nickels in the late 1950's....i found in them a few liberty head nickels that caught my eye and I was hooked from that time on ....collecting lincolns nickels dimes quarters half dollars ....the whole whitman album gamut.
Then in 1965 when silver coins were damped down I knew something was happening so my interest in coins went to new level.
Attended my first ANA in St Louis 1970 ....someone pointed out to me Eric Newman who at that time I had never heard of .
It was during the 70's I began to hustle coins for Harry Forman at coins shows and met Steve Ivy and David Hall when they were coin entrepeneurs setting up a coin bourse by themselves at coin shows. There was something about them ....smart intense dealers at that time !
However when I began dating girls and I showed them some of my coins most of them thought I was nerdy and dropped me! Oh well, I liked my coins and interest in coin collecting more than those girls anyway!
I bought my first foreign coin in the 1980's I believe it was a 1913 Brazil 500 reis in uncirculated ...pretty coin with much luster. Since then the world became my oyster when it came to coin collecting. Very interesting and varied ...crowns became my focus . Over the years fortunately I found many attractive foreign coins purchased raw. Still can.
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
I was born and raised in Racine Wisconsin. Back in the early '60's there were a couple of us kids that liked to look thru bags of cents to fill our Whitman trifold albums. A good way to kill some time on a cold winter day. We got the albums from a neighbor who worked at Western Publishing where the albums were made. We got the bags of cents from parking meter change from the downtown shopping areas. We would go through maybe one bag a night and then swap for another. Great fun and kept us occupied. I am happy we knew nothing about varieties at that time, I think it would have driven us nuts, but you never know what could be found.
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
My digital cameo album 1950-64 Cameos - take a look!
My Dad had a couple of Morgans and a couple of large German silver coins. They intrigued me. He was not a collector, just kept them because he thought they would be valuable. I still have the German coins. Then when I got a paper route, well, silver was still in circulation, and I would get Mercs, WLH's, V nickels, SLQ's and the occasional IHC. I was hooked from then on....Cheers, RickO
I was 8-9 years old when I needed a hobby to earn a badge in the Cub Scouts. My father was a coin collector so he got me interested in them at a young age and it sank into my bones. I’m still with it today at the age of 68.
Thanks Dad❤️
My uncle is a collector and got me interested in the early 90s. We didn’t live close to each other, so on visits coin shopping was a real treat. His collection was amazing to an 11 year old, and honestly my current collection probably isn’t 10% of what his was even back then.
I was pitiful and he was generous and would buy me a coin when we’d go and help me decide what to use my own money on.
My dad, though not a collector, also helped in getting me to local shows and shops and even auctions. Life and coin collecting were so pure back then for me.
My uncle got me started with some Canadian coin. I drifted to the American coin a few years later
Dad's cabinet above the fridge in 1974 when i was 7 had, (among some boring papers with words and numbers all over them) his pocket knives, good booze, his stack of girlie magazines, the spare keys to the '65 mustang, and a coffee cup with his grandma's old coins..
33 silver roosevelt dimes, one each slick Merc, standing quarter,, and Walker, a Franklin half, a British halfpenny, and a Morgan and 3 peace dollars.
I was most interested, upon discovery, in the neat old coins that sounded prettier when jingled. I started reading numismatic books and magazines, and saving wheat cents and war nickels and the occasional silver dime or quarter from change.
In 1976 the bicentennial coins came out and Dad started driving me to the coin shop on Saturdays to spend my allowance and lawn/ pool service money. We'd also mine halves from the credit union for silver.
By the 1979 silver boom and SBA news, I was selling bullion and buying circulated type coins back to 1820s and nice gem silver coins.
In 1982 I put coins on hold for a couple decades, while I explored the rest of the kind of stuff the contents of the cabinet represented 😉
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
I truly do not know. I remember keeping wheat cents in a pink Styrofoam egg carton, but like quite a bit of my childhood I have very few clear specific memories.
My story kind of matches @crazyhounddog . I started collecting, organizing and displaying something as a requirement for a Cub Scout Badge. That something was coins. My dad brought me home a blue Treasury of Coins album that contained pages for Lincoln Cents (1909-1963), Jefferson Nickels (1938-1963), and Roosevelt Dimes (1946-1963) in late 1963 and I was started. Soon added a Whitman Mercury dime book. Collected from change, money from my paper route, and trading with friends who also collected. My collecting slowed in High School and through College, Marriage, and a family but I never completely stopped. For the last 20 years I have been more heavily involved with my collecting. I still have that Treasury of Coins album with the coins. David Lange used a picture of that album on the cover of one of his books on collecting coin albums.
I am not quite as old as @crazyhounddog but I can see him up ahead in the distance.
Life member of ANA
Same here. Joined the Cub Scouts in 1963 and one of the twelve achievements to earn the Wolf Badge was to "start a hobby." I still have those two blue Whitman folders with the cents I found in circulation and in rolls. Thanks to my older brother who got me started.
We had a metal detector in the family in the ‘60’s and the good fortune to live up the hill from a very large, old park that dates to the late 1800’s. The park also had a bandshell with a natural grass amphitheater with room for more that 1,000 people to sit.
My Dad and brothers gridded out that whole theater and searched the rest of the park and found a TON of stuff—everything from seated coins on up. I was busy playing baseball and golf but enjoyed seeing the goodies everyday spread out on paper plates on the dinner table.
They found a load of silver but no gold and no silver dollars. One brother found an 1877 Indian Cent. Years later he found the ‘09-S while detecting his yard. That was amazing.
While my family has kept interested in coins, it turned out that I was the only one to pick It up in a big way and stick with it all of these years.
I think I went to coin show with an uncle and 3 cousins in the 1970s. I didn't recall that memory until the last few years though. I saw a coin in a holder that didn't look familiar to me at first, but then remembered that experience! I doubt that I liked it at the time, but it's possible it planted a seed mentally. I would have been single digits in age at the time and was probably disappointed that there weren't any toys!
But...I really consider my interest beginnings with the release of the Sacagawea! Watching Robert Chambers and Paul Hollis on a regular basis on Home Shopping Network became an obsession! Luckily I was a newlywed complete with a mortgage and children and didn't have the money to spend on their overpriced offerings! I did learn a lot from them and with the help of the internet, numismatic books and a lot better eyes than what I have now, I began my hobby journey!
My dad taking me to a coin shop at age 8 and buying me a mint sealed silver Ike (I opened it like a idiot) a merc and a 36 buffalo. Also I got a few wheaties from change.
I used to check the vending machine change returns waiting for my mom to checkout at the grocery store. One day there were three mercury dimes waiting for me!
Many kids collected coins, stamps and baseball cards in the 50's. I had three or four Whitman folders as did some of my friends. It was common to look for coins in change that were hopefully worth more than face value and compete for the best finds (not new you see). Something we did together like playing baseball or playing kick-the-can after dinner. Why I stayed with coins probably has something to do with my love of history as well as a bit of greed, throw in some friendships. And the collector gene, some have it.
Learning to count using pennies.