Did either of your folks get you into coin collecting?

bennybravo

My dad used to take me to a little coin store in Montgomery Alabama in the early 80's called the Continental coin shop when I was 6 or 7. I'd root through that little basket on the counter with the 30 or 50 cent Indian head pennies and maybe a mercury or barber dime thrown in for a little more. Did you have a parent that got you into the hobby?

Mr_Spud

No, it was my older brother instead

silverpop

no

messydesk

Yes. It started when I needed to make a collection of something for a Cub Scout badge, with a Whitman One-a-Year cent folder and a paper bag of mostly wheat cents that my dad had.

bennybravo

@messydesk said:
Yes. It started when I needed to make a collection of something for a Cub Scout badge, with a Whitman One-a-Year cent folder and a paper bag of mostly wheat cents that my dad had.

Awesome!

RegistryCoin

My mom used to take me to the casino where I would stand for hours outside a window to watch her put into the slot machines all the coins we searched through.
She would turn around to show me any buffalos or silver or wheats that came out.
(Yea, we played the penny slots too.)
Anything we won would come home to search through. Rinse, repeat.

She did introduce me to the local coin dealer when she went in to order the annual updates for her stamp collections.

Rudy at Treasure Island, El Camino Real at Santa Cruz Ave, if I remember correctly.
Subsequently, I spent a lot of time there.

Tibor

I inherited my paternal grandfather's Roman coin collection. About 45 pieces.

alefzero

Nope. AFAIK, I am the only one in my bloodline with any documented interest in numismatics.

MarkKelley

My mother had a little box with a couple common old silver dollars and a few Indian cents. What really piqued my interest was a Stone Mountain half and an 1859-O Seated quarter. At seven years old, I was hooked!

Zoins

My Dad gave me coin gifts, NCLT for Christmas and foreign circulation coins from his business trips. My grandmother gave me a coin she kept from the old country.

yosclimber

My dad had an Indian Cent board with most of the dates in low grades,
I think from his Boy Scout merit badge days.
I always thought it was pretty cool.
Eventually my sister and I were given Whitman blue folders for Lincoln cents 1941-date,
and we competed with each other to fill them in!

jughead1893

My Grandfather got me started.He had lots of Whitman folders and cigar boxes full of silver and buffalo nickels. I thought he was a tycoon !

Soldi

We lived in an old brick flat in Albany, NY. As you transverse the living room to the dining room there exists a short hallway with cupboard made of heavy wood and glass at waist level and above,drawers at the bottom level waist down. I removed the bottom drawers in curiosity reaching onto the floor area below the drawers lie much dust and the stillness of nothing having seen light for 100 years ALAS!! WHAT DO i SEE ! An 1859 Indian head cent in AU or better condition along with two Martha Washington 1.5 cent stamps. The Spirit that escaped the dark and unlit drawer cavern and entered into me has never ceased within me for 56 years. It continues until this very day.

Cameonut

My parents got me a 1961 proof set and a Whitman tri-fold cent folder for my 7th birthday. That got me started.

1960NYGiants

@Cameonut said:
My parents got me a 1961 proof set and a Whitman tri-fold cent folder for my 7th birthday. That got me started.

Pretty much the same for me minus the proof set. I went grayside when my grandfather gave me some Canadian large cents and tokens the following Christmas (55 years ago).

alaura22

No, in fact I was called "stupid" for collecting coins!
I remember buying a 1955-s lincoln cent for my collection, the only coin I never found going to the bank and looking though many many rolls. I bought it for $1 at a coin store. Before I took it out of the 2x2 my dad saw it, he asks me, what is this? I said I bought it for my coin set, it still had the $1 on it. I was called dumb for buying a penny for a dollar. Mind you, my allowance was 25c a week!
So, I never showed them anything after that (around 10 years old) and hid my collections.
I also remember telling him that they were stopping the silver in coins and that he should go and get some silver and gold at the bank before they stopped giving them out, once again, I was told "what do you know, you're only a kid"
Not a good time in my life!
I am the only one in my family that collects coins!

Dr_Bones

My father helped me with my first boy scout merit badge which was coin collecting. We worked on collections during my teenage years. I have subsequently taken over the pursuit of finishing his pattern collection now nearly 50 years of attempting to finish.

TennesseeDave

My dad's younger brother had some silver dollars that got me interested in the early 70's.

MilesWaits

Let’s see, the opposite of collecting coins is… Yes that would be my parents they preferred to spend the coins as quickly as they got them. And the bills.
I think you were trying to figure out if there is some genetic or nurture component. Neither of which I seem to have gotten from them, in the areas of saving.

divecchia

My parents were savers (not collectors) as far as money goes, but it was my dad that starting me looking at coins when he showed me a 1916 buffalo nickel that he found. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. My wife reignited that flame 15 years later and I have been collecting on and off ever since.

Donato

Rollerman

When my Dad saw I was hoarding wheat back cents, he presented me with a pouch of coins he bought out of the register when he was a young man. Well worn IHC's, Lincolns, a Barber dime or two, several Mercury Dimes, an 1870 Newfoundland half and the one that really got my attention, an 1837 large cent in Fine condition. That large cent really knocked me out. Things just grew from there, but I was in and out of the hobby a couple of times when my kids were small. The only bad advice my Dad ever gave me was, "If I were you, I'd clean those IHC's and put them in an album." I did that, but after I wised up, I set about upgrading that set and called it done in 2005 when he passed at the age of 96. I replaced an AG 1877 with a decent VG example.

crazyhounddog

I was in the cub scouts when I needed a hobby to earn a badge or arrowhead patch. My father was a coin collector and got my involved in coins when I was 8-9 years old. It sank into my bones at an early age. When I sit and look at my coins it takes me back to those years when I was a boy and my dad was everything to me. He would take me to all the coin shows he went to in the San Francisco Bay Area. I miss my dad and always will. He was a great man, very smart . He worked at NASA at Ames research center in the cardiovascular research center for astronauts at. midget field air base. I got to watch the moon landing there at his work on this giant screen that had setup.
He was a great man and father. I am 70 years old now and what a HUGE change there has been from the hobby then up until now.
I love this hobby and now have my son and grandson interested in coins.

Happy hunting😊

OAKSTAR

No, it was my paper route as a kid.

EDIT: No, wait a minute. It was my father. He's the one that said, go out a get a job!!

Cranium_Basher73

My father got me into it. Most of what he had was stuff from pocket change and the bank if they had any silver. He got a few silver certificates from them also. Just singles and a couple of fives.

Most of my stuff was from pocket change also. Not a lot of coin store bought items. A couple indian head cents, a large cent, a 2 cent, a silver eagle and a 1881-O Morgan. I stopped when I went in the Navy. Started up again in 2000 about 7 months before my father died with the proof platinum set. Periodically bought a few coins the following years and stopped again after buying a 1 ounce proof and burnished platinum eagles after their price reduction in 2008.

Occasionally buying something from the mint like the 5 coin silver eagle set, palladium eagles (2019 was the last), 2015 and 2017 high reliefs, and last years Morgan's and silver eagles. Topped off with the 3 double eagles I bought this year. Now, I want to add about another 6 or 7 double eagles and some decent Morgan specimens in the future.

johnny9434

My uncle did years back k with some cNDian. I moved to American coin and still enjoy both

Namvet69

In the late 50's I got thrown out of a Manhattan Bank because I was CRH on my lunch break from middle school. My dad went to that bank and opened a passbook savings account in my name, with $5 so I could make a withdrawal in cent/nickel rolls. The rest is history.

thebeav

Yea, my dad got me started. He brought home the Whitman Lincoln cent folders, #'s 1 & 2 when I was about 5 or 6.

ricko

My Dad was not a coin collector, but he did save a few Morgans and some big silver German coins in a bureau drawer. He had an interest, mildly, but never collected as a hobby. I got interested through my paper route and the coins I would get when getting paid by customers. IHC's, Columbian halves were oddities.... Mercs, Buffs, WLH's were common change then... Occasionally a V nickel... saved some, they disappeared from my bureau drawer when I went in the Navy...Still have a couple of my Dad's big German coins. Cheers, RickO

CommemDude

When I was little, my father pulled Walking Liberty halves and Mercury dimes out of circulation and saved them.

From that pocket change I put together a VF set of Mercs (minus the three keys) and that started my interest in collecting.

Joe_360

Yes, my Mother owned a neighborhood grocery store (60s/70s) on the southwest side of Chicago. My Dad would keep the silver coins received in a cigar-box and we started us out collecting wheat cents and quarters in collecting albums.

My parents cashed in a lot of silver in the 1980 spike, as I recall turned in about $500 plus in silver. They used the proceeds to buy their retirement home in Paducah Kentucky (were my Mom was born).

My two brothers and I are all collectors - Each one of us have a complete set of Lincolns, CC Morgan's, Silver and such.

I hit the Coin Star daily and find silver multiple times a month and save it all... Thanks Dad!!!

rokky

Yes, in a roundabout way. When I was 5 years old I did a little snooping into my father’s nightstand and found a small dish with all kinds of different coins in it. The first one that caught my eye was a 1905 V Nickel. I held it in my hand and just marveled at the beauty of it. That’s where it all began. It was love at first sight. Lol. It was not much longer afterwards that trips to the local coin shop became a weekly adventure. It was also nice that my mother worked at the local bank. The president gave me permission to go through all the change dispensers (8 to 10 of them). I found a lot of silver since it was the mid 70’s. My father, though, really helped me with collecting up until my mid-teens. At that point, I was able to get a job so I could afford some of the more expensive coins that I had always wanted.

JWP

Nobody really got me into collecting coins that I can think of. I didn't have that influence as far as the small town that I lived in which was only about three to four thousand as I was growing up. When I approached high school that's when I found a coin shop in our local town down a small alley. I went in there and got to know the owner real well it kind of took me under his wing and gave me some good deals and really got me hooked. I truly love coin collecting and I'm trying to at least get to hopefully all five grandkids to get the same Love of coin collecting that I grew up with. Hope it works out.

jesbroken

No, my Great Uncle.
Jim

golden

In February 1961 my Mom brought home a blue Whitman folder for Lincoln Cents. I was hooked immediately. She never did like my collecting. My Dad supported me greatly and sometimes helped out with a loan.

Glen2022

Nope. My parents thought I was nuts to pay $1 or $2 for a penny.

Sapyx

Neither of my parents were coin collectors, though everyone in the family collected something. Once I'd picked coins (at about 8 years old) as "my collecting thing", my parents encouraged it, but I certainly wasn't pushed towards coins, by anybody; I found coins all on my own.