Sentimentality And Coins.
BLUEJAYWAY
Posts: 9,322 ✭✭✭✭✭
It's said that you never forget your first. No not THAT first. I'm speaking about your first coin(s) that you remember acquiring. You know the ones that mean the most to you and bring back those fond memories of a bygone time. You may or may not still retain them. If you did let them go, was it a difficult decision that you now regret and have resorted to reacquiring them? I am reaching a point where I must now consider "letting go" the collection, primarily error coinage, but somehow those first ones do not seem to want to budge from their rooted position. I may also add that giving up the collection as a whole is not that easy either. The fond memories, what they represent, are causing a bit of consternation. For those in a like situation such as mine,how did you part ways with yours?
Comments
Just like a lot of collectibles, you're selling the item, not the experience or memories.
Take some high quality photos of what you're selling, that may help ease the pain.
I still have the first US coins I ever acquired. When I was 7 , my parents moved to the US, we left the beaches of Portugal to an urban area of NJ. I had a hard time adapting the first few days. A neighbor realized that I was having a hard time and asked my parents if I had any interests and my mom said I like coins. So the neighbor put together a set of old US coins for me. While a few were sold I kept the wheat cents. I finally finished that set in a Whitman folder early this year. It’s probably one I won’t sell.
That maybe the only set I don’t sell, it also doesn’t have much value (well the slabbed coins do). And it doesn’t take up a lot of space.
My current registry sets:
20th Century Type Set
Virtual DANSCO 7070
Slabbed IHC set - Missing the Anacs Slabbed coins
I guess these could be considered sentimental.
The only reason I still have them is because they're numismaticly insignificant. However, as an 8 or 9 year old kid at the time, they were the most significant things I ever owned. It took me months to fill this folder and I protected it with my life! I opened and closed this folder so many times looking at the coins, filling the holes and taking coins in and out, that the holes became weak and wouldn't hold the coins. So I (of course) scotch taped them in place! Very ingenious for an 8 year old! 😂 🤣
Many many years later, I pulled out this folder and smartened up. I removed the tape (with the folder paper 😫) , took the coins out and removed the tape residue with acetone and put them back.
I still have 7 or 8 of these originally acquired Kennedy's. As a kid, I would save up 50 penny's, get on my bike on a Saturday morning, ride down to South Shore Federal Bank and ask the teller if she had any Kennedy half dollars.
Disclaimer: I'm not a dealer, trader, grader, investor or professional numismatist. I'm just a hobbyist. (To protect me but mostly you! 🤣 )
I have a few coins with sentimental value - A colorized ASE my Mom gave me (she was not a collector and thought it would become very valuable - it is, to me.).... A few memorable date coins.... I will keep them. Cheers, RickO
I surprised myself when I sold my Nolan Ryan baseball card collection that took me 27 years to put together. I still have a few more pieces to sell, but I will only keep the first Ryan card I bought that started it all for me. Maybe you can do the same or keep one coin that means the most to you.
I agree with @ChangeInHistory that you are selling the items, not the experiences or memories.
Donato
Donato's Complete US Type Set ---- Donato's Dansco 7070 Modified Type Set ---- Donato's Basic U.S. Coin Design Set
Successful transactions: Shrub68 (Jim), MWallace (Mike)
I’m sentimental about some, but only because of the people behind them. I bought Bear’s Oregon commem - stuff like that.
The first coins I purchased were garbage. As soon as I learned enough, I no longer wanted to own them and they were easy enough to sell (at a loss).
Back in the mid 70's I had a distant cousin that had a coin shop. I would go in there about every week to check to see what. he had gotten in. I found this silver dollar and ask him how much. He said $400. I had very little money raising 2 young boys and a wife to care for. I told him that I didn't have that kind of money. He handed me the coin and said "Just pay me when you can" . I still have it and won't sell it even though it's worth more than $400. It's in a fine details holder because of the "W" scratched on the cheek.
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My Big Regret!
Back in the 1960’s when I was just a young teenager, like many of you, my dad knew I enjoyed collecting coins in blue Whitman folders - Lincoln cents, Roosevelt dimes, and Buffalo nickels (aided by the use of Nic-a-Date, lol).
My dad owned a coffee shop in lower Manhattan, and would regularly bring home “interesting” coins for me. One day he brought home a Twenty-Cent piece (1875-S, probably around XF. Apparently, someone thought it was a quarter, and used it to buy a cup of coffee).
Wow, I was so excited! I had never even heard of an American twenty cent coin!
That was the start of my passion for putting together a Type Set!!!!
Over the years, I worked on putting my Type Set together. Around the early 1990’s, I started upgrading many of the coins in my Type Set. The day came that I upgraded that 20 cent piece. Silly me, I sold that dupe just as I sold other dupes that had been upgraded!
As noted at the beginning, this is a big regret, a big mistake! How I wish I would have kept that coin! NOW I recognize the true value of that coin, being worth so much more than the few dollars I received for it. 😢
Steve
My collecting “Pride & Joy” is my PCGS Registry Dansco 7070 Set:
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/type-sets/design-type-sets/complete-dansco-7070-modified-type-set-1796-date/publishedset/213996
Been collecting for 63 years now.......But my favorites are my first.....just the way it is.....Way back in 1959(?) my aunt worked at the local bank. The Memorial Cent came out.....The bank manager had the tellers put the new pennies in single Whitman folder pages to hand out to customers as a promotion.......My aunt brought one of the folder pages home and gave it to little 5 year old me!.........I WAS HOOKED!!!!.....I could not stop looking at the little man in the building!!! I found him!......He was so small!....Haven't stopped since then......That penny page is sitting in a drawer not 5 feet away from me now. They will always be my favorite!.... MY FIRST!
See The Little Man?.....
I have a 1949-S cent that is near and dear to my heart. I found it in change when I was 6 or 7 (I was already collecting then) and showed to my uncle who was a modest collector and got me started. He put it in one of those thick 2x2s they had 50+ years ago and wrote 1949-S on the top and EF (grade) on the bottom. He was a draftsman and had very neat and distinct writing, so every time I see that coin, his writing pops out and i remember fun I had as a kid.
Yea, Hoopster, I hear ya'.....The first coin that I ever bought was a Barber dime. Probably cost around 15¢. Bought it at the local hobby shop. I put it in a plastic 2x2......It was my treasure! I ran across it a few years ago while looking through a box of old junk coins....Half the reverse is TOTALLY worn smooth.....the obverse isn't much better!...And the plastic 2x2? So much black dirt and grime you can't see the dime!....But that's the dirt and grime from the fingers of the little boy that loved that dime!.....I'll never clean that holder!...
I also have huge regrets selling many sentimental coins. Most coins in my early collection were from relatives, and some of them were really nice. There was a liberty gold dollar that I traded for a Black Eagle silver certificate, a holed 50c California gold(sold for $40,) and a (problem free?) Indian head gold dollar in ~xf (sold for $200.) I don't remember any dates. I would pay double what these coins are worth just to get them back.
I also spent some '64 halves on a garbage toy at a gas station (broke the same day) and sold my entire banknote collection (honestly, not worth much, but had many cool foreign banknotes) for $6. I sold a couple Morgan dollars for $20 each (I still have 1) and gave away or lost several potentially valuable coins - I didn't know what key dates were at the time, so I didn't check for them.
This was all BIG money to a kid who wasn't even 10 years old. These decisions often keep me up at night to this day.
I do still have this, though. Thinking about it now, I probably came very close to selling it. I have had it for years, and I love the toning.
Young Numismatist
Thanks to all for your comments. Many points to consider. Won't be an easy process.
A story based in trust such as this, helps keep you going in your belief in humanity.
My first was a little pouch of Liberty V nickels, I was about 10 and my grandmother had them stashed away, I somehow stumbled upon them and was mesmerized. They seemed impossibly old, ghostly, like a portal to another era. Some of them you could read some letters in LIBERTY and that was the key to what condition they were in. I guess I technically "stole" them, no one seemed to notice they were gone, then later on, teenage years, I lost track and don't know what finally became of them. That's what started the whole thing off for me.
Such a saddening and melancholy post, OP. I've not reached that point yet, but I think I'd just keep my absolute favorites and sell the rest. We only have so much time on earth and things that bring one happiness shouldn't be discarded.
I would then document why the few I retained were special to me so that whomever inherits them will know.
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
I looked and looked through change and some rolls for months looking for a 55-S to finish that 1941- folder. For whatever reason, I couldn't find one. That was the first coin I ever bought. I paid 50¢ for it. I was so proud of the purchase and to fill the folder. I got it home and showed my dad. I'll never forget the look on his face and what he said!
YOU PAID HOW MUCH FOR A PENNY!?!?!? 🤣 😂
Disclaimer: I'm not a dealer, trader, grader, investor or professional numismatist. I'm just a hobbyist. (To protect me but mostly you! 🤣 )
I can relate to that and would convey the same suggestion to the OP. Keep a few sentimental coins and document why they are sentimental with detailed high resolution photos. Its OK to keep 20 coins and later realize that 10 were truly sentimental. You can always sell, but you cannot always get back that same exact coin that you handled many times over.
I am not one for spoilers, but in the movie Citizen Kane, we see that a man of his riches only really valued that old wooden sled he used to enjoy as a child. No one knew this. As he uttered his last word "Rosebud" which was the name on the sled, and passed away as a lonely old man, the next scenes would show that all his possessions that had no intrinsic value were being discarded and tossed into the fire, including that sled Rosebud. Of course, that sled had nothing but happy memories for him, but he also had no one to open up to all his life.
I know some people take their possessions with them to the grave, but the majority leave them for the next of kin to sort out and a few have very specific instructions.
As a related aside, keep in mind that after one passes, one has no control of what happens to their possessions afterwards. Specific instructions help, but what I found effective is to give some of the items to the intended person while alive and well including some signed letter of that transaction (one can make it a birthday present, for example). In that way, the chain of possession is not in doubt by those that may want to dispute it and it gives one time to tell the stories behind it as well as document it.
Think about how many of our grandparents' possessions we have retained. I bet the vast majority of us have only a handful, if that.
BST: Tennessebanker, Downtown1974, LarkinCollector, nendee
My children have no interest in my coins, but I have developed some serious, unexpected health issues and am working on parting with my collection. I've been sitting down with r them and showing them the coins that are either special to me or have family connections that are important and should be saved.
My daughter picked out a silver denarius of Hadrian we we are going to put it into a neckless. It wasn't necessarily a special coin to me. Lower grade with about a $50-60 value, but just the fact that she liked the story of Hadrians Wall and wanted one of "Dad's coins" now makes special