Evolution of a coin collector.

cladking

I'm curious as to how we individual collectors evolved. I started with
buffalos and soon started IH cents. After a few years off, I came back
Jeffersons then Washingtons and other circulating issues. While con-
tinuing with these later issues I also started world coins (mostly moderns,
silver, and modern gold). Also added tokens and medals. (arcade, trans-
portation, telephone, and good-fors).

I've tried several other series and even ancients, but in each case there was
something that stopped me, such as unavailability, expense, or difficulty
in researching the coins. There's always more time and more coins...

numobri

I went from everything to morgans to $1 coins(all dates)(all U.S.)to Bust Dollars,i'm stuck here but like it(along with everything else).

WWBillman

I started off with a complete US type set, circulation strikes, no gold. You know how expensive a highgrade type set is?

Well I am still at it and the end is not yet in sight.

After I bought my 1917 & 1918 MS66FH SLQ I have been tempted to stray into the series but as of yet have resisted. But it is still calling me. I think I would really enjoy that series.

ARCO

I loved coins as a kid, but never had any dough. One day about 4 years ago, like a switch turning on, I thought "I am going to start collecting coins"

It was very strange, it seemed so natural. Where from the day prior, there existed not the slightest inkling to collect, was born a full fledge yearning to get collecting.

I studied many series but nothing grabbed me. I thought maybe lincolns to get my feet wet, and because as a kid that was all I could afford from pocket change.

I was surfing the web when I came across a web page dedicated to Barber Halves. Seeing the neat contrasts of toning and color from the circulated halves I was utterly transfixed. I knew at that moment what I would collect. It has been a consuming passion ever since!

I find many series very beautiful, but nothing keeps my fascination or perhaps addiction in full throttle like the Halves.

Tyler

ANACONDA

It was 1984 and I was working on my MBA. I kept seeing the Solomon Brothers report that reported rare coins as the #1 long term investment. I started buying books and reading. I bought one of Bowers' books, and then was hooked. It wasn’t the profit potential, it was the profit potential AND the richness and complexity of all that is “COINS”. Coins are a microcosm of the universe. Everything can be related to coins. Art, history, romance, love, greed, death, birth, honesty. For coins are a reflection of man and man is a reflection of that which made all.

I bought more books and then I read them. Then I started buying coins. At first, I picked nice circulated junk silver coins out of tubs at a coin shop in San Antonio owned by a guy named Rick. He treated me fairly. He’s still in business. I started buying more expensive coins. Then PCGS came along and I started buying more and more coins and dealing. Then my wife started really, really getting on my nerves. I then I started really getting on her nerves. So, she suggested that I leave and that we have an even split, she gets the assets and I get the liabilities. Of course at that time, not having finished my MBA, I thought that sounded fair. So she got all the coins (except one) and sold them to the father of Henry Cisneros' mistress, Bob Medlar. My ex-wife used the money to buy the home she, her new husband and their 3 kids live in. We are both very happy now.

Later, went to law school. I continued reading about coins but didn't have any money to buy any coins. I was sitting in class reading a book about coin investment (“Rare Coin Investment Strategy” by Scott Travers, 1986), and this absolute babe with brown curly hair and blue eyes sat next to me. I thought she was visiting the school as I had never seen her before. I fell madly in love with her that very day and have been completely mesmerized by her ever since. Later, I graduated from law school, moved to Dallas to take a job defending doctors, then got laid off, then went out on my own and was joined by my now lawyer girlfriend (the aforementioned babe, now wife) and we started representing people with claims against doctors, among other things.

We started out practicing law out of my apartment. Things were really tough at first; my car got repossessed, the landlord locked me out of my law apartment, my phone got cut off, etc. I took my last coin to Heritage, the coin I loved the most, the coin my ex-wife let me keep, an 1804 Draped Bust Half Cent in PCGS MS64 brown and with that money got my car out of hock and wobbled back on my feet. As time went on, things got better and better. I started making pretty good money and in Thanksgiving of 1997, got back into the coin gig after being out of it for 6 or so years. Since then I have purchased many books, none of which I've sold, and handled some pretty cool coins and currency. They come and they go. Many go really fast, and a few just won’t leave.

I owe the modicum of financial success I have attained [my numismatic inventory is worth well over a million dollars (it’s a poor dog that won’t wag his own tail)] and hence my level of coin involvement, to three people. One, my father, who said "Adrian, what the hell is the matter with you? Turn that TV off, get your butt off the couch, and go out and weed the strawberry bed like I told you this morning. When you are done, if there is any dinner left, you can eat."

Two, my ex-wife’s father who is a successful businessman who told me “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”

And my wife who said “Sure, I trust you, you can buy it, but do you really think we need another coin?”

adrian

My library (mostly pertaining to coins and herpetology)

http://imagehost.auctionwatch.com/bin/imageserver.x/00000000/snakesq/08.10.02.1886.4.jpg

kryptonitecomics

After looking at the above post by ANACONDA it is clear that the only way for me to achieve the financial success I desire is to write a book about Adrian!!!!!!!!

I started off by collecting everything, then I tried to switch over to key dates for investment purposes. I was not completely successful with the switch because I am still a quantity VS quality man most of the time. I am still going after the key and semi-key's, but I want punish myself too much if I stumble into a few common date Franklin's, JFK's, Buff's etc.


P.S. Adrian, I'll call you and we can talk about the book rights over lunch

09sVDB

My grandmother had an old penny board on the top of her dresser, circa 1968. It was a complete set of Lincolns taken from circulation less the 09SVDB. She showed it to me one day and I was hooked. She tried to get each one of the grandchildren interested in something but in the end I was the only one who stuck with anything.

coinrookie

My experience oddly enough is kind of like Arco`s. I collected circs. as a kid. Then no coins for about 20 years. Then the Quarter Program started and I bought a few mint sets. But my acquisition of a computer really opened up my interest. The problem is I am all over the place. But I buy the nicest coins I can afford and sometimes ones that I cannot, so hopefully when I get more disciplined I will have a nice foundation to build on.

Catch22

I was about 11 or 12 when my dad bought me a metal detector for Christmas. I began searching in an old park in Lubbock Tx. on weekends. Found a bunch of wheat pennies and mercury dimes, with the periodic Walker popping up. About the same time, I got sweet on a lil gal in one of my classes. Her father owned a coin shop at the mall. I started taking my finds to his shop (after cleaning all the silver coins with toothpaste) and sold them for melt. He gave me a Red Book and encouraged me to research all my coins before bringing them in. He also told me to stop using toothpaste to clean the coins. I can still remember tray after tray of golden toned, MS Mercury dimes in his shop for 3 dollars each. Anyway, I became interested in Indian Head cents and began a collection that I still have to this day. For the past 25 years I have dropped in and out of the hobby as other interests seem to come along. Only in the past 3 years or so have I become more serious about my collecting. I now concentrate on genuinely rare issues of any series, key and semi-key dates as well as my specialty, Gobrecht designs. My seriousness in collecting is directly related to my purchase of several hundred dollars worth of books. The education and history lesson sparked something in me that just doesn't seem to go away as it has in the past.

Rotts

I like coins,i started out collecting guns mainly 45's,then went to collecting carrosel horses then old cuff links then to currencey and finally to coins about two years ago.I enjoy the coins more than the rest.I collect because i like to.,Not to have the best or the most valuable but to have what i want.what i like.Isn't that what it is about??Happy hunting...rotts

AlanB

I started out collecting the oldest coins I could get my hands on and just last summer started working on an Ike registry set.

Clankeye

My evolution was this: first a spot on my skin mass became sensitive to light, which then became a kind of primitive set of eyes. This in order to see coins. Then, from my fins I began to develop leg-like appendages, this so I could get out of the water on to land. Land is where there are coins. To augment the legs I began to develop arms, and hands. This so that I could grab coins.... unfortunately, at this point evolution had still left my brain small and under developed, it told me that coins could be hunted and gathered by throwing more coins at the coins. People in my tribal group became scared and unhappy with me. I was lashed to a log, and set adrift down a large river.



Edited, because my ability to spell is underdeveloped.

dpoole

Hell, if I sold my coins to a mayor's mistress and I'd married a babe-wife, all my coins would be toned by now, too!



(GOD, I hope my wife doesn't see this...)