For those of you who still have your childhood collection......
SanctionII
Posts: 12,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
...... when you look at it today what do you think about how good or bad your "eye for quality" was as a YN?
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I was broke so it's not very nice. But I did the best I could with the funds I had they where not to bad I guess but no key's.
Hoard the keys.
I had no budget or opportunity for quality when I was a YN. It was just for fun so no big deal.
Recently, I’ve upgraded a type coin from my childhood collection from like VF to MS65RD. 66 is top pop for this year but I could not find an as eye appealing example and I’m okay with 1 under for this.
No eyes for dolls let alone coins ....... eyes for food only
Beggars can't be choosers when you spend a penny for a penny or a nickel for a nickel. Dimes were out of my league! When I visit them I remember the instance that I discovered some of them. Not all but a lot were from my paper routes or from searching rolls in the lobby of Wells Fargo Bank or such. I remember my friends doing it with me. I remember riding our bikes to the bank and back and the laughs and smiles and discoveries we all made. I remember good times.
Still have them all. Have removed them from the Blue Whitmans to a Dansco to help them feel better.
bob
My childhood collection is 99.9% "darkside" and is both coins and currency. I still have it fully intact. I didn't really have a penchant for quality but more a desire to accumulate things that were different from US stuff. I had an affinity for aluminum or brass and more unusually shaped planchets (scalloped, square, etc.). I also had a budget of almost zero.
Almost the exact same history!! The first coin I purchased from my paper route proceeds was a 1863 Indian Head Penny, still have it!
I also transferred my coins from Whitman folders to Dansco albums. Still working on the Nickels 1883- Dansco 7110, which I don't see being sold anymore. It's a six page album with room for nickels from 1883 to 2000. I upgraded just a few, but left quite a few "fillers" for sentimental reasons.
Considering how aggressively I cleaned them with a pencil eraser, my eye wasn't great.
I've got a coffee can full of "wheaties" . Nothing really special, just circulated and sorted by date. But....I had a lot of fun searching for them and saving them.
My first purchases were large cents when I was about 7-8 years old. Paid too much for too little. But there were also some very fortunate purchases like the $5 1797 that grades VF.
I had no money to buy coins growing up, so all of the pennies, nickels and dimes came from looking through rolls or from change. So with that said they range from good to very good, my eye was just FILL THE HOLE lol.
No coin shops or shows when I was a kid...just my paper route... so quality was as received. Most of those coins are gone now (except for a cent album - which, by the way, was a dump find - at the town dump)...so no expenditures and therefore no complaints.
Cheers, RickO
Just circulation finds.... Ikes, Kennedys, SBAs. Nothing special then, even less special now.
NO..................because back then I had no eye for anything.........except a date and mint. Being selective back then was not an option.
Pete
Eye for quantity was much more important then. If I could get 10 dateless Buffalo nickels for a dollar and acid date them, that was a better deal than getting just one nicer one.
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That was 50+ years ago...but I used Comet! Made my War Nickels very shiny
I was a paper route guy too, had a small amount of disposable income and a B&M store close enough we could ride our bikes. Almost all of my purchases were Mercs and were driven by, a. shiny, b. hole filling and/or c. quantity.
For reasons I don't recall, I was also enamored with the 1941-S year/mint and did purchase a penny, nickel, dime and quarter in BU. The penny especially has not fared well over the years.
I still have the coins, mostly XF-AU later date Mercs or G-VG earlier date Mercs. While I wish I had learned quality vs. quantity much earlier in life, looking at my old coins still makes me smile. Good memories.
If we were all the same, the world would be an incredibly boring place.
Tommy
YEAH! And those pencil erasers on Lincolns shined em up real good, too.
Pete
My collection was started looking through family accumulations and roll searching. A B&M was a rare treat while out of town on vacation.
Mint sets and Mail order of low end (affordable) coins was my highlight. Just filling them holes! I think it was Littleton Coin in Chattanooga TN?? Anyway... what a waste of money! If only I knew...
I was jazzed when I found an error misprint on a stamp.
I should have run with it then, but girls got in the way.
Most of my childhood collection is low quality stuff, however there are some coins from the 60's and early 70's that I pulled new from circulation that are surprisingly nice. Including some clad dimes, quarters and halves.
I was always trying to upgrade but it was just plucked from circulation.
One early July a guy came around selling cherry bombs from the trunk of his car - there went the Merc dime collection.
I considered whatever I could find in circulation. I used my dad's Red Book to learn the basics of grading, and when I found a coin that I thought was better quality, I would replace the previous coin with the better one. The notion of buying coins was not an option, as I lived in a small rural town. But I had access to coins as I collected for my paper route.
More directly to your question... Given my limited access back then to coins, when I look at my original coin sets, I don't think they reflect my "eye for quality," rather they indicatively reflect the coins and their qualities that were available in circulation back then.
My strategy is about collecting what I intend to keep, not investing in what I plan to sell.
Sadly my childhood collection is long gone!
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Pulling from circulation eye appeal takes back seat to that fits the hole in the Whitman.
For the most part, not bad. I have sold most of the coins that I bought back when I was in high school. I only only have a few left. I made money on most of them, although I did lose my shirt on a set of Indian Cents. I bought them at retail and sold at the bottom of the market for them.
Here are a few coins I still have from my early days.
A 1929 $2.50 gold, still raw
A 1908, No Motto $20 gold, NGC MS-64
1901 $10 gold, NGC MS-65
An 1832 dime. This one had some hairlines on it when I bought and I put of few more on it when I tried to remove the tarnish. Still raw
Back in the mid-sixties and early seventies I didn't have any money for coin purchases. My brother and two cousins would get rolls from the bank, grocery stores, Steak n Shake and other stores and look through them for dates to fill our Whitman Lincoln Cent album 1909-1940. At first we only kept the cents from 1940 or before. I filled most of the album except for the key dates, the 09-s vdb, 09-s, 11-s, 14-d, , 31-s. My brother did find a 14-D in VF condition. The cousins ended up stealing it. Later, we expanded to the second Lincoln album. It was much easier to fill. Since they were all from circulation some of the coins are pretty well worn, some with the date and mint mark barely showing.
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Dahlonega Type Set-2008 PCGS Best Exhibited Set
Great coins BillJones.
They show you did have a great eye for quality as a YN.