What is earliest expression of your interest in coin collecting?
291fifth
Posts: 24,806 ✭✭✭✭✭
This is not about when you actually started collecting but rather when you first showed an interest in old or unusual coins.
In the early 1950s my mother took me to the butcher shop on 86th and South Ashland in Chicago. This was an old time butcher shop with sawdust covering the floor (I liked that). My mother received her change from the purchase and I noticed an unusual coin in that change. I now know it was a 1913 Barber Quarter, mint unknown. I asked my mother to put it aside. Obviously Barber Quarters were nothing special to her as I never saw it again.
All glory is fleeting.
0
Comments
Correction ... the butcher shop was on 84th and South Ashland.
I was 11 or 12 when my parents took us (me and my siblings) to a Moose Lodge get together.They had activities for the kids and one was a potato sack race.I won that race and was awarded with an Ike dollar.So big in my little hand...I had never seen one before...I was totally fascinated.Thinking back, there was a spark there.
My gramps had a collection of coins he collected from change. I remember specifically the one he was most proud of, it was a washington quarter with a cud covering most of the date.
He also had a 17xx copper coin which blew my mind. It was holed so he put a little string around it and gave it to me to wear.
He died in the mid 80s so it was a while ago but those memories are vivid. Unfortunately after he passed his widow was forced to sell his coin collection.
In the 50's, many of us collected coins from circulation. My best friend got me started as a kind of competition - who could fill the holes. Started as more pecuniary, quickly morphed into a deeper interest.
In 3rd grade......influenced by my dad and scouting.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
Glad you corrected. All they had when I got there was bongs.
I had been collecting typical kid stuff, pennies and nickels. Then I was offered a job in my mother's casino's hard count room. I did not take the job but did work there occasionally as needed. I was 16 or so. It's then that I saw tens of thousands of old (to me) coins being used in gambling in the casino. Saw my first gold coins (not used in casino but Mom would always make loans to customers on gold coins and held them in a special spot in the room). The silver dollars by the bag full were stunning and eye opening. We were using silver dollars in normal circulation in town and I saw a few here and there and carried a few in my pocket but the sheer numbers blew me away.
I encourage Mom to start collecting them along with half dollars which were plentiful as well. She said: "just put away what you think I need to save" and she'd buy them at the end of the day and take them home. Over a period of 4 years she amassed a dresser drawer full, thousands for sure. I could spend half my shift going through bags looking for keys and high MS dollars and I was paid 75¢ an hour to do so!
When she passed there were no dollars found and I have no clue whatever happened to them. I can only hope she sold them on the first major run up to $50 back in the day.
That was my entrance into real collecting.
bob
Since I started collecting later in life, I didn't immediately HAVE a "story from my youth".
But thinking about it, I recall that my Mom had a Morgan Dollar in her jewelry box. If she was loitering around her dressing table, and if we asked nicely, she would pull it out for us to look at. A rather unexciting XF 1921, I know now. But back then, it was exotic and impressive!
She gave it to me when I did start collecting, so I have that "unexciting" dollar now. Even if I liquidate everything else, I will still have that dollar. Love ya, Mom.
It was pretty much all at once. My great grandfather died in 1978. He'd been a real collector back in the day, but he'd sold his entire collection in the early 60's to help various members of the family start businesses, move out of the old neighborhood, etc. I'm told it fetched $20K or so back then, so it must have had some interesting things in it. In any event, he had held onto a bunch of things that weren't worth much over face at that time -- common Unc and circ Morgan and Peace dollars, etc. My dad had liked looking at his coins with him when he was a kid, so Zaida left my dad the cigar box with those remnants, all in pencil-labeled Kraft envelopes, a couple of Whitman blue books and a red book, and his old safe. I was starting third grade when it landed at our house, and that's all it took -- I was off to the races. Those coins have since been dispersed various ways within the family, but I still have a couple of my childhood favorites, and my son has a nice one holding down the Morgan spot in his type set.
I have a similar story with an old 1881 P Morgan that was my grandfather's. He kept it on his dresser and when we were kids (in the late 60s and early 70s, my brothers and I would study that coin and imagine all the hands it passed through. In 76, he got us Bicentennial Ikes and that was the start of my collecting. When my grandfather passed, I got that 1881 P. It was the first Morgan I owned and was the start of my adult collection. It would probably grade at VF on a good day, but among the hundreds of Morgan and Peace VAMs in my collection, it is my most cherished coin.
I started hoarding the Lincoln Memorial cents when they started to appear in the spring of 1959.
When I was a little kid I got a dime with a strange design that I saved. It was a very well circulated Barber dime. I even made a holder for it and labeled it with "Old Dime".
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
That's easy, I was in the second grade and read this in our Weekly Reader. I've been interested since then. I'm sure I posted this here the last time this general question was asked.
I remember my mom (1962 ish) saying :" I wish I had a million dollars". One morning I woke up early and my dad was having a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He was perusing a magazine. I recall asking , " Dad, how can I get mom a million dollars ?" He showed me the magazine and said "find this". It was a 1943 copper cent.
I thought that would be easy.
Years later (1980 ish) I realized if mom and dad didn't have 15 kids , she'd have had her million. So I said "dad, mom could have had a million dollars , if you two didn't have all that sex".
Dad looked at me and said , " I only got it 15 times ".
They're long gone but left behind nearly 100 grandchildren , over 150 great grandchildren, unsure how many great great grandchildren and one coin weenie, who never did find that copper coin.
``https://ebay.us/m/KxolR5
My interest really got started with my paper route at eight years old....Silver was still used for dimes, quarters and halves... and often saw SLQ's and a few Barber coins...My first Columbian half really got me going...I had an old cowboy hat (how old could it have been at that age
) hanging from a nail in the bedroom, and I would toss special coins in there. Then, as I got older, they went into a dresser drawer. Then most of the coins disappeared when I left home for the Navy. Cheers, RickO
Ca 1972-3 my dad returned from 'Nam and had a Seagrams bag full of Vietnamese, Singaporean, some Thai and Australian coins and some MPC's that had missed a C-day. Those were the nucleus of my collecting. Later on my grandfather gave me an 1867 2 cent piece that he had kept for over 80 years when he gave it to me circa 1976 - that is the most priceless coin I own, it has been in the family since 1896.
I cannot think of when I first saw something unusual but I can tell you when my son did.
He is six years old and soon will be seven. I pulled out a morgan, franklin, and peace and put them in this little hand made clay tray he made us from school. When he had a moment I showed them to him. Compared the difference in sound they made when dropped on a table versus newer coins. Explained they are worth more then face due to being silver. They were looked at over a few month period and when I thought they had enough I put them away.
It was not a few days later when my son asked where are my coins?
When I was a kid in the late 50s I spotted a few silver dollars and a couple of Indian head cents in her jewelry box. I'd often take them out to look at them, fascinated by the 19th century dates. After I started collecting, she gave them to me. The best coin, an 89-S Morgan is in my type set.