Your very first coin that started it all
tonedcoinlover
Posts: 59 ✭✭✭
We all have stories.
We are all getting older.
We all have a story about the first coin that started it for us.
What is your story?
How can we help create stories for the next generation?
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1995 DDO cent.
Bought three at the peak for $600 all in from and ad in Coin World.
The local dealer tried his best to steer me into Morgans.
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
This has kind of been discussed before. Feel free to check out this thread.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1116742/what-year-did-you-start-collecting/p1
Disclaimer: I'm not a dealer, trader, grader, investor or professional numismatist. I'm just a hobbyist. (To protect me but mostly you! 🤣 )
My first walker was a raw 1940 S in XF/AU. Only paid about four or five dollars for it. I bought it, because I was just in awe at the beauty of the coin. Went back to the same dealer and bought a whole lot more. I had a nice raw walker collection back in the day with lots of early dates too in higher grade. I eventually sold them all and used the money towards investing in certified walkers. I still think they’re just as beautiful, now, as I did back then.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
There was no particular coin that started my coin collecting for me. My brother and I were given Whitman folders and started filling the slots from pocket change and change jars. The 1921 dime in G4 was a memorable find, but we were both well into coin collecting when that happened a year later.
While I started out in the late 1950’s collecting Roosevelt Dimes in a blue Whitman folder, my first real coin that got my juices up came in 1962. My dad owned a coffee shop in lower Manhattan, and brought me home a twenty-cent piece, an 1875-S, probably an XF. This was before silver coins were withdrawn from circulation, and the customer may have thought it was a quarter. Regardless, I was fascinated, and that’s the coin that started me putting together a Type Set, an endeavor that lasted almost 60 years! My Dansco 7070 Registry Set, shown below in my auto-signature, is the final result. It’s currently ranked #2, behind D.L. Hansen.
My biggest regret is I sold that coin decades ago when I bought an upgrade! Silly me! Oh, how I wish I had that coin today!
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
I was going thru penny rolls with my grand mother in 1966-7 and an 1911 s wheat that started it for me
I started down the collecting road when I was in 5th grade. A classmate was already a collector and brought several old coins to school… I don’t remember what they all were, but I do remember an Indian Head cent and a Shield Nickel. I was soon hooked. I do remember my very first coin, purchased at a coin/hobby shop in Jacksonville NC… an 1863 CN Indian cent.
I don’t have a pic of that coin, but I do have a pic of the first Charlotte gold coin I purchased raw in 1991, waiting until submitting it to our host @ 2002.
The one that started my “Charlotte madness” over 30 yrs ago:
It was the summer of 1967 or 68, I was the new kid on the block.
. )
A friend I had made (I didn’t actually create the friend, just made a friend!
Anyway, we rode our bikes to a coinstore across town (downtown Tustin, Ca.)
There were gumball machines that you could put in a quarter, turn the knob, get a coin or two in a plastic egg.
It was a 1885 IHC in around VG 8 condition, but I had never seen one before.
My dad looked at me like I had two heads when he found out I spend 25 cents on a “penny”.
25 years later, when he passed away, I inherited his collection that cost a heck of a lot more that 25 cents!
Something rubbed off, my dad started collecting some really nice coins! I still look at some of them to this day and remember him!
I started as a child filling folders, unsure what started that phase off.
After many years, this coin below started my second “adult” phase of collecting. I had been looking at very old red books I had from the the way back, and I was intrigued by Vermont colonial issues. One night about that time I was at the casino on a lark, won $3 grand playing blackjack, then few days later I went to the Bay State show, and bought this beauty (raw) off Tom Ronaldo using some of the bj winnings. Planchet flaw on the reverse, otherwise some of the nicest color and surfaces I’ve ever seen on a mid-grade landscape.
This one started it all…
I posted on a different site the low grade Washington Quarters and a few other coins I found on the ground as a 5 year old. (Coin Chat)
I have to attribute books, the internet and coin storage albums to my second childhood of coin collecting.
My wife gifted me 5 Eagle Brand certified coin albums; each is designed to hold 9 slabbed coins per page and she gave me 2- 3 page, 1 -4 page & 2- 5 page albums. At the time I owned zero certified coins.
I asked for and got the Walter Breen Encyclopedia of US coins for Christmas. I then spent a good year or so studying it.
I got the internet around the exact same time. (circa 1995-1997)
I will openly admit that i had always assumed a bunch of cigar smokling, brandy drinking old dudes had snatched up all the rare and interesting coins years before i was born. I was wrong.
The combination of materials and access allowed me to cherrypick several dozen Seated Halves. Throw into the mix that ANAC at the time was running very cheap offers to get coins slabbed and attributed and it made for a mix that created one of the single greatest experiences of my life. Coin or otherwise.
Thank you for your question. James
PS Odd fact. The first coin I bought was a 1977 7/6 that I didn't realize for almost 20 years.
Edit to show 1877. 1977 would have been much more spectacular. lol
This was the coin for me - an 1854 large cent, which I still have in my collection. I'll probably be buried with it if my kids don't want it. Over a century old, a different size than the modern cent, and a nice look and history to tell. All for under $10. Had me hooked - though interestingly its only been the last few years that I've started coming back around to the copper coins (my early interest was more focused on silver).
My starter coin was an 1859 IHC that was so beat up and miscolored that I got it as a dime in change from a customer while working at a local pizza joint ay 17 years of age. It was a slightly silverish color and was given as a dime. I need to dig it out and get a picture of it.
Simple 1970-S Jeff. It was 1973 and I was a skinny little 9 year old from NJ who just started collecting and I remember how cool it was to get a coin "all the way from San Francisco" in my change. This was particularly exciting because all the coin books I saw at library (which were all at least a few years old) said that SF stopped making coins in 1955
As with many was the Lincoln Cent.
This is the coin that got me started in coin collecting. I found it laying in the dirt while hoing in the family garden, Summer, 1956. The roundness of the object I had hoed up is what got my attention so I picked it up and wiped some of the dirt off of it while still in the garden. I thought I saw "1809" date on it. Later, I washed my penny find with water to get the rest of the dirt off and saw then that it actually bore the date "1899." I showed my 1899 penny to Mr. Grout, owner of Grout's corner grocery store, on Main Street, Garden City, South Dakota. He wanted my 1899 penny for himself so made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Two packs of baseball cards for my 1899 penny.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.---Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America, 1801-1809. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
Bicentennial quarter.
Never dawned on me coins were ever different. Mentioned to family member and given Morgan Dollar. Visited coin shop and bought a red book along with Columbian Half with hole. Dealer handed me a flyer for upcoming show at convention center. Mid 1980s. Walked in and first booth saw a case full of gold coins. Years later got first gold coin: 1988 proof 1/10 eagle sold at Sears of all places along with Olympic coin offerings.
Still have 1/10 gold. Flogged holed Columbian
Do you remember the cards you received from the baseball packs? Those packs would have high value now if they were unopened.
That’s a really cool story!
My YouTube Channel
I noticed a deep cameo Franklin in an ad in the late '80's. Given that Franklins were the largest coin minted in the year I was born, I thought it would be neat to have one. I can't remember the magazine or the dealer, but surprisingly the coin sent, a 1956, was a true DCAM without issues. Needless to say, I learned about coin ads, and the less than honest practices used by some dealers, within a short time thereafter.
Here's the "oldest" coin I still own from my earliest period of coin collecting. It's a rattler MS66FB, and the first coin I bought specifically as a toner. Even though from my current knowledge base its toning is nothing to write home about, I still like it and have kept it.
Decades later at an ANA convention I found a toned 1944-D Jefferson MS66*5FS. Given how coin collecting OCD works, thereafter, when I found a pleasantly toned 1944-D in MS66, I would buy it. Via this I now have a toned 1944-D MS66 Jefferson, Mercury, Washington, Walking Liberty set.
https://ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/58491/
U.S. Type Set
went full send on a 2008 Krugerrand
Llamas and alpacas are camels. They aren't like camels, or related. They are camels. When was anyone going to tell me this?! How long had Bill Nye been holding out on us?
odd thing is it was not a coin that got me into this but a banknote i got in change overseas that got me into this hobby
still have that banknote
1997-present
I think it was this one, taken from a haul at a toy store in 1983 😎
Empty Nest Collection
Mine was a 1941 wheat cent. I'm poor so I couldn't afford a charlotte gold coin.