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• ajaan Posts: 17,600 ✭✭✭✭✭

  November 7, 2005 9:25PM

  Uncle Art. In 1964 he gave me a new 1964 Kennedy Half which I lost the same day, but that's another story. Uncle Art was a real collector. Never bought a coin that I know of, except Mint and Proof Sets from the US Mint. He assembled a set of Lincoln Cents minus the 1914-D. He found a 1909-S VDB while stationed stateside during WWII. He got myself and all my brothers interested in collecting. I am the only one of the five still active.
  
  
  
  << <i>This thread goes out to my father and grandfather, two men who made me who I am today, thank God, a collector. And to anyone who goes out of their way to help kids excel in life in all regards.
  
  Even Ajaan >>
  
  
  
  OT here. The B.N.A. (Buffalo Numismatic Association) had a show last month. One of the members who was at the registration desk is the father of one of my ex-students. His son is now a senior in HS and the father told me his son wants to become a Math teacher. I never felt so good about being a teacher as I did at that time.

  
  DPOTD-3
  'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
  
  CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
  
  
  Don

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• theboz11 Posts: 6,576 ✭✭✭

  November 7, 2005 9:53PM

  A Coin dealer had me restore a 1939 MG for him and he wanted to pay me in US Gold coins, I agreed ,Bought some Coin books and restored his car. I ended up traveling the country doing coin shows for a few years with him after my divorce lost my Restoration Shop. I built and upgraded while dealing.

  My Medals collection
  
  FOR SALE Items

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• coinrookie Posts: 794

  November 8, 2005 1:29AM

  My grandmother collected Peace and Morgans for starting the day I was born until the day she died. That was 40 some odd years ago and I still have all the Morgans and Peace dollars.
  
  
  
  Steve

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• DorkGirl Posts: 9,994 ✭✭✭

  November 8, 2005 10:04AM

  I also owe my love of collecting to my father and grandfather. I can remember sitting on grampa's lap after the dishes were cleared after Thanksgiving dinner and looking through his Morgan Whitman albums. My dad collected Morgans too, and after grampa died, it was always my job to catalog the coins. Then when dad died, I inherited those wonderful old albums. I finished filling the albums a few years ago, for all three of us. That was a very good day.

  Becky

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• oldshep Posts: 3,240 ✭

  November 8, 2005 10:40AM

  Actually it was my wife...her deceased ex-husband left her with a safety deposit box full of ( mostley circulated) US coins and she asked me to look at them and do an inventory. I was struck by the unique feeling of history when looking at Morgan silver dollars from 1878. I started looking at the US forum and thought I would look at the World forum....that's when I saw Cosmicdebris old icon of the Yemen roaring lion... I was hooked!!!!! The beauty, variety, and civility of the members brought me to the dark.
  
  I then found the the beauty of the old sailing ships was a theme of many coins throughout the world... I have never looked back.
  
  I enjoy the people on this forum, the large number of coin designs I never imagined, and the price availability of the works of art.
  Sort of a wordy answer, but there it is.
  
  Shep

  

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• xbob Posts: 1,979 ✭

  November 8, 2005 10:51AM

  My mother. She's been buying me proof sets since I was a kid. I thought they were neat but not much more.
  A few years ago I actually said "enough with the coins" when I was trying to minimize my stored belongings. I took the Morgan and Peace Dollars that had been handed down to me, through her, to the Baltimore Ccoin show to unload them. Instead I was awestruck and did a complete 180 and became more interested in collecting than I've ever been. She is glad I finally came to. Me too.
  
  My Grandfather also (my Mom's Dad) has always saved cents for me in old Pringles cans and I pick them when they are filled. I saved the keepers in a coin folder and the rest went in the bank. He's my only living grandparent and now saves the cents for my kids.

  -Bob
  collections: Maryland related coins & exonumia, 7070 Type set, and Video Arcade Tokens.
  The Low Budget Y2K Registry Set

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• worldcoinguy Posts: 3,030 ✭✭✭✭✭

  November 8, 2005 11:15AM

  Good post Nick.
  
  When I was 10 or so, I crawled back into my parents cedar closet and found a bag of 20 silver dollars. It was all over after that. They were all average circulated common dates, but to a 10 year old, they were the most incredible treasure ever found. Only later I learned that my great grandmother actually earned them as bonuses back in the 1930s when she worked a department store in downtown Chicago. Needless to say, I still have them to this day and they will stay in the family.
  
  Once my parents and grandparents caught onto my interest, they would stoke the fire periodically with something small here and there. The interest was rekindled in college when I studied abroad in Spain and the Ukraine. The 8 months overseas started the slide into the darkside......

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• Philip Posts: 847

  November 8, 2005 3:42PM

  My high school history teacher. Happened in 10th grade, some 8 and a half years ago.
  
  He is an active collector and still rips me off occasionally.

  4 765 of 50 971 (9.35%) complete
  
  First DAMMIT BOY! 25/9/05 (Finally!)
  
  " XpipedreamR is cool because you can get a bottle of 500 for like a dollar. " - Aspirin
  
  

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• nicholasz219 Posts: 1,386 ✭✭✭

  November 8, 2005 11:07PM

  Everyone:
  
  I would like to thank everyone that posted to this thread so far. I really enjoy hearing about how each of us was seduced by the dark side.
  
  The posts have been great and I can say that I really think remembering how we all fell in love can remind us to help others fall in love too. If you know a kid who might be interested, spend a buck and get them addicted to something they can enjoy until they are well, dead.
  
  Something I started doing when I got back into collecting after a long absence was relabeling my coins in new 2x2's with the name of the person I bought them from on the back if they were a friend, fellow collector or good dealer friend. I have a lot of coins marked "Dad". He died when I was 21 and only 48 himself and even seven years later, seeing his name on my coins reminds me of what a great person he was. And how he would take the time to get interested in something I loved even if it meant a note on the table the next morning with "Nick....cool coin" written on it.
  
  Sorry to be a dork.
  
  Nick

  My Collection

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• ccrdragon Posts: 2,697 ✭

  November 8, 2005 11:20PM

  My mom and my grandmother. Mom started me with a Whitman folder for pennies that we partially filled (wonder where that thing is) and my grandmother continued the process by showing me all of the folders that she had filled with silver from circulation. Started early and have never lost the love!

  Cecil
  Total Copper Nutcase - African, British Ships, Channel Islands!!!
  'Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup'

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• Udo Posts: 984 ✭✭

  November 10, 2005 6:09AM

  I can't tell who promoted me or what got me started, but I've had a hard start.
  
  
  The Treasurehunter
  
  When I was a young boy at the age of ten, my grandaunt gave me a bunch of old coins. Those were coins I've never seen before, they were from the nineteentwenties up to World War II. mainly German coins but some Austrian and Swiss were includes as well.
  I hadn't had any references and all I knew was that they were dang old, at least for me stupid young boy.
  
  I shouldn't continue to tell about it at this point, I was so stupid, but what the heck ...
  
  So this bunch of coins was a real treasure for me, but that young stupid boy thought that it isn't a real treasure untill it is buried. Yes, real treasures are buried and must be discovered and dug up, that's logical isn't it? At least for a ten year old.
  So I packed my treasure and wrapped it several plastic bags. I even left a written notice with the coins which confirmed that I'm the legal owner of this treasure.
  Well, I found a nice place to bury the package in the forrest nearby our house. No sooner said than done, it was buried and it was a real treasure then.
  I just wanted to wait for an approbiate time before I wanted to rediscover and reveal it again.
  
  I never found it anymore. My interest in coins got lost in those days.
  
  
  
  The Jerk
  
  In 1989 when I served in the army, I visited the pub of my comrades father. There was a gaming machine (Tetris) I wanted to play. I put a 2 Mark coin in the slot, but the machine didn't accept it. I've tried it again and again but it didn't work, so I went to to my comrade: Hey Cheesy (that was his nickname) that machine won't accept my coin, change it please!" He looked at the coin and said: "No wonder, this is an old 2 Mark-Max Planck, they were withdrawn from circulation in the early seventies."
  
  I decided to keep this coin and from that day I started to collect MS coins from circulation. I stored the coins in a big stein that was given to me when I left the army in 1991. It had the crest of our unit on it and was signed by all my comrades.
  Then the day came when I had to move, my brother in law helped us remove the furniture. That jerk thought he could take down the cupboard with all the dishes in and on it!
  My stein fell down and was broken in several pieces with all the coins on the floor!
  My beloved stein!
  I picked up the coins from the floor, wrapped them in some paper in a hurry and stored them in a packing case.
  
  I never found them anymore, they got lost as well as my interest in coins.
  
  
  
  The Children
  
  In spring 2002 I found a strange looking 20 Cent piece in my pocket. Oh yeah, the good ol Deutsche Mark had left and the Euro took its place, so every coin looked a bit strange to everybody in the first months with the new currency. But what I knew was that this wasn't a German piece. I got me a book about Euros and the hunt started again. I wanted to have them all, at least a complete type set from every country.
  I collected from circulation again and soon I realized that there are some small states that issue Euro coins also, but one won't ever find them in circulation. I did many searches in the Internet and with one of the searches I found the website of the British Royal Mint. I was taken with the beauty of the British coins and ordered some Mint Sets, Britannias and 1 Pound coins in silver. Yes I found them very attractive and wanted to build a set of the silver pound coins.
  Yes I even bought some from Lawrence Chard for big $$$, last week I've seen wybrit offering such a coin, I could have bought four of those from wybrit for what I paid to Chard.
  One day I thought of my children and realized that they didn't know anything about the old coinage we had, they grew up with the Euro coins now. I decided to build a ste of DM coins for them to look at and after a time I thought it would be nice to show them a set of coins that my great grandparents paid with. So I got more and more back in time.
  
  Yes I think my own children promoted me to collect seriously, without their help.
  

  

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• nicholasz219 Posts: 1,386 ✭✭✭

  November 10, 2005 11:01AM

  Udo,
  
  Apparently, someone didn't want you to collect until now!
  
  I think of the coins that I sold off when I went to university to pay for my girlfriend's extravagant lifestyle and I want to cry.
  Needless to say, we did not work out.
  
  Nick
  

  My Collection

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