Remember that feeling?

JoeLewis · April 20, 2007 3:36PM

I remember sitting on the living room floor, dumping out my dad's spare change jug and looking through pennies to put into my Whitman coin folder. I was about ten years old, and it was so exciting. I didn't know anything about moderns vs. classics, PCGS vs. NGC, AT vs. NT, MS67 vs. MS68, or anything else like that.

I wish I could have that feeling always when looking at coins. It comes back in small spurts here and there.

DUIGUY · April 20, 2007 4:19PM

Great post ! Yepper, I remember,

As a kidd I remember asking my Dad when we were at a store for some change to put in the bubble surprise machine, maybe get a cool spider ring or what ever . His standard response was " Sorry son, I have no change", yet I could hear it gingling in his pocket . I would sneek into my parents bedroom late at night to peer over the dresser and I would see a stack of change setting there. I wondered why Dad would not give me a quarter or something. On my parents Silver Wedding Anniversery my Dad presented my Mom with over 800 peace dollars. He saved all his loose change to exchange at the bank for peace dollars for Mom. She went out and bought a new washer and dryer.

Dad passed first , Mom passed years later. While going through my fathers study after Mom's passing, us kids discovered three envolopes , each containng bills that were printed on our birth dates.

Yepper ! I remember !.

garsmith · April 20, 2007 4:48PM

No I don't remember that, when I was that age I was looking through bags of Euro stamps

Thank god I grew up

Myqqy · April 20, 2007 4:54PM

I remember going to the one coin shop in my hometown when I was about 10 or 11- it was tiny, and run by a middle age guy and his old father-in-law. They would patiently let me look through their folders of old material, and I was completely transfixed by anything from the 19th century. Just to see these old worn pieces of silver that were used by people that had been deceased for 150 years never ceased to capture my imagination. I would buy an item for 2 or 3 dollars and walk out thinking that I had a treasure that couldn't be measured in monetary value....
The items that got to me the most were the old morgan and peace silver dollars. I couldn't afford them, but figured that someday I would be able to own some. It's cool that I get to live out that dream now.....

Coxe · April 20, 2007 4:56PM

Yeah. I remember having pounds of dateless Buffalo nickels, trying to make educated guesses as to their dates and mintmarks before bringing them up with a little acid. There were no TPGs and no MS grades. Didn't care at all that these were problem coins or that I was doctoring them. Just wanted to guess the dates and fill up an album.

BIGJAYVEE · April 20, 2007 9:01PM

It's great to see this side of the hobby,it's how alot of us got started.i still have 3 large cents my father gave to me,not ms,xf or fine.Maybe VG at best,but will be handed down to family,so maybe they can get that feeling.The feeling that Joe mentioned that most of us remember.

GoldenEyeNumismatics · April 21, 2007 12:38AM

I think this is a glory that gets us all started out on coin collecting. Often, after a long show such as the Summer ANA, after I have scoured every table for what I'm looking for, I'll just sit dow near a nice big junk box and spend the rest of the day there--and while I'm doing it I'll get that feeling

ziggy29 · April 21, 2007 1:14AM

Yeah, I agree. Unfortunately, as my means have increased, so has my taste for higher-end coins. But when you get right down to it, I've never had the "joy" of buying higher-end slabbed coins thrill me as much as when I would go to a coin show as a kid and spend my week's allowance on a well-worn early Lincoln to fill a hole in my pennyboard, or in weeding through my dad's rolls and rolls of duplicate Mercs and Buffs (which he plucked from circulation in Puerto Rico in the early 1960s) to fill a board of my own.

I'm trying to be excited about my collecting "roots" again. I love collecting as much as ever; it's the shenanigans and greed games that accompany a lot of slabbed coins (crackouts, dippings, and stuff, all to get a value bump for the *same coin*) that have soured me. I'm really hoping a shift in collecting strategy will re-energize me. Should I continue to see things that way, the slabbed collection I've amassed so far can go quite a long way toward funding that future endeavor.

Zoins · April 21, 2007 1:18AM

That sort of collecting is still available in many areas.

You can still go through jars of change looking for modern varieties and errors.

Many areas of exonumia are not dominated by plastic, e.g. HTTs, CWTs, etc.

Talking a walk on the darkside, you can find coins that were used by people who have been dead longer than the US has been around.

There are many collecting avenues that have not matured like the US coin market. Sometimes it's a refreshing change of pace.

PrivateCoinCollector · April 21, 2007 1:20AM

I would search anyones change who would let me. Then there was the little bag my aunt got down from some corner of one of closets. And there is was, a 1910-S Lincoln. It was like yesterday only it was 37 years ago. I sold it years later for $2.00. A fortune. I now have one in PCGS MS 65, but it will never replace THAT coin.

SilverEagles92 · April 21, 2007 1:20AM

True, this was one of the most thrilling parts of early collecting. But, didn't you feel the same when you were able to graduate from years of fruitless searching Dad's change, to buying a Morgan dollar, or a nice Walking Liberty half? That's what I remember. The first REAL coin I bought was a Walking Liberty half, and then a Morgan dollar. They were both probably VG, maybe $10 for the pair, but THAT was something to be proud of. A 120 year old silver dollar, and a 60 year old half trumps the wheats in my book. And then, graduating from that to slabs, to registries, to eventually selling some of these coins, feels great also! I was frenzied when I bought my first slab, about a year and a half ago. 2005 Kennedy Half, NGC PF69DCAM. Nothing special, but I had graduated again.

You don't have to miss this, keep graduating. Completing a set that you've been working on for 5 years feels about the same. Sure the individual coins might not be awesome, but the completion IS awesome.

JMHO, take it as you want.

Musky1011 · April 21, 2007 6:04AM

My long gone Grandfather had a Quart liquor bottle filled with silver dimes

He let me go through them when I was about 10 years old
it is one of the few times we actually did something together

He let me keep a few Mercs and one Seated Dime

The Seated Dime now rests in a special place in my Danso 7070

Jim

cladking · April 21, 2007 8:01AM

I used to collect the buffalo nickels like that.

Now I search the moderns but especially the quarters and I still feel
like a kid in a candy store or on Christmas morning. Almost every day
can have that moment when you open up your bag of candy from Hal-
loween.

You can recapture the feeling in many ways but this is what works for
me.

PerryHall · April 21, 2007 9:00AM

I remember my first real coin. It was a Saint and I bought it mail order for $47. It was a nice coin and it would grade MS64 by todays standards. I sure wish I still had it even though I have many saints that are better than this coin.

Longacre · April 21, 2007 10:25AM

Yes, I remember. When I was a kid my father found an old jar filled with old nails that used to be my grandfather's. For some reason we dumped out the jar, and inside was a large cent! It was very very worn, but it was a highlight to me. I spend many hours trying to figure out the date (yes, it was that worn).

foundinrolls · April 21, 2007 2:58PM

Hi All,

I still get that thrill everytime I pop open another roll of coins or dig into a bag or box of cents or halves. I won't find any bust halves but you can't beat finding a three cent piece in a roll of dimes. It's fun finding the occasional IHC or Liberty Nickel and although the conditions of the coins wouldnt win any prizes, In the past ten years I've put together a set of Buffaloes minus 5 or 6 coins. I've put together a nice set of Lincolns too.

You can still get a kick out of the hobby evn if you have a million dollar collection. Searching through rolls or bags of coins is a treasure hunt every time!

Have Fun,
Bill

Shamika · April 22, 2007 12:52AM

I remember my dad would occasionally bring home a roll of Jefferson nickels and a roll of Lincoln cents on the day he got paid. I'd run to my room and bust open those rolls as fast I could carefully searching the contents of each. Finding a prevously missing date was always cause for great excitement!

One day my dad brought home a bank bag of $50 of Lincolns

. It weighed so much that I could barely pick it up. All I found in it was a 1930-P and a few dates from the 1950's but it was still great fun. This was 1977.

foundinrolls · April 22, 2007 3:43AM

The world of varieties has opened up the doors to a new way of searching through coins. The folks that are looking for the wheats will probably get frustrated after awhile. There are still plenty of them out there, but they aren't the only treasures to be found.

Looking for repunched mintmarks, doubled dies, Wide AM and Close AM varieties, for example make the searching through cents that much more interesting.

Half dollars provide some opportunities to discover some great die varieties. There are more things to look for than the 1974 D DDO Kennedy. There are DDOs and DDRs that would knock your socks off. In fact, If anyone here is sitting on a pile of 40% or 90% silver Kennedys (not literally as that could be painful), They are probably sitting on some great varieties right now.

I'll post some pics later.

There are great coins to be found if you look closely.

Thanks,
Bill

Myqqy · April 22, 2007 7:51AM

Thinking about this thread again, I remember a particular coin from when I was about 10 at the local shop. I bought an 1853 seated dime, probably graded about vg, and I remember being blown away by the possibility that abraham lincoln might have used this dime to buy something for himself...

Remember that feeling?

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