If you can remember it, what was that one special moment/experience that hooked you as a coin collec
coinguy1
Posts: 13,484 ✭✭✭
For me, it was probably when I was about 7 or 8 years old. One day, my stepfather brought home some coin albums and suggested to me and my brother that we see how many coins we could find in change to fill in the slots in the albums. I think it was the excitement and challenge of finding what was out there - and we went to great lengths to do that - with the added bonus of the knowledge that some of the coins were worth more than face value.
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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
"Bongo hurtles along the rain soaked highway of life on underinflated bald retread tires."
~Wayne
His father had been an Italian immigrant brick layer who specialized in cobblestone streets and would bring home Indian Head pennies he found in sewers and catch basins...that's what got my father interested in coins.
Commems and Early Type
for something from my family heritage. I looked at Russian and Hungarian items, not really looking for coins.
When I came upon this one
It screamed........ya....buy me
Since then never looked back, I was hooked
Its been a very exciting and strange journey.
It took me from gold World coins. Russian and Hungarian coins to US silver (Morgans)
and then toners of any type, after which I turned to tokens
CWT's, HTT's and Conders.
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CoinsAreFun Toned Silver Eagle Proof Album
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Gallery Mint Museum, Ron Landis& Joe Rust, The beginnings of the Golden Dollar
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More CoinsAreFun Pictorials NGC
I then began going to the Mt. Carmel rectory on Sunday afternoons sifting through the collection. I still have vibrant memories of all the great rennaissance coins that passed through tose eleven year old hands.
Collected and sold many times over the past fifty three years. Still enjoy it as much today as when I began.
Check out some of my 1794 Large Cents on www.coingallery.org
during the day and gave me a shiny new coin he just got from the mint near our house.
He told me to save it in an album and it would be worth twice what it was now smoeday.
Father always knew best, so I did and he was right and that started me on the road to
becoming a school waste control engineer. I still have that coin. Boy were my sisters jealous!
R.I.P. Bear
anyway ... that isn't what got to me right away ... oh yeah, I remember for a short period of time I thought they were really, really cool ... and I tried to learn more about them and even found some things as well as approximate values from the local five and dime newsrack, but it didn't hold a great interest for very long ... maybe six months? ...
but the box came back ...
In the spring of 1987 I was stationed at Lemoore working as an AT in an F/A-18 Squadron when my Mom sent me a small box of things from my childhood. Low and behold, in the bottom of that package was the old box of coins Tony had given me years before, along with probably the only two magizines I had ever had about coins. An old Morgan Dollar with an O mintmark, a couple of Walking Liberties ... Mercury Dimes and Indian Cents ... my memory of the day he had given them to me and the little I had found out came rushing back ... adn I guess something clicked, because now, looking back, my world somehow was slightly transformed at the kitchen table that day ...
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
went back the next month and bought 15 ounces of gold:
eagles
pandas
kangaroos
maple leafs
I was into it from strictly a bullion point of view.
Then I got a Morgan and Peace dollar from my mother after she passed away.
I was hooked.
Now I am like a junky, having to deal to support my habit!
I still have both coins although they are low grade (G to VG) examples.
When I was a young 'un my Grandparents always gave me cool, old coins to put in my piggy bank.
Bought my first Whitman when I was a Cub Scout. From that 1st Buffalo nickel, it was all about Love of old coins.
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
Every time Mom took me shopping, he let me look at them. Once I cried with the butcher was working the register...instead of Mr. Reich. I didnt get to see the large cents that day.
Ed. S.
(EJS)
Once upon a time there was a small cardboard carton and a piggy bank each filled with collectible pocket change.
Three early influences led me to fill those bygone containers of coins. It all started in the mid-1970's in Kansas. Around the corner from our tree-lined street, we had a neighbor who owned a metal detector. One summer, he and his wife took to inviting me and my younger brother and other neighbor kids to look for coins in their front and back yards. We'd pass that metal detector over the grass and swing it back and forth with him, listening for telltale electric squeals, and doggone it by and by we'd get a hit! He'd dig it up and there'd be something like a small roll of Lincoln cents that we could all share. Then, his wife would bring out glasses of iced lemonade, and we'd savor the moment with sips while sitting on the lawn. At the time, we never did catch on that he was planting those little coppers and trinkets just for us. But the thrill of the hunt and the celebration of the catch spurred me on. From then on, I always kept an interest in checking my pennies and keeping the wheat-backs to push into a simple Whitman coin folder. Checking my pocket change once around this time, my heart leapt when I discovered a 1919 Lincoln. It's age astounded me, and I didn't care that there were earlier Lincolns to be found. Finding something that old - 1919! - gave me the thrill of winning a rare prize.
The years and months after that, eventually leading up to the Bicentennial, were a lot of fun, as was that Bicentennial summer. Lots of colonial history, patriotic cheer, colorful parades, summertime picnics, and for the first time in my young life, coins with new designs were released into circulation. I was twelve that summer of '76. Ever after, I got a kick out of adding to a ceramic piggy bank all the 1776-1976 quarters, half dollars, and Ikes that came my way. Seeing that the reverse of the Eisehhower came in two varieties somehow fascinated me, especially since the version with big block lettering seemed harder to come by than the one with thin lettering. It helped that my brother and I started a paper route in 1977. The previous paper boy did only just enough to get by, I guess, because my brother and I got a big wind-fall of money from folks on our route who hadn't paid their newspaper bills in awhile. The change with which they paid often added to my hoard of bicentennials!
The third big excitement in my early collecting was a small stash of silver coins that a family friend gave to me and my brother.
Now this was out in western Kansas, on a nice ranch, surrounded by big sky. Well, more than a decade before, this girlfriend of my grandma's had gone on holiday in the 60's to a casino in New Mexico I think it was (or maybe it was Reno?), and when she came back, she kept at home a small bit of her leftover winnings from the slot machines. Much time passed, until once during one of our rare visits to her home, she suddenly decided to share with us her long-held stash. She now knew of our interest in coins, and felt that we could appreciate what she had saved and held aside all those years. And so out of the kitchen she came, surprising us with a little jar of money. It was probably less than $10 in face value of quarters and dimes that she gave us. But all were coins of shiny silver - like new, they seemed! - and to us boys it was a jar of real treasure.
Still, things moved slowly for years with some times that I was totally uninvolved in coin collecting. The internet really made it take off for me.
--Jerry
One day at the store as the clerk was giving me my ten Lincoln cents, one looked oddly different. I asked the clerk, “What kind of penny is this”? He told me it was a steel war penny and that is just the way they looked.
My friend, Jimmy Kinsey, told me his dad collected coins and maybe he could tell us about it. Off on the bikes to Jimmy’s house we rode, with my treasure in hand. Jimmy’s dad (whose name is lost to history) looked at it and explained that the war effort needed copper and so they made Lincoln cents out of steel in 1943. He then pointed out the mint mark and explained that the “S” meant it was made in San Francisco. I guess I looked very interested (I was) because he asked me if I would like to look at some cool stuff from his collection. I jumped at the chance. We must have spent a couple of hours there as he showed me a plethora of coins that until then, I had never seen. I was in awe, and had a million questions which he tried to answer. Finally he told me that a coin show was happening that Saturday and invited me to come along with him and Jimmy.
To a nine year old this coin show was amazing! Everywhere I looked were cases and cases filled with money. At one table a dealer asked me what I collected. I told him I hadn’t started yet, but I would probably save “Pennies”. He handed me a used Blue Whitman Lincoln Cent 1909-1940 coin folder and told me I could have it. Not only did he give me the folder, but it had about a dozen Lincoln Cents in it. The only stipulation was to come back next year and show him how many holes I filled. Little did Jimmy Kinsey’s father know, but he started me on a journey that has taken me down some magical roads for nearly fifty years. Where ever you are Mr. Kinsey, THANK YOU!
Recipient of the coveted "You Suck" award, April 2009 for cherrypicking a 1833 CBHD LM-5, and April 2022 for a 1835 LM-12, and again in Aug 2012 for picking off a 1952 FS-902.
<< <i>Probably when my older brother showed me how to magically restore the dates on old worn out standing liberty quarters and buff 's. >>
How did he restore the dates on the SLQ's? Nic-o-date works on the nickels but I've never seen anything that'll restore the dates on SLQ's.
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
Robert.
<< <i>This is a nice thread!
Aw shoot, and here I was gonna make a joke about the announcement.
As a kid in the late 1970s my Dad used to bring home $10-20 in rolls of cents or nickels from the bank near his office. Once a week or so, and we used to go through and save the wheat cents and try to fill some Whitman folders. I think the thing that clinched it for me was finding a couple of dateless Buffalo nickels in a roll, from that point on I was hooked.
Sean Reynolds
"Keep in mind that most of what passes as numismatic information is no more than tested opinion at best, and marketing blather at worst. However, I try to choose my words carefully, since I know that you guys are always watching." - Joe O'Connor
The older I get, the fuzzier the memories.
For me, I was an adult when I inherited a collection of coins from my aunt. (For anyone interested, here's an article called "The Penny Lady Story" about how I got started into coins which was published in a couple different coin publications.) I didn't know anything about coins back then so I took them to a local dealer with the intent to sell them, but when he gave me a price that I thought was pretty low, I decided I needed to learn more about the coins before selling them. But I had a husband, kids, and a full time job and didn't really have time to learn enough about each series, so I decided to concentrate on just one series and since I've always been interested in Native American history, I chose the Indian cent to study. That got me hooked.
The Penny Lady®
However my father was not pleased at all!
This was the look I got from him.
But like "meeting the eyes of a stranger across a crowded room," - as executor of my parents estate, I opened the lid of their safety deposit box, - and felt "love at first sight," for the second time in my long life.
https://www.smallcopperguy.com
There were bottles of liquor... I knew enought to stay out of those until I was older (but I still opened a few and took a sniff... which did NOT make me want to taste any). There were spare keys to dad's '65 mustang (knew enough not to touch those... well, at least not to put them in the ignition... well, at least not to start the car... well, at least not more than once ) There were magazines with pictures of naked ladies in them. Those I took a good look at! There were long kitchen matches, there were candles, there were a few old bottles of strange spices, there was a little box containing assorted nuts, bolts, nails, and fastener doo dads. There was a flashlight.
And there was a chipped ceramic cup full of old coins... ah, here was treasure!
Bicentennial coins were starting to come out, and I was starting to notice the dates on money more and more.
I will never forget the contents, as long as I live, I loved those coins and spent hours arranging them.
one 1921 morgan, 1922, 23, and 25 peace dollars. One 1951-S half. One each slick and dateless SLQ and WLH. One slick 1901 indian cent, 33 assorted date silver Roosies. 84 assorted wheat cents. And one 1959 British Halfpenny, you know, the one with young QEII on one side and the ship on the other.
The coins were from my great grandmother, and when I showed an interest, my grandmother and grandfather gave me more coins they'd saved, a couple more silver dollars, some rolls of silver quarters and dimes, a big jar of wheaties.
It wasn't long until I had a CoinAge from the magazine rack, then a redbook from the library, then Saturday trips with my dad in the Mustang down to the coin shop, where I'd spend my chore and gift money on my growing collection.
I sold most of the junk silver in 1979, putting the capital into type coins and a group of BU morgans... then put coins away at age of 13 (had different interesting things to spend disposable income on) sold most of the morgans in high school to fund mag wheels for the Camaro and ski trips to the mountains.
Rekindled interest in coins in about 1995, when finally had a bit of disposable income again to spend on things numismatic. Did most of my buying in the 1999-2004 time frame, and then the pressures of job and family once took me away from coins.
So now my oldest is 4... and there's a coffee cup of old coins stashed in the high kitchen cabinet, waiting for little hands and eyes to find.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>..and there's a coffee cup of old coins stashed in the high kitchen cabinet, waiting for little hands and eyes to find. >>
Baley, what, no car keys?
``https://ebay.us/m/KxolR5