The 2025 Late-Night Loungers / Workers Thread...

Hello all you late night people! It's "The Late-Night Loungers/ Workers Thread".
A thread all about Coin collecting in nature, hopefully.
This Evening or Morning depending on where you are is about you as collector. I want to know because I'm nosey. Scratch that. Umm... I mean because I care about how others collect and what they collect. How they are able to afford to do so. Most of my collection I am blessed to have because of family, friends (That means you) and the slow process of making purchases over my now 50 years of collecting. I started when I was 8 and was influenced by an uncle who had a collection.
So, what's your story as collector?
(Hoping to get back to Metal Detecting this Spring hopefully). Fingers crossed.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

It all started for me in 1974 at Bob's News and Books Store. One of the Coin publications I passed, showed photos of silver art bars on the cover. So I bought the magazine or newspaper, I don't remember who it was. Then I ordered the Old Ironsides bar from one of the advertisers-$5.00 plus 50c shipping.

There were two clues in that bar that I did not realize at the time: 1) Joining the Navy 2 years later and 2) Exonumia would be the only thing that would really hold my interest in Numismatics. Especially compared to date collecting a series. I honestly don't know how people do that.

David Schenkman once observed ( I believe on the Coin World podcast) That collectors who started out in coins and went to Exonumia tended to stay primarily in Exonumia. But collectors who started out in Exonumia [such as art bars] and went to coins tended to come back to Exo. It took me long time and a lot of disenchantment to go back to the beginning but I've been in Exo for about 20 years now.

BTW, Bob's News and Book Store is still in business although in a different location. And even the new location is only a few blocks from the old one.

 

You asked for it

Coin Collecting – My Story

Building a collection of circulated coins in “the good old days” was not all that difficult. All you needed was determination and dedication. If you think about it the total face value of 20th Century circulation coins is about $275. There were a max 5 different coins produced by each mint: Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter and Half. That is 91 cents. Given that most years there were three mints operating, that makes it $2.73 per year for a complete set for one year. Of course, some years there were 4 mints operating and some years only one or two. So, let’s just say that the face value of a complete Twentieth Century Circulation Set is $300. You now have determination and dedication but need resources (funding and adequate sources of coins).

There was a more than adequate source of coins at the time. Virtually any coin ever put in circulation was available. I even got a Twenty Cent piece in change one time. Looking at enough coins you would see Indian Head Cents, Liberty Nickels, Buffalo Nickels, Barber Dimes Quarters and Halves, Standing Liberty Quarters, Walking Liberty Halves, and the occasionally earlier stuff.

This all started when I was 5 years old, 1948. Our Aunt Mimi gave me two nickels, an 1883 and an 1885. Mom took me down to the local bookstore. I looked at some coin books. One of them indicated that the 1885 was worth $5. Wow, $5 for a nickel. I was hooked. That same nickel today is worth at least $400.

About the Twenty Cent Piece mentioned above: There was an old vegetable vendor that pushed a handcart down the alleys in our neighborhood. He sold produce out of his garden. One day mom gave me a Fifty Cent Piece and asked me to go out to hm and buy something. Mom said it would be Twenty-Five Cents. I gave him the half dollar and he gave me a Twenty Cent Piece. They were almost the same size a a quarter and only in use for a few years in the 1870’s for this same reason – confusion. Now, technically, the vendor gained Five Cents and mom lost Five Cents. As I thought, when I told mom about the mix-up, I was told to put it in my coin collection.

On another occasion. My brother Pat and I were digging a big hole in the backyard. We came upon an 1888 or 1889 nickel. The big brother (me) kept it. I’m the coin collector in the family. I held it for 40 years and then passed it on to Pat.

When I was very young my family and relatives helped with resources. Dad would get home from work very late sometimes. He was an Engineer on the RR. Every morning there would be some coins on the table from his pocket change. Relatives would hold anything that looked interesting and ask if I needed it. The other resource was your feet and a bicycle. The town was about 30,000 and most all kids walked or road a bike. Predators didn’t exist then as they do now.

Another resource was the informal coin club. There were a few other youngsters that were as interested as me. And, they had other sources in their own neighborhoods. We would get together from time to time and have a “swap meet”. We never were interested in making money, but we were quite aware of scarcity. We might have to trade several coins for one that is more difficult.

There were three Mom & Pop grocery stores very close to our home. I helped them around the store a lot, stocking shelves and coolers, cleaning, etc. I got paid a little and complete access to the cash register. As I got older, I would be a clerk in one of the stores. I am very serious when I say that the owners of these stores allowed me to walk in, open the register and search it anytime I wanted. The brother of the owner of one store saved Indian Head Pennies. He had coffee cans full of them hidden all around the basement. He and his wife were very old at the time. Sometimes as I walked by his house, I would see he and his wife working and would stop and help. I never asked for pay, that is just the way things were back then. However, occasionally he would open a can full of IHC’s and offer me a few. Yes, he would let me dump it out and look through them.

When I was 13, I began working as a pin setter at the local bowling alley. That usually paid about $6 a night during league times. A good source of income to feed my hobby.

The searching became routine for me. After school I would walk home and pass the shop that serviced juke boxes and pinball machines. Sometimes I would help with chores and roll coins for him. People using juke boxes and pinball machines were not critical about the coins they dropped in. Very good hunting ground. I would stop at the “Mom & Pops” to visit and search. If they needed help with anything I would always offer. A couple of nights a week the local amusement park was open. If I was available, I would ride my bike out there and help with minor chores. The rides were like 10 cents, 25 cents, etc. They always needed help rolling change. Then there was the bank on Saturday morning. My brother Pat and I would sit in the vault and roll coins for the tellers. We had free access to search and roll coins.

Plus, on most days, if you had a dollar, you could trade it for a Morgan or Peace Silver Dollar.

So, you see, getting all the coins up to the middle of the Twentieth Century (1964 when it all dried up) was more a matter of tenacity than money – not much more than a couple hundred dollars.

 

Really enjoyed reading that over coffee this morning. I hope generations to come can come back here, run across that story and imagine what life was like for a collector during those years.

My journey- (in a nutshell)

I got started about four decades after you in the 80s-90s and most of what I received were gifts. I liked coins and was fascinated by the Coin World Newspaper I'd get as a hand me down from a stranger I barely knew up the street. Between that and an occasional magazine, that was all the info I had. No internet, no real collectors in the family.
Most coins seemed out of reach and trying to understand the entire expanse of coinage was overwhelming so I mostly focused on sports cards for most of my youth. At that time any shop owner could convince you something was rare and hard to obtain because it actually was when you didn't have the internet to track things down.

How did I fund things? Well, I mowed lawns. Wheeled and dealed. Had a paper route. Helped contractors. By my early teens there was no place my friends and I couldn't travel by bicycle. No cell phones with us. Parents didn't really know where we were most of the time though we did spend a lot of time playing video games too.

I got a summer job at a factory in 1999. Got a big raise and it was the most I ever made up to that point... $7.00/hr. Gas was $1.33/gal. Even dropped to 0.98/gal. for a brief time.

It would be another 9 years before the passion for coin collecting came back to me again and has never left. I enjoy reading about coins as much as going to a show and purchasing one. Also like photographing coins because it enlarges them and better captures the art of their designs.

The current collection has just been a slow, gradual grind since 2008. Some years more active than others. I still receive one as a gift now and then but few people know I collect. Now it's become a relaxing escape to just think about coins sometimes. The NGC registry is a decent portion of my collection and gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Also a way to enjoy and share what I have without physically getting things out. It's a process now. If I get something for a registry set, document the label number, enter it in, photograph it , add it all to the set, maybe add a comment, and then there it is for me to bring up and look at any time on phone or computer.

 

@Vess1 Great story, thanks for sharing.

 

I started collecting when I was 6 years old, so that means that I've been at it for 70 years now. Can't believe how quickly the time has gone by but I've loved every minute of it. No regrets...not a single one, Sal.

Bruce

 

I've told my story so many times, I should just find one of those posts and copy/paste. Grandpa was the head librarian at the Chicago Tribune. Back in those days, major newspapers had extensive libraries. He was promoted when his predecessor passed away. The previous librarian had people all over mailing him coins, and the coins kept coming after he died. Other world coins probably came back with overseas journalists after WWII. I think grandpa knew he was dying from lung cancer (we didn't know at the time), so he sat down his five grandchildren at Thanksgiving and piled his collection on the table. These coins were all raw and in piles in a box. We each took turns picking a coin, and then after they were all passed out, did some horse trading. We at least knew that we should try to collect all the denominations with the same dates, so some trading was based on that. I was 13.

We took them home and were smart enough to put them in 2x2s and album pages. My two siblings and two cousins did the same. Their collections have sat untouched since 1972. To them, it's nothing more than a remembrance of grandpa. I may have ended up the same, but I picked up a coin magazine with price guides in the back, and found that my Canadian 1948 and 1947 Maple Leaf coins were worth around $2000. That was my wow moment. To be fair, my brother was also into it for a couple years. We were in the school coin club. We used lawn mowing money to buy a few coins at a couple Chicago shops. We earned $5 for mowing an acre of lawn. BU Franklin's were anywhere from 75 cents to $1.75. Gas was 35 cent a gallon.

I then worked in an ice cream parlor during high school. Some silver was still circulating (ca 1974-1977). I pulled a bunch of Ike dollars out of the till. The weirdest thing that came in was a crisp uncirculated 1935 $5 silver certificate. I always brought some money to work to swap out coins and bills.

A couple years ago now I finally submitted the best Canadian coins to ANACS mostly to protect them and put grandpa's name on the slabs. They had been in the same album and 2x2s for over 50 years. I think they all should grade a point higher (or more - I can't believe the 1947 ML 5c only got MS62) but it is what it is.

My collecting was dormant for decades. Then I went through a phase where I thought I would collect all the George VI silver from Canada, especially filling in gaps in grandpa's coins. A couple of coins pictured were not from grandpa but I attributed them to him anyway. Besides, I'm a Smutny too.

I took an interest in Barber coins when I happened to discover an undocumented dime reverse type introduced in 1900 and then modified again in 1901 to the reverse type mentioned in the guide books. I've gone on to having six articles published in the BCCS journal. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be a published numismatist. It's so much easier to discover things now because you don't have to have actual coins - there are thousands of images online you can examine on a screen. My collecting over the past five years has been almost exclusively weird Barber stuff. What's the next phase? Who knows.

 

I don't collect. I accumulate. I have way too many disjointed items to even say I have a collection. My kids are not going to know what to do with this stuff once I kick the bucket (strangely, I don't have any buckets).

 

I'm giving my stuff t the kids before it ends up on a table at a garage sale.
Today is my oldest sons' birthday (61). I gave him this USN 1943 Elgin Timer stopwatch from my stuff.

 

Were you an officer?

 

No, I just have a lot of stuff.

 

I'm right there with ya on that one! More of a hoard of junk than a true collection. That's why I'm trying to reevaluate what I really want to do, and figure out how to get rid of what I don't want. Organize and purge. Then, use the funds from the purge to get more of what I really want!