If a young (or old) person wanted to start a coin collection today I would recommend Jefferson Nickels. There are hundreds of complete collections out there in the wild. There are hundreds of complete Buffalo collections out there if you don't mind restoring some. A person could, with some serious effort, collect all the nickels from 1900 to date.
Volume. But yes. Possible. I’ve enjoyed nickels over cents because of what you state here. Available participants waiting to be discovered.
My first 1950D came in the late 70’s hunting nickels in the back of our parents 1977 LTD station wagon. I recall one of us finding a shiny nickel. It sat unrealized for 40+ years. Amazingly it was kept in an old printers drawer with multiple divided sections for keeping the printing tools; the letters and numbers along with symbols. We picked one of the larger sections for the multiple 1950D’s we expected. Of course…it was the only one. 40 years later I realized this was an MS coin. Liberated 20+ years and held under a bed for another 20 years. After that, I searched around 15-20 boxes a year for about 5 years. Found another MS coin but accrued some wrapping machine damage and another fairly circulated specimen. So to this point I have built 3 full sets and I have a number of partial sets missing the 1950D and perhaps 1-2 War date/mm. The thing that we have in common are the numbers of high state specimens we’ve gleaned from circulation. Definitely items from a deceased collectors collection. Safe from further wear and tear.
