The first coin i ever collected...

"...we didn't know they were rare, swapping duplicates, etc." That's how we grew our collections when I was very young. We had informal swap meets. Sort of a coin club. You might trade 2 of these for one of those. It was more judged on the degree of difficulty than the scarcity or market value. Everyone helped each other.

 

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Great stories! I was much older when I started looking at coins. My Great Grandparents live in Great Britain before and after WW 1. I never knew my Great grandfather. He was killed in France. But my father gave me some of their coins. He gave me a 1921 Half Penny, a 1917 Penny, and a 1938 Three Pence. From my father's years in WW II, I got a New Zealand 1941 Bronze Penny and from India, a 1944 One Half Rupee and a 1943 Anna. I'm not much on foreign coins and I'm sure they're not worth much, but I got about 30 Walking Liberty Half Dollars and 20 Morgan dollars. Most of them were after he was killed in a car accident. I treasure anything I have of my family's.

 

My collecting started 60 years ago when I was 4 or 5. My dad took me to his workplace, a small candy and tobacco wholesale house. I was short enough to see a few dozen pennies under the packing table. Treasure! I thought. I scooped them up and showed them to my dad... sure that it was finders-keepers. But he told me to take them to the boss... who thanked me but kept them. I was really upset until that night when my dad gave me the pennies he had "bought" from the boss. It was the steel pennies that really caught my interest and later hopes that collecting would make me a millionaire....that didn't happen but I've enjoyed collecting ever since.

 

1986 huh? The year my mom was born

 

Youngings , lol

 

Wow. I have a granddaughter born in 1986.

 

Wow, some great stories here...... @Derrick Combs, thanks for starting this & for an excellent 1st story.

I can't say what my first "collected" coin was, because when I started, I thought I was "saving" coins. No one in my family or circle of acquaintances "collected" coins (but stamps were a thing).

I "saved" certain coins that attracted me (usually, shiny & new) but I remember my interest really being piqued when I acquired my first new '59LMC (I was 10) & the fact that you could actually see Abe sitting inside . I suppose that is when my "savings" turned into a "collection". Soon after, I discovered I could actually go to a bank & trade a paper dollar for a silver dollar!!!

I guess I could say the '59LMC was the first to kick off my "collection", & I'm certain I still have it, but I have several & I'm not sure which was first.

 

86 hehe I entered Navy Boot camp in 86.. a very good year for me

 

Thread got me to thinking about my young collecting days. I managed to use my newspaper route earnings to assemble quite a stack of worn slick V-Nickels. I spent my afternoons after school at a little coin shack and the owner took a liking to me. He probably gave me most of that stack of slug nickels..... I saved up and bought a Whitman V-nickel book with lofty ambitions of filling it with my prized slugs. The Whitman folks were kind enough to pre-plug the 1913 hole for me which set me off to the library to figure out what the deal was with the 1913. I was so obsessed with that 1913 nickel, I had dreams of acquiring that nickel as a youngster.

 

Remember those days? We had to go to the library to get info on anything. I would stop at the book store and browse coin books like the red book for info.

 

Very nice stories here. 1986 is the year my son was born. My second child, first was my daughter in 1984. I don't remember my first coin but do remember them being Cents and "Buffalo" Nickels. I do remember trying to fill my Whitman books with cents, nickles, dimes and quarters. When I headed off to college, I left the books at home, so as not to loose track of them. Later when my folks moved a few times, they either became misplaced or confiscated by my younger brother. He didn't do the college thing. I didn't save half's at the time. You could get 2 candy bars and a 16 oz Pepsi and get change back. I started back up in the early 70's when my neighbor, also my boss, started collecting for investment. He was a Mobil dealer in Southern California. He had a system and set about collecting Morgan and Peace dollars. His system consisted of heading to Las Vegas with cash in hand. He would play all the dollar slots at the older casino's on Fremont Street. Back then, they still took dollar coins and paid out silver dollar coins. Mostly Morgans. He'd keep everything he won, bring them back and we'd sort through them. Ultimately, this became part of the down payment for the ranch he bought when he and his family, moved to Eau Claire, WI. He got me back into coins and the story continues to this day. I still collect Morgan's and working on a circulation set. Happy collecting..

 

My grandparents lived in Chicago in the 1950's and my grandfather was a salesman for a French company.

In 1956 his company sent him and grandmother to Paris for a two-month tour of western Europe. They flew from the US to Paris and back to the US.

I was eight years old then and my grandmother gave me the French coins she brought back.

I was fascinated by the "foreign" coins.

One of them:


France 100 francs 1956
Copper-nickel, 24 mm, 6.0 gm

 

When I was a kid I got an IHC as change from the ice cream man. I had never seen one before and I had to ask my dad what it was. We're talking early 1960s here. And I remember all the silver Washington and SLQs my mom used to give me for lunch money...if I only knew back then...

 

I'm truly relishing the heartwarming stories of everyone's foray into our shared love of coin collecting. I know I've told this story here in other threads, but this thread obviously beckons for a repeat.

My grandmother was the catalyst to my coin collecting. One day in the late 60's grandma was doing some spring cleaning, and I helped. I was probably 7, 8 maybe 9 y/o. She came upon an old handbag buried deep in her closet. Needless to say we opened it and much to my surprise we found two nickels. Not knowing anything about coins grandma proceeded to tell me they were an older style coin no longer minted, called buffalo nickels. She offered them to me. And I gladly accepted them.

Seeing my enthusiasm grandma thought the time was right to teach me about silver coins versus clad coinage. She showed me her hoard and began giving me pre '64 silver. The passion has never waned.

 

Grampa gave me and my brother each an 1880-O Morgan and a penny album (like this one) about half full with only the 22-D, 24-D semi-keys. Filled the rest myself except the 09-S VDB, and my 14-D has a hole in it.

 

1912 S V Nockel

 

Thank you all of these wonderful stories. I can almost picture them and they're heartwarming.
My 1st coin memory would be of my dad in his room getting ready for work, putting on cologne and getting his cufflinks out (1971 and I was 8 yo) and he showed my an 1883 Morgan he kept in his drawer that he dug up on a chicken farm he worked on as a teenager. For days after that I kept asking to see it, so he gave it to me. I was hooked. I got into world coins as an adult because of my time in the Army.

 

Very nice story you shared with us today.
So sorry about your dad's passing at such a young age for your entire family. I'm sure that hasn't been easy. He's sounds like he was a very caring man, and father - took the time to share with you enough that his words stayed with you and fueled your passion for coin collecting, to this day. My grandpa was the same.

 

You guys, so many responses. Taking time to read them all. Love these stories. The memories it helps bring back. Even things long forgotten if only for a moment...