What Started Your Love Of Coins?

Hello Again,

Here is a question I would like to pose to the rest of the board,
What Coin Or Series Started You On Your Road To Collecting?

As for myself, My grandfather owned a Coin & Stamp Shop here in my city, and on my 8th birthday, he took out one of those famous Whitman blue folders for Indian Head Cents, and let me have the run of his common's bin. What a great time that was, and I still vividly remember sitting with my head in my hands, wondering who might have held these coins.

How about You??

Barry

 

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As with most, my Grandfather sparked my interest in coin collecting. My Grandfather was a big part of my life until he passed away when I was about 7 or 8. He spent most of his time gardening and playing with his coins. With him being such a big part of my life, it was only natural that I'd acquire his interest in coins. I still have an old whitman folder that has my pre-school ability hand written name scrawled across one of the pages.
When he passed away, all of the coins were put up and by that time, we actually lived across state from him. I still had an interest in coins but no one to guide me along with it so it fell to the way side for many years until my Grandmother had my Grandfathers extremely large collection of mostly lower end stuff distributed between 6 of us (his kids and grandkids). I immediately was bit with the collecting but again. That was about 7 years ago and there has not been a day go by since that I haven't thought about coins.
Jason

 

One of my ouncles is a sailor. When I was 16 he started bringing me change from his trips around the world. My futher was also bringing me to a local fleamarket where I was allowed to dig in junk boxes and spend a couple $ on coins. At the age of 18, I went to one of the coin dealers I new and asked how much he was going to buy my jar with doubles so I could buy other coins I missed. When I heared the price I was getting, I said "hey, if I sell those piece by piece like you do, I will get 10x that ammount of money".. I asked another dealer the same question and explained to him my "interest" to sell them piece by piece. He told me I could put them on his table and sell them myself if that was going to get me more money! A year later I knew what I'd like to do better.... become a coins dealer!! 10 years later, I am still not a full time coin dealer but still want to help this great hobby and become a full time coin dealer!!!!

 

My father got my interest piqued at a young age, however, after his death my mother gave his collection to my younger brother and he spent the coins. He was probably 6 or 7 at the time and didn't now. I was away inthe service as was my other brother. I was heart broken when I found out but what you gonna do.Can't killem all you can do is love em. Thats when I started collecting on my own over 30 years ago. Better watch out will give my age away. I sold most of my coins during the big silver boom of the early 80's made a decent profit. Started right back collecting after the great fall. Been at it every since. Hoping for another Hunt Brothers. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

coinman, i'm 18 now and am thinking about becoming a coin dealer full time, in 5 years a shop that i go to the owner is going to retier(sp?) and i get to say yes or no before he offers it to anyone else, i'm thinking about it but thats alot of work, need to save my money now so my lone isnt' to big. Anyway i got into collecting when i was 6 years old i got a lincon penny book for chistmas and started going through change, the rest as they say is history.

 

I think my background with coins is the most common one.I began as a kid with Lincoln Cents.A family friend collected them and showed me his Whitman folder.Before that a coin was a coin :roll: ,but I learned about dates and mintmarks and before long I was working on Cents and Nickels.
Once you get hooked there's no turning back!that was 37 years ago 8O ~ Jim

 

It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand

I learned as a teenager to value gold (and silver) as the store of wealth and to understand wealth as the product of human intelligence. I saw Morgan Dollars and such but they did not grip me the way California Gold did. I stared for long minutes time and time again at a dealer's display in a downtown arcade. I hoarded silver coins from circulation when clads came in. Then, in 1972, I bought my first sovereigns.

I did not care who was on the coins -- and I was usually disappointed when I found out. I prefered bars, Engelhards usually, in gold and silver. Coins were only bullion to me and tainted products of evil governments, at that. Gold bars and silver rounds were honest money. (I regarded paper money as the work of the devil. :evil: )

About 1992, I put together a propossal to my employer to issue their own sales tokens, good for $1 on their $100,000 industrial robots. They did not take it up, but the work got me interested in tokens and I collected some examples from Major Corporations.

What really knocked my socks off was later in 1992, my daughter was about 12 or 13 and the Michigan State Numismatic Society convention needed pages to work as runners for the show. She went with the coin dealer I had worked with, through, and for over the years. Dropping her off and picking her up, I saw that I could afford ancient Greek coins. I was amazed! 8O I knew about Romans, but like US and German and so on, they did not impress me. But ancient Greek coins were a cultural context I could relate to.

I did nothing for about six months. Then, I saw a rerun of Carl Sagan's COSMOS lecture, "Backbpne of the Night." It blew me away and I began collecting ancient Greek coins by the times and places of famous philosophers.

I branched out. I collected US Type (all the Mercs from bags of Circs except the 1916-D and a couple of the semi-keys I wanted in better grade), World, paper, etc., etc., etc. I wrote about 50 articles, won some awards, and went to work for Coin World.

And then, something snapped, or went out, or something. I stopped caring about owning coins. I had the knowledge. That was more important, just as the scabbard was more powerful than Excalibur. I sold off my collecting in two large lots to the dealer I had worked with, through, and for.

I kept a few, about 10, not the most expensive by any measure, but the most interesting. For instance, I have a Deep Cameo Proof 70 Roosevelt Dime. The coin is not worth what it cost to slab it. And I hate FDR as a fascist dictator. But it is a perfect coin and you gotta like that!

 

My story is similar to most...started collecting wheats out of circulation, and then my grandfather gave me his collection of wheats, Indians, and a few coins he picked up during the war (big II) during his travels. I was hooked! I was into it for a long time until I discovered boys That took up just about all of my attention for a period of years, until I finally settled on the perfect specimen. :wink: Now I have the time to devote to my first love, and I am back with a vengeance. My biggest problem is that I want it all! I have way too many coin interests.

 

My experience is the same as Chrysta's...except for the discovering boys part. I discovered girls.

For years, what I was left by my Grandfaher sat around in a closet and I would look at it from time to time and it fascinated me quite a bit. However, I never thought I could afford to collect anything.

Then the State Quarter program came along and through that I discovered Ebay and saw that there was a tremendous amount of stuff that I could afford!

 

My Father got us our first Whitman's. I wasn't lucky enough to inherit anything from my grandfather. I abandoned collecting until about 1999 and have collected in spurts since then. Then after Daddy passed away I started up again, maybe just to pass the time and my interest has really peaked.

 

Mine was a 1944 mercury dime I found in a cash register at work back in 2001

 

My beautiful wife saves all change that I bring home, It adds up in no time to hundreds of dollars. She ended up with a hand full of Merc dimes, silver quarters, and some Walkers (that someone had given her as a gift). I decided that if she was going to treasure these old silver coins they would need something that would perserve and protect them. That first trip to the coin shop is what did me in, I had no idea that you could acquire such beautiful old coins. The dealer got me started on ASE's, but it was when I saw my first proof set that I knew I was in trouble. Then it was Mercury's and silver Kennedy's.
Now I'm into silver BU years sets.
Is there no end to this sickness. Will I ever regain my will power. No I'm doomed, doomed I tell you.

 

Through my dad, and I'm back because of my daughter...

[edit] Duh, I suppose I should read the entire question before responding. Thalia and I both started in the "traditional" way, with Lincoln Cents, a generation apart. I quickly branched into World Coins and the 20th Century Type Set and Thalia became most interested in coins with Queen Elizabeth on them.

 

WOW---what an old thread!....
I can't really say what it was---my dad always had some coins but for investment than anything really---when I started I wasn't really in it for money---I joined a forum and have stayed with it going on 6+ years.

Speedy

 

I found a Buffalo Nickel in a Hardware store when I was 5 and have been hooked ever since. My grandpa collected when he was alive, but I never got to meet him, as he passed away when I was 1.

It's been a fun and educational road ever since. 12 1/2 years running. Boy, where has time gone.

...and yes Speedy I 'm surprised this ancient thread got revisited, from 4.5 years ago.

 

I started out with...surprise...lincoln cents. My cousin had made a halfhearted attempt at a whitman folder. For whatever reason I kept asking him to look at it, something about the age of some of those cents got me into the history of it all (what ELSE was happening in 1911 when this coin was minted, etc). Anyway it was a small step to start hunting myself, this was 30 years ago so wheaties were more frequent in change, plus my uncle gave me unfettered access to his cash register at the pharmacy (oh the joy of a silver dime or quarter!).

 

not one other person I know collects coins, most of my family and friends are, in fact, conspicuously non-collectors and care little about my hobby. I am a designer and I oddly enough have a long story how I came to collecting coins and it involves 'I, Claudius', Art History and general love for portraits, history and art (etchings more tham most).

 

Coinshooter:

When My my three-year term enlistment with the Army was up at the end of 1957 I brought my fiancee to Ohio from New Jersey, and married her. My father had died while I was overseas in Berlin, Germany. His brother, my Uncle, attended the wedding and gave me some coins he had and a small coin catalog put out by B. Max Mehl of Texas. I soon joined two coin clubs and started one of my own with a few members of another local club.

Clinker

 

Same here

Regards
Ben

 

When I was a kid, there were a lot of canadian coins circulating around. I don't know why because for the most part it is rare to see one anymore. I started to collect them out of my parents pocket change. I was amazed by them because they came from so far away. My cousin and uncle collected coins, and my grandfather had many morgan and peace dollars that he saved from before the Depression. He never had a bank account in his life, and the silver dollars were his "savings account." This made me realize that coins came from far away times as well as far away places. My interest in coins was resurrected a few years ago from a series of economic/investment studies that got me interested in the now extinct age when money actually had intrinsic value, so I restarted the collecting hobby with mostly silver [and some gold] coins. I have to admit that I'm still more interested in how old a coin is, where it came from, what it is made of, and whether or not I can get it for a bargain price than I am about the condition, and I'm perfectly happy with circulated coins. Circulated coins contain more magic anyway.