Just wondering what got everyone into collecting and how long you have been collecting. I started about a year ago. I was at an Antique mall and bought a couple Walking liberty Half Dollars. Then I bought more, and more and now I am always looking online for coins as well as hunting in shops on the weekends.
My grandfather, in 1986 or 87 he sent me a box with 25 pounds of wheat cents (thats about 3675-3750) it also included 4 cull large cents (one 1835 with a hole, one 1852 with a hole and 2 1796-1807 type without readable dates) and an old roman copper. Once I started sifting through the coins, that was it I was hooked!!!
My Dad did :hug: He would tell me how he would go to the bank and get rolls of halves and dollars and dimes, and how he would find silver coins in all the rolls, well all the rolls were all silver. That got me a little inquisitive, the next day I went to the bank, bought $200 in dimes, not a darn silver coin. BUt I kept at it, and if I could describe why coin collecting is so fun in one word, I would say "ADDICTIVE!" When you get one coin, you realize how many you don't have, then you get more and more and more and more and......... thats how i got started :hatch:
My father collected coins and when I became interested we would go to shows together. I started in the usual way-- Whitman Lincoln Cent folders-- and ended in perhaps the usual way, frustration at hitting the financial barrier to completing the series (uh, 1909S VDB on an allowance?). Then my daughter became interested, and the cycle repeated...
What got me started---one word......COINS! My dad had some coins---some times he had gotten good deals and sometimes not so good deals....I had always seen them and had a few myself but they were more of an investment I guess you would call it---and for a little guy it was a large investment. Then about 6 years ago I got some coins at a coin shop just so I could look through them....then I started getting rolls of Wheat cents---the dealer would let me bring home bags of wheat cents and go through them and pull out any I wanted....all I had to do was to put back one for each one I took out. Then as time went on I wanted to complete a set so I went to Franklins....a good friend that I met online offered to send me a coin and it was a PF66 Franklin graded by ICG---that coin is still in my PF66 Collection. After about 3-4 years grading and such were more of an interest with me and I started to look for the harder coins to complete sets.... Now I'm where I am....and I see no turning back! coins have me hooked.... Speedy
My older brothers were casual coin collectors when they were kids, and eventually I recieved a box of coins as a "hand-me-down" about a month or so ago and I ended up getting fascinated in collecting coins.
I started out by finding Australian & Fijian 5c.,10c.,& 20c. coins in change.Here in New Zealand,I used to always find Sixpences,Shillings,& Florins in change,as the Sixpence (6d.) was legal tender as a 5c. coin,the Shilling (1/-) was legal tender as a 10c. coin,& the Florin (2/-) was legal tender as a 20c. coin.I used to commonly find these in change very often,not so today.After the end of July,new New Zealand coins will be issued.As from the end of October,the old coins will no longer be legal tender.The 5c. will cease to be struck. I have been collecting since 1986,when I was 9.I started to branch out into collecting foreign,but now,I am sticking to collecting British Commonwealth.Eventually,I will be offloading my foreign coins online,& ploughing some money into buying more British Commonwealth coins & notes.I am aiming to buy my own laptop computer as well,so I can work from home. Aidan.
I found a 1920 Buffalo Nickel in a hardware store when I was 5 and knew that it was different. I was inspired to find out more and have never stopped since. My word for why I collect is INSPIRATION(AL).
What got you into collecting?? Well I guess I have been collecting for about a year and a half now. A guy I worked with was always talking about old coins and his wife (working at a bank) always finding old silver for him. Then when I cooked dinner at work, sometimes he would pay with halves. I held onto the halves and come to find out one was silver, a 64.' So I decided to get an album to put these halves in and decided to get albums for all of the circulated denominations. Then started buying lots of wheat pennies and various silver on e-bay. No have been searching boxes of pennies and nickels from the banks. Fixing to get into halves. I wished I would have started earlier instead of baseball cards. I had a great grandfather that was into coins but I never was as a small child.
my father taght me to search rolls when I was in elementary school. i'd search cents to fill my Whitman folder and he'd search halves for silver.
My joining the hobby was fairly simple. I was always someone who liked to collect things growing up (original it was football cards). One day, when I was probably 12 or 13, I was helping my father clean out his gun safe. On one of the shelves in the back was a stack of blue books, they turned out to be old Whitman coin books. I was looking through them, not too seriously, I just thought they were interesting. I picked up the Lincoln Cents 1941-1974 book and remember thinking the 1943 cents were really cool - I had never seen them before. I asked my dad about them and he told me why there were zinc coated steel and how he had collected them when he was in high school and then for a little while after he was in the Army. Well, not long later, I bought a set of Whitman Lincoln cent books and began to fill them up. I think it was a combination of my interest in the 1943 cents and the fact that it was something in common with my father thay got me hooked on coin collecting.
My Uncle has been giving me coins for the past few years, but I am just getting an interest in coins.
when I was about 9 my uncle gave me a coin cent folder with alot of dates missing, I was obessed immdediatly and eventually filled in all the slots that I could find, then one thing led to another... and I moved onto large cents and so on.
I began in the early '80s. A friend gave me a Mercury dime and silver Washington quarter. I remember thinking how "neat" they were. Shortly afterwards, my church had a "hobby night." One of the members of the congregation was (unbeknownst to me) a former president of the Maryland State Numismatic Association. He showed me what I had and gave me a 1983 Redbook, which I still have. (I also still have the original silver quarter.) I've been hooked ever since.
I found an 1861 IHC in my yard when I was a child. Although there was a 10yr break to serve in the military and drink a lot, essentially I've been collecting for the 40 years since I found that coin. Sure wish I knew where it was these days.
Lived in a bad neighborhood. Everyone stole anything they could. My gang stole lots of coins from gum ball machines, candy machines, pay phones, newpaper stands. Trouble was how to get rid of so many coins. If we tried to spend them someone would wonder where they came from. If taken to a bank, the same thing. So I started to save them and soon became a coin collector. :smile :smile :smile
I was EXTREMELY bored, so my brother and I were taking all of his pennies and lining them up end-to-end by date. A 1940 coin caught my attention and ever since then, I've been cautious about what money passes me by. I eventually found a 1981 $50 bill and googled it. That brought me to this site and the rest you can figure out.
Grandma started letting my brother and me pull all the wheat pennies from her coin jars. We also got any silver she had in the jars. Dad started saving them - this got him interested. In the early 70's he started buying proof sets from the mint. Then once I was out of college (mid 80's) I started with proof sets and just about anything else the mint came out with. About two years ago we decided to look at other coins rather than the modern coins. Actually I was reading the forum for months before I joined. Actually I still have the very first coin I bought from the mint - 1982 proof geo wash. comm.
