How Did You Get Started?

How did you get started collecting coins?

In 1963 I took on a paper route. The paper was 25 cents a week, so I came into contact with a lot of coins. My dad had a coin collection, so he introduced it to me, and soon I was collecting my own coins.

 

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Father collected coins so now I collect coins.

 

Your story and mine seem one and the same.........

 

I hoarded “pennies” ( I didn’t know they were cents at the time) when I was a kid and filled a Whitman blue book with all the dates from 1959 to I don’t remember. I also had a couple of buffalo nickels. I thought it was fun but once the book was full, that was kind of the end for me. Fast forward 10 years, I was 22, stationed at Fort Bragg North Carolina and a SPC in the 82 Airborne Division! There was an awesome Chinese restaurant located on Yadkin road right outside the gate. Well I got off early one day and stopped there to eat lunch/dinner. When I was walking inside I noticed a Coin/Card & Comic store in the same shopping center. I decided to stop in there when I left as I had never seen a coin shop before. Well.. needless to say when I went in I was a bit overwhelmed! I talked to the dealer, he was retired air force and a little strange (I have since learned that all coin dealers and most collectors are a little… eccentric). Well I explained to him I was just looking and I liked the items more for their history than to really collect them. Immediately upon me saying that he showed me a genuine “piece of eight” (his term not mine). It even had chop marks! Which he told me was “very rare”. Well I purchased that coin for the small price of $200! I now know that he saw me coming from a mile away and will never have my business again. It was only worth about $45.00 but I didn’t find that out until years later. I ended up buying some silver eagles, a few silver bars and a few other coins from that dealer. I still remember taking that coin to everyone in my unit who would listen and telling them all about it. I would get the same deer in a headlights look that we all get but I was so excited I didn’t care. That day, that’s the day that I became a coin collector.

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I would also like to add a funny note about my Whitman coin album. When I was a kid, I didn’t have a coin book and had basically no knowledge about any of the cents I was putting into the book. When I got to the part for the 1982 cents and saw how many different one’s there were, I had no idea why. Everyone I asked told me they didn’t know either so I just filled it up with any 1982 cents I could find matching the mint mark. I figured if I couldn’t tell then no-one else could either. I remember the day I was reading my first coin book and learned why we had so many different cents in 1982. I just smiled to myself and vowed that I would put the correct one’s in the holes one day. It was almost 3 years later before that came true
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Hmm, for me it was a few things I guess-
1. My dad's friend bought me a mint proof set the year I was born. When I was older (although still a young child) I kept looking at it and thinking how shiny it was.
2. When I was still little my parents bought me a state quarter book so that I could collect the state quarters as they came into circulation...... that was really fun for me (I finally got my hands on the last one- Alaska!)
3. My dad has a coin and stamp collection from when he was a kid, plus coins that he had collected with my mom from other countries that they had visited

 

Inherited the interest at about 8 years old, and later the coins (father, maternal grandmother, paternal great grandmother). Also from Pennsylvania, where it seems coin collecting is expected of the citizenry.

 

I have worked in vending for the past ten years. Ocasionally I will find something interesting and buy it for face value. This is where most of my coins come from. I don't buy many. My best mind is a 64 toned jfk. I found it on top of a machine at a college. The dang thing wouldnt fit in a the slot for the student. When I think about it I feel bad for the parent they took it from. My oldest find is a 1905 liberty nickel.

 

In 1952, southern NJ was mostly farms. The family of one of my classmates operated a roadside vegetable/fruit stand adjacent to their farm. One day he brought one of the old blue Whitman folders to school, about three-quarters full of well circulated Barber quarters. That did it for me...

 

Interesting.

 

I got started in the mid 50's, while on a Boy Scout camping trip. We found a small amount of coins in a creek, at a natural crossing in a creek. We found many Stone Mountain half's, and many other coins of many donations. I found a 1875s 20 cent coin, and that what started me collecting coins. At first I could only afford coins in circulation. Mainly cents.

 

When I got back into it. Divorce and bills made going to a bar too expensive. So the early days of eBay and buying RAW Kennedy's was about all I could afford.
About a coin a week in the days before PayPal of writing a three dollar check and mailing it out and waiting to see what came back. Funny thing is I was able to sell almost all those coins when times got better and I moved into certified coins.

 

I don't know why I liked coins as a youngster but I did. I remember buying a state quarters album and filling it up with the current state quarters, I was about 9 or 10 when the first quarters came out. A few years later I bought some coins from Littleton which I now know was stupid and I paid a bunch of money for pretty much junk. Then for a few years, while in high school, I didn't really care about coins. Finally, last year at the age of 19 I randomly searched "gold coins" on google one day and I was hooked again. I think I'm going to be collecting for the rest of my life now.

 

As a boy of 7 years old when going to school lunch cost 25 cents.
I was given that money every morning to buy lunch.
Ill never forget some mornings i got 5 nickles and others 2 dimes a nickle and mostly a standing liberty quater.

I skip lunch to keep those coins and got a nice collection for my first 2 years in school.
But in 3rd grade my dad signed me up to work in the lunch room for my meals.
I still have most of those coins but i have spent or sold the ones haveing no dates.
I wished i could have gotton them all the way to 10th grade as at that time i was needed at home and dropped out of school never to return.
Those few coins paved the way for what i have today.
Seems strange to read someone post that you should never touch the surface of your coins.
Heck back then we didnt care about how they got handled and dont know if any here have played a game call throwing to the line where if your coin is closer to it you win all the coins used.
When i see the coins you post here and see words like wear pmd and look at what i saved those years i wonder if your coins lived in the real world i grew up in.
Mine show macine washed the wear from pocket change clanging togeather and how many times have i seen guys at old stores match for a drink and let the coin hit the floor to show the side it landed on.
No way your coins have the history these coins could tell but to me they are priceless.

 

You might want to budget yourself.

 

You bring back memories. They stopped making those standing liberty quarters in 1930, but there were still a few left in circulation in the 1960s.

 

My dad & 3 uncles got me started at age 6 with a Lincoln Cent folder. In 1960, at age 12 I got a Dayton Daily (ohio) newspaper route 7 days a week. I collected 67 cents per customer per week. Would you believe that some people would try to cheat you out of 67 cents per week back then. Dad got me Proof sets from the US Mint for $2.10 per set. In 1964, when the Kennedy half came out, I think we ordered 25 Proof sets. Sometime during my teen years, I found a VF 1937-D 3 legged Buffalo in my Dad's pocket change. About a year later, some guy offered me an Unc. $20 Liberty Gold coin for it. So I traded, so after all these years, I think I am ahead with the gold. Besides, I bought another 3 legger years ago, to make up for the original one. It has been a great hobby. Collect what ever you like and spend what you can aford. :thumb:

 

I was a little lazy collecting, when I was a paper boy.

I apparently traded a trade dollar for some other coin when the price of silver skyrocketed around 1980. I sort of regret that now, though that might be the reason I wound up with a 1909-S Indian head cent, whose value has more than quadrupled since then.

 

I have a tendency to collect what my parents gave me. Started with stamps as I started off collecting when I was young. Moved through into the comic book and baseball cards craze on my own.

Funny thing is when I got their coin collection I wasn't interested from the beginning. It wasn't until almost ten years later which was last year. I started getting into coins and I tried to stay away from paper money but failed miserably. So now I hoard... I mean collect a whole slew of stuff.

 

In 1958 I was a Boy Scout and started doing the requirements to get the merit badge. My mother ran the concession at the local ball park and brought home bags of coins to be counted and rolled each night. I used my lawn mowing money and allowance to buy whatever I found.

 

my dad got me started. he collected coins from his paper route in the 50s. when i asked about coins, he took me to a coin shop, bought some whitman lincoln cent folders and a red book, then went to the bank, got some rolls, and told me how to fill holes. that was my start at age 12. since then, i have expanded my collecting tastes to more than usa coins and filling holes in folders. i love my dad for getting me started on this hobby!!