Anyone switch focus from modern to ancient or vice versa?

Since both areas have their own unique set of qualities and drawbacks, I am very interested to hear from those who's main focus has changed between the two, and why?

 

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I only collected modern growing up & when I got back into collecting in 2008, I stuck with modern. But ancients bit me & I have devoted more to ancients then moderns.

BUT! I do collect moderns still, only world though. Too many lovely world moderns to ignore just because they are "modern".

But U.S....no U.S. has entered my collection in 6 years, aside from a silver find in coinstar or something.

 

From Modern to Ancients, and will never look back! Modern machine made (so what!); THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS considered scarce or rare (LOL, I have several ancients that under 20 pcs are known); mundane; minor-minor issues in manufacturing are ridiculously sought after (artificial excitement); MILLIONS to BILLIONS made - just like McDonalds; perhaps in one word: BORING.

Maybe I have been in mass manufacturing for too long (37 years), but today's minting process for coins does NOT excite me. It is all Marketing hype...

 

My focus was moderns, and has been steadily shifting towards ancients. I now have a few!

 

I have a few moderns that were given to me when I was young, but I never really got excited about them. I purchased my first Ancient, a Marcus Antonius legionary denarius in 1981 and have only collected Ancients since.

 

I collected moderns when I was very young through until my 20's ... and then life kicked-in and I needed money for other things!! (food & rent for example)

... and now that I'm getting older, more gray and more settled => I seem to have some sweet coin-cash ...

=> and once I discovered ancients were so much cooler and so much less expensive than moderns, it was a no-brainer!!

 

Hasn't this topic kinda come up before?
SO,
I collected modern U.S & World on & off for 25-30 years. I still have them, well 98% of them anyway.
My collecting has always been history driven because yes I like to study history, always have even as a little kid.
I always thought ancient coins would be expensive & out of my league. That is until around a year and a half ago. My focus is from then been ancients.
I have to admit though I still collect world bullion and for some reason I don't understand everytime I see an AU or BU U.S war nickel I have to have it. Also Civil War era coins and currency, oh ok, Civil War era stuff to not just money.

 

Like most people in my country I started out collecting US coins when I was about 6, but unlike most I soon branched out into World coins. When I was about 14 I discovered ancients and fell in love with them and the history behind them.

I work at a coin shop that does mostly US coins, so I don't think I could collect them in the evening after working with them all day every day. Thankfully I don't want to, ancients are my true love.

 

I originally started by collecting pre-decimal Australian currency at a young age. My grandmother gave me a head start by gifting me her collection. She had the foresight to store away lots of it when we moved to decimal currency in 1966.

Although I had an interest ancient coins (greek and roman) from an early age, I mistakenly assumed they were unaffordable and / or exclusively in museums. It was only as an adult that I discovered the truth and began collecting them.

Later, I recommenced collecting modern coins - proof sets. Mainly because I would read about proof sets but as a child never owned one.

The novelty wore off quickly as it did not give me the same satisfaction as collecting ancient coins, so I sold almost all of my modern collection.

Today, I have no intention to collect anything other than ancients.

 

Moderns is where I make money to collect ancient coins.

Still need to sell a few so I can comfortably afford to make the deposit for my study abroad in France.

 

I started out with bullion, got interested in U.S...got more interested in ancients have collected them since 2013. I still collect modern stuff - U.S. military trade tokens (concentrating on Air Force tokens), military payment certificates, chits, and would one day like to add a sutler token and sutler scrip. But that's it. Ancients and that other stuff. I do not like slabs/slab mentality, stickers...minor errors. To each their own.

 

I started collecting US coins back in the 1960s. I was probably 8 or 9 when my grandfather gave me my first Indian Head penny. I started filling those blue Whitman albums--first with pennies, and then with other coins--that I pulled from circulation. Back then you could still get a Mercury dime or Liberty Standing quarter, even an occasional Indian Head penny in your change. Sometimes I would go to the local bank and buy a roll or pennies or nickels, pull out a few keepers, replace them and then swap the old rolls for new ones. Anybody remember those days?

Eventually I got into high school and rock and roll (and booze and pot) and lost interest. Life staggered on.

Fast forward 30 years to the early 1990s: my mother is cleaning out closets and getting ready to sell the old home, so she sent me a box containing my old Whitman albums, most of them still containing a few old coins. One of my kids who was around 9 or 10 at the time and latched on to them. We started going to the local coin collectors' group to swap coins, filling the holes in my old albums--as a teenager I would frequently raid the quarters and halves albums for spending money--and even starting new collections. I was a graduate student with three kids at the time. We didn't have much money, but back then you could buy a common Mercury dime in worn condition for $.50 and a Liberty Walking half for $2. We also discovered eBay, which was still in its infancy, and we would occasionally buy coins via the internet.

The problem with collecting US coins on a tight budget is that you quickly fill up every slot in the albums except for one or two key coins, which cost hundreds of dollars. Within a couple of years we had arrived at that point. We'd go to coin conventions and gawk and droll but leave empty-handed. (I remember one time I broke down and bought a worn, beat-up US penny from the 1790s for $30. What a HUGE splurge that seemed at the time.)

Then one night I discovered ancient coins on eBay. I'd always been fascinated by ancient Rome. I saw a coin of the emperor Constantine, an XF campgate. On a lark I bid $8 on it, and I won it. Hmmm: $8 for a 1,600-year-old Roman coin, or $700 for an 85-year-old US penny? To me, there seemed to be no comparison. I was hooked, and I've been collecting ancients ever since. (My son still has our US collections. I don't know if he still actively collects or not, but I haven't been able to interest him in ancients.)

 

Don't think you will get many "vice versa" replies in the Ancient Coins forum.

 

Gee, I wonder why?

 

I switched my focus to US type collecting and ancient Chinese coins for the same reason. Then I got a fanciful idea that ancient coins were a lot cheaper than US coins, so I decided to branch out a little bit. What I saw was a culture shock; most of the interesting coins were in the hundreds of dollars, while I was used to paying less than $1 each for my Chinese coins. But If I look at a Julius Caesar denarius for $500, I would hardly hesitate in comparison to a $500 Morgan Dollar. The denarius just has a lot more character, and far fewer people have one.

Plus my favorite $300+ Morgan dollar I got for $17. No need to pay up.

But I still collect US coins as a type set. It is still interesting, and you are not paying up because a coin was embossed in a slightly different way than the rest.

 

Once I discovered ancients, I started buying uncleaned coins. This proved to be a great way to begin collecting. They usually cost between $.80 - $1 each, there was very little risk of counterfeits (at that price, why bother?), and I was compelled to learn a lot about ancient coins and ancient history just to figure out what I had.

 

I built a set of Walking Liberty half dollars, a set of Standing Liberty Quarters, Buffalo nickel's and started on Seated Liberty coins and ealy half dollars along with other US coins. One day I was looking at my WL half set thinking about upgrading a few when I realized that $800 1921 looked just like that common 1941. Same with all the other US coins. What's the point of putting together sets of almost identical coins? I haven't bought a US coin in 5 years and have sold most of them to fund ancient and medieval/early modern (1500''s or so).

 

I also tired of collecting the same design (completing sets) with the only real noticeable changes being date/mm. I have decided that just one nice coin of each type I like is good for me. I am trying to get into collecting some ancients, but I'm finding that my taste for both high quality,and designs that I like, price me out. I'm not giving up though.

 

Isn't this basically true for moderns as well?

 

Some of the Non-Circulating Legal Tender coins are quite pretty, as are some of the designs for the cheaper modern coins.