When I was finished highschool, I got a job with a lawncare outfit and had the means to buy coins. Stupid me, started into purchasing Franklin Mint Proof sets/ Proof gold coins. Back then I had no idea of auction houses/ had no reference books. I went to the CNA coin event with my Dad/ met a lot of dealers/ started admiring their display cases. From that day on, I read coin publications/ got in touch with auction houses like Paramount/ Stack's/ NFA/ Tkalec....rest is history. Anyone else have a similar story?
My family has a long history of stupidity regarding coins. My grandfather started it, buying mint sets and commemoratives from the 1950's onwards. He had an entire room in his house devoted to displaying those coins, though sadly I never traveled to see it. When he passed, they were all sold at auction and from what I gather, didn't make as much as the family had thought. I emulated him by also buying mint sets and commemoratives for the last 20 years. When I chose to sell them to begin purchasing ancients, I learned first hand how bad an investment they were. Luckily, I also invested in real estate, and I more than made up for my numismatic deficiencies there.
I think it just a process of time plus experience, and maturity, and luck (or lack thereof) that moves us in different directions when it comes to collecting and just about everything else in life. When I was young (ah, Jethro Tull) my natural focus was on US coinage. When I was really young an uncle gave me a box of pennies, that was the start. My dad, a music teacher, had juke boxes as a sideline. So, we would count the nickels, dimes and quarters collected from the boxes. I never kept any; the money was needed for other necessities. Well, by the time I was in college, a friend of mine showed me a Mexico gold 50 pesos, 1947 (the restrike year). It was the most beautiful coin I ever saw, aside from the Saint Gaudens $20 gold coin. So, I finally set aside some of the money in 1977 I earned working at Ford in that summer, and bought one, and a Mexican $20 gold coin (Aztec Calendar Stone coin). Both coins are long gone, but they did set the direction for me in terms of collecting, although I did start with US coinage and, yes, even some "limited edition" coins. But I never regretted that start. It's all an evolving process as I see it. Oddly, I still have the receipts for the two Mexican gold coins, found in the back of a 1974 Red Book that's been in the garage for years.
Coins are a hobby the better you get the better the profits. I started with the CPG and Strike it Rich, never found many coins that I wanted to sell.
When I was 9 or 10 years old I walked into a local hobby shop & spotted a selection of Whitman Blue Coin Folders for a variety of U.S. coins. I bought the Lincoln Cent folder for 35 cents & began that way. Mom was a bank teller & started bringing me rolls of pennies to go through a couple of times a week. It took me a year to fill up the folder but for 4 of the key dates . Then I graduated to Buffalo & Jefferson nickels. Dad was impressed with my progress & took me to a local coin show where he bought me a near mint state denarius of Septimius Severus for $15 & an American 1873 $2.50 gold coin, in AU condition for $30 . It snowballed from there .
Been there, done that, not with american though, but with french sets and private strikes... I'm feeling better now Q
I find the more books you read/ the more you appreciate "older" coinage. I just got a new book on Medieval gold from Spain 980-1516AD/ some of these coins i had never seen / heard off.
Sorry, but I don't consider collecting ancient coins "common sense." These are tiny little blobs of metal with an intrinsic value ranging from a few pennies, in the case of bronze coins, to at most a couple hundred dollars for gold. If anything, collecting ancient coins is the antithesis of common sense. It's an obsession. And I love every minute of it.
I agree with @gsimonel. What @panzerman is referring to is Hindsight. And Yes, I am also guilty of throwing Common Sense out of the window when it comes to collecting
When I get hit with common sense seems to an ongoing process for me. Whenever I look back I feel like a dummy, but in the present I always think I know what I'm doing lol
My 'common sense' in the 1950's said that I should never pay more than face value for US coins. I collected from circulation and traded duplicates at a local coin store. At first, the money went to coins I failed to find (I still have most of them) but soon I discovered that ancients had no face value so I could pay whatever I saw fit. Then I stopped searching US and got a job (to fuel my coin hobby?). Unfortunately that job was suggested to me by my draft board and paid under $100 a month the first month I was in. Poverty and a new baby drove me to sell all but three of my ancient coins in 1974 but my mother took my US (at face). When she passed, I got them back. She did not want the ancients. Today, I am faced with the same dilemma. My only child has no interest in ancient coins. I was sandwiched between generations that do not care!
I started collecting pre-decimal UK coins from circulation when I was a kid. Around 1970 you could find 100yr old coins such as young queen Victoria pennies. I'd clean them with ketchup (high vinegar content) to make them nice and shiny.
