What got you started?

What got you started with numismatics? For me, I was once searching through my pocket change and found a 1955-D wheat penny. I thought I was so lucky... What got YOU started? Was it a specific coin?

 

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I collected a little bit as a youngster but my serious collecting started when I got a job as a door to door milkman.

Got a lot of unusual money. At the time some were amazing finds. But by my standards today they were mostly common collectible coins. My favorite find was a MS 1938 Jefferson.
I knew it was a good one when I saw it without a magnifying glass and just using a flashlight looking into the change in an empty milk bottle.
They got 2 half gallons of regular milk which cost $2.30 total at the time.
Two ones, a quarter and that nickel.
I still have it from 39 years ago. I wrote "Jackson" on the 2x2 because that was the customers name. Should I dig it out? . . . . . yeah

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Well, I found it. It looks like I moved it over to this holder at some point. It isn't my best 38 but one of my favorites.
Took some poor pictures here tonight.
I had a note on it. Poss LG/SD which I think at the time, I didn't know much about doubled dies.
I see split serifs. Doesn't make much difference to me but I'll go look it up now.

 

My friends on my block were all doing it. It's one of the only good habits I picked up from them.

 

That die is a little in a manner of speaking past it. But I'll bet that sparkles like a diamond for it.

 

In the day, it boggled my mind as to why it was in a milkbox. It looks better than my pictures here, that's for sure. At least in my 39 yrs of holding it, it didn't get spots or green slime.

 

My Grandma gave me a 1927-D Peace Dollar but also the scouts coin collecting merit badge was an influence.

 

It's in great shape. And those later-stage wrinkled surfaces often times can explode with luster. I'm seeing an easy gem-plus.

 

When I was around 10-12 my Grandfather was retired but he took a part-time job working at a laundromat and he would show me his findings from the washing machine traps. Not the coins so much but what really caught my interest was the Tokens and Medals! Although I don't have anything from him anymore because I was ripped off for the collection I got from him, one of the Tokens he showed me was like the one pictured below which is from the 1920's. Needless to say, I was hooked! The timeframe was the early 1960's as my Grandfather passed away in 1963. Every time I come across a Token or Medal that's in the style that he shared with me, it brings back memories, my best memories! ----------The Token below is from the Victory Sparkler Company which was sued into the poor house due to a young mans death. Linked below!

https://casetext.com/case/victory-sparkler-co-v-gilbert

 

When I was a kid (in the 90s) my dad showed me the coin collection he had assembled in his youth from circulation...mostly Whitman folders and mostly Lincoln Cents. I remember being fascinated by the 43 steel cent. That got me hooked.

 

trip overseas in 1996

 

thanks for all the neat stories keep em comming

 

My uncle John gave me the 13th Edition of the The Red Book and the two Lincoln Cent folders for Christmas in 1959. Before that I had been hoarding the new Lincoln Memorial reverse cents.

I still have the Red Book and the second cent folder from 1941 to the labeled 1959 hole. Book has the original price, $1.75, marked in it.

 

When I was about 8 years old in the late 70's, my mother worked at the Buena Vista in San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf. She'd go through all of her tips at the end of the night and the next day she'd give me all of the foreign coins that the tourists would leave her as tips. The very first one I remember getting was a Hong Kong dollar coin with the lion wearing a king's crown and holding onto a round ball with it's paws.

This is what got me first started on coins in general. A number of years later when I was a teenager, I attended a private school and the owner/principal was a coin collector and he turned me on to collecting US coins.

 

My grandfather gave me a wheat cent, buffalo nickel and Mercury dime. Naturally I wanted all the old denominations. Then one weekend I stayed with them and grandpa was roll hunting cents. He soon bought and album and my occasional weekend stays we would go through rolls of cents and nickels. Age 7 or 8 and I was hooked and here I am almost 30 years later still looking at those round pieces of metal.

 

Until the last 10 years I have collected, sporadically, since I was 8. The bug really started when a friend's dad showed me his collection and when I was going for my Coin Collecting badge in Cub Scouts. Like I said, I've been sporadic, but I've always looked trough my change. My goal now is to spark that same collecting bug in one of our many natural & "adopted" nieces and nephews. All of them have coin collections, whether they want them or not and a couple have actually caught the bug!!

 

It was state quarters and Lincoln cents for me. My mom told me to look for all the state quarters and they were the first set I finished from circulation, then the 1941-74 Lincoln album. I found most of what I needed in either rolls or bulk Wheats but needed to eventually buy a 1960 as it was proving to be impossible to find in circulation for whatever reason.

I was 9 years old. Next year will mark a decade in this hobby for me, and over half my lifespan in the hobby.

 

I honestly really don't know I started, I was incredibly young, but I think it was pocket change. When maybe around 10 years old, back when one couldn't function without physical money, I began putting cents in Whitman albums and collecting year sets from circulation (at that time: cent, nickel, dime, quarter, half). Somehow I ended up at a coin shop in the back of a vacuum cleaner dealer and picked out some very worn Liberty Nickels from a pile. I then bought a Liberty Nickel Whitman folder and tried to fill it by subsequent visits to the store. I still have all of those nickels, but the album vanished somewhere in the intervening years. Somewhere in there I starting buying coin magazines and price guides. I even went to a few coin shows.

Then a took a long break and began buying coins again when I had my own income. I went nuts. At that time I put together a US 1900 type set from cent to dollar. I remember thinking how much nicer the 1900 coins looked compared to the 2000 set. Sadly, I unknowingly bought a number of harshly cleaned coins. I didn't really know what I was doing.

Then some life changes occurred, I sold a lot of the coins I had and, a few years later, hammered coins, especially those of Elizabeth I, lit the fuse once again. I'm still in that phase, though I've settled down quite a bit from 5 years ago. Somehow paper currency snuck in.

Some say collectors are born, not made. If so, I was definitely born. I know people who don't understand collecting to any degree whatsoever and I don't think that they ever will. I know other people who couldn't stop collecting no matter what obstacles stood in their way. The inclination does seem to reside somewhere in one's makeup and personality. So perhaps I started in coins simply because I was born that way?

 

I’ve told my story several times before, but I suppose once more won’t hurt.

When I was but a wee lad, there was a small decorative plastic box on my parents’ bedroom dresser. Probably no more than 4 ½ inches square by 2 inches tall. Inside this box were coins and currency my dad had brought home from the South Pacific after WW2, along with some an uncle had brought home from the war in Europe.

I was allowed supervised access to that box, and its contents were responsible for some of the first words I learned how to spell (“Daddy, what does y-e-n mean?”). It probably explains my lifelong fondness for world coins.

When I was eight, a much older cousin showed me his nearly full Whitman folders of cents, nickels and dimes. Between that and the box of WW2 treasure, I was hooked.

I’d like to say I’ve been an avid coin collector ever since then, but like many of us I tapped the brakes while I was attending college and starting a career and family. Though my collection sat undisturbed on a closet shelf for a few years, I never lost interest. Once I had some disposable income and the kids were no longer all-consuming, I started actively collecting again and never stopped.

P.S. That small plastic box long ago became brittle and cracked into pieces, but I still have all of its contents.

 

Like Maxfi above I've told the story often, but here goes again.

Back in 1963 an 11 year old boy was playing in the park (yes, back in those days we actually went outside) and found an old quarter with a weird design on it. It turned out to be a 1917 Type 1 Standing Liberty in what I later learned was EF. (Another aside, back in the day we knew that the word extremely began with an E)

Anyway, 11 year old boy--naked boob--I was hooked. They've called me bustchaser ever since.

 

I started collecting at 7 y/o , my father spent his entire life working for the Federal Reserve bank.
He actually quit H.S. as he was offered the position as a bank runner...collecting bills from city businesses and banks.
He was paid one day with an 1812 bust half to cover a bill he was collecting. That was the early 1930's .
Now if you do a search on a inflation calculator one will realize that in the early 30's that 50 cents was a lot of money...as he most probably made <$1@ day.
He gave me that half..which I still own today....along with a few other coins he had managed to save over the years.

Some how Im guessing that a 118 year old coin was worth saving by him at that time As 50 cents had the value of $8.66 in todays money. I was also fortunate to have an uncle who collected coins. Uncle Bill always gave me coins.
Unfortunately in those days cleaning coins wasn't taboo....and I did clean the half in my youth.
But that was the seed that got me into coin collecting....its another reason why I offten give kids coins....As I love the hobby ,and what it offers to the collector. History,Geography, Science,and Math...etc.
As for some kids it affords an interest in learning more of the subjects listed above making them better
And smarter students.

Oh I also had a paper route delivered and collected for daily news papers.
One need to know...that in my collection money bag was silver coins,war nickels, buffalo nickels, the notes were silver certificates, Red seal US notes...so I would go though my bag buying any date or mm needed.
Unfortunately living onnthe East coast S mint marks were hardly ever found...Denver and Philly were not hard to find...but air travel in the 60's was more for the rich and famous...not the every day Joe.
Thus money traveling in pockets seldom made it east to west or west to east.