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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Hus.thaler, post: 3129270, member: 85490&quot;]To answer the question in the OP&#039;s title, <i>of course</i> you can collect interesting coins on minimum wage.&nbsp; Since this is the world coins blog, we can bypass the pocket change and bank roll avenues (as fun as those are) and go right to the fact that there are plenty of ways to get interesting world coins on the cheap.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>1) Remember that &quot;interesting&quot; is in the eye of the beholder, and you don&#039;t have to sneer at a coin just because it is common and cheap.&nbsp; I got hooked on coin collecting when some relatives gave me a handful of pocket change from their travels, and, to this day, you cannot convince me that a shiny brass French Marianne 20 centimes is not an amazing coin.&nbsp; Collect what you like to collect, and if what you like only costs 15 cents per specimen, then all that glitters <i>is </i>gold.&nbsp; If you can be content with what you can afford, then life will go better for you than a well-heeled but disgruntled double-eagle hoarder.</p><p><br /></p><p>2) Dealers have plenty of cheap bins full of world coins, and if the specialize in domestic coinage, you can be sure that they will not have taken as much care as they could have to sift out all the better-than-poundage items.&nbsp; Buy a couple of Krause catalogs (outdated editions can be had cheaply on the used market), pour over them and become a cherry picker.&nbsp; Not only is it cheaper to find that $5-value coin in a bucket of &quot;25 cents each/5 for $1&quot; coins that in would be to buy it in a 2x2, it is a lot more fun and rewarding.&nbsp; Sure, it takes time, but have you got anywhere else to be?</p><p><br /></p><p>3) If you are a kid or newbie collector, look for any dealers or collectors who have that teaching spirit, and take any opportunity to chat coins with them.&nbsp; Take any wisdom that they have to offer, and you will also find a large number of those ones who, wanting to keep the hobby alive, will either offer you nicely discounted coins or even outright give them to you.&nbsp; (Being a kid helps, and being a courteous kid means dealers almost throw coins at you at bourse shows.)</p><p><br /></p><p>4) You can always save up your spare dollars and buy one of those bank bags full of poundage off of eBay.&nbsp; Personally, I am sort of tired of them now and my collecting interests have developed elsewhere, but I have no regrets over the hours/days spent sifting and sorting through a big bag of those coins and thumbing through Krause to look up the ones that looked different.&nbsp; I learned more about world history, geography, politics, and economics from doing this than I ever learned in school, and I bet most of you on this board probably could say the same.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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