Coin collecting before the internet.

I love that answer. I believe every bit of that

 

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Yeah make day pay for the coin mags. Men are weak

 

My parents started my coin collecting interest. As I got older there was a coin shop in a strip mall near our home that I visited often, and the rest is history. One thing my dad advised me to do is buy, perhaps trade, and never sell.

 

Do you still have the paper route. Was it a daily. I did my brother route a few times cuz of fishing with his dad elsewhere

 

I love wit

 

As kid in rural KY the early 1990s, residential Internet and computers were expensive to my poor family. In fact, the only person in my family to have them was my aunt! Plus, the Internet service was terrible dial up, its no longer dial up, but still terrible! I had three main ways to get coins. One was Littleton's "Coins on Approval." Now as an older collector I know it was very overpriced, but I remember holding an uncirculated Merc. for the first time and just being amazed. Secondly, my local bank gave out prizes at Easter egg hunts each year. If you got a special egg you received, a shiny new silver American eagle! Traded some candy for one one year! When I got older, the bank was my source for these coins as they would order them from the mint and I would buy them. And lastly, my family would save any old coins for me they happened across, mostly wheaties and foreign. I visited the LCS few times before I began to drive because it was 30 miles away and I was at the mercy of my parents! I always had little time and little money so most of the trip was a window shopping experience. I do recall one time getting a bag of coins at a pawn shop.

 

I think that's the biggest difference between then and now. Back then we had to learn the hobby if for no better reason than to avoid getting ripped off. Today the upstarts pretty much start in accepting ready-made grades. And they're not even grades, but market grades, based not necessarily on the coins' condition but on what they'll fetch in the marketplace.

 

My question about pre internet purchases...

What was it like to have a somewhat competent post office?

 

The only thing I bought through the mail was a BU 1935-D cent for 60 cents postpaid. It was in the back of a coin magazine. And it came and it was a nice red unc.
Usually I would hit a few shops once in a while with my dad. We would go to the swap meets occasionally, and I remember getting a 1945-S micro S Merc dime, with green slime in the 2x2 and everything. And I remember making runs to all the local 7-11s to buy all of their hall dollars to get the silver pieces. I still have the first coin I ever got in 1970 - an 1887-O Morgan Dollar in G. Since I was the oldest I got the 1887-O, and my sisters got an 1890 and 1923 Peace. It literally changed my life.

 

They hiked it, in my time. They parked down the street, swung the bag of mail over their shoulder, walked right up to your door and stuffed it in your mailbox or door slot. And in the rain, sleet and snow. But of course that was well, well, before the Internet.

 

Nothing can beat or will ever beat the days of going through pocket change with no clue about what goodies might be in there.

 

I started in about 58 and would look through my parent’s cash register in their small store. They were kind enough to let me add to holes in my Whitman ‘penny book’. Then nickel book and dimes. I bought a 25 cent book but frankly it was too much to ask them.

I would come in from school every day and ‘look through the register’! I loved that. My blue whitman folder still has my finds. Never found any 1909-s VDB. Or 31-s.

Moved into proof sets. $2.10 for 50c, 25c, 10c, 5c, 1c. Learned to buy from Canadian Mint, French Mint and South African Mint. I was an ‘old’ stamp collector so loved writing to far off mints as much as receiving the coins. Even the Nepalese mint sold me a ‘specimen set’. Barely uncirculated and coins pushed into card board that stunk.

My favorite thing was pulling 1950-D nickels from circulation. I found ads in the new Coin World newspaper that began to come out in 1962 I think, where dealers were paying 9.50 or 10 bucks per coin. Parents were impressed. I remember taking the money from those nickels and buying three Liberty $10 Gold coins. Circulated, different dates and mints. Those cost about $26 each.

No local coin shops but we had a local Baton Rouge Coin Club and it met monthly. I was a junior member and would love to look at the tables of the two or three dealers. Would buy stuff and resell them to ads in Coin World. There would be a presentation each meeting. One was on medals awarded during WWII and I was able to learn how to get medals for dad and family members even some from Mexican-Border Campaign in about 1916. I still have some Wooden Nickels from our annual coin convention during 1962, 63 and about that time.

Thanks for listening this far.

 

I'm squirreling this away for the next time somebody says "buy the keys first". In 1962, a circulated 1950-D nickel was worth about 10 bucks. Today, it's worth... about 10 bucks. Uncirculated, maybe 20 or 30.

Gold's taken a dive in the last few months, so those eagles are back down to maybe.. $830 each. And let's not talk about milk, or gasoline, or houses.

 

where can you get a 1oz gold eagle for $830 ??

Don't forget about Pet Rocks as an investment. They're the "cornerstone" of my investment strategy

 

I have tp say I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks to all that shared their "early days" of collecting.

 

Collector NASCAR plates.... Far better investment strategy.

 

Started collecting at 12 in 1990 and my pre-internet collecting required change/roll searching, the small LCS in town and the yearly coin show at our Mall.

I lived in a 'major' city in rural northern lower MI and there wasn't much diversity of options. It served me pretty well during my active time collecting in the 1990s, but between 1997-2011, I didn't really do much with my collection.

Then in 2011 I jumped back in and have been wallowing in the glory of an almost infinite selection across the internets.

 

I started collecting in 1979...my neighbor got me interested enough to buy some Whitman folders and my Dad had a large jar of wheat cents that I went through and filled most of the holes. I went to some local coin shows and found a local coin dealer where I bought my first Franklin half dollar...a 1963 proof for 8 dollars. I learned a lot from him and went to him every time I needed something for my collection....so that's where I'd get most of the coins I needed. Fitz Sheldon was a wealth of knowledge. I also did alot of roll searching, mostly for Kennedy halves. I didn't do much buying from magazines.

 

Not "1oz AGE", but "$10 Gold Eagle". Those purchases were made in the 1960s, before 1oz AGEs existed.

Edit to add: and where could you get a 1oz AGE for $830? In the past, of course.

 

Don't forget those 1977 Farrah coffee mugs.