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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1904237, member: 19463&quot;]When I was eight, my parents divorced and my mother had to work leaving me alone more than today would be considered appropriate.&nbsp; I had a lot of time to kill in the apartment.&nbsp; &nbsp; I developed an interest in collecting US coins by date and my mother helped greatly by lending me $50 so I could buy a bag of 5000 loose cents from a vending machine company nearby at face value.&nbsp; I would go through the bags keeping the few I&#039;d want and rolling the rest so the bank would take them.&nbsp; I had to pay my mother for the 20 or 200 I&#039;d keep but she never asked for interest on the $50 I&#039;d tie up for the week or so it would take me to process a bag.&nbsp; Occasionally I&#039;d get a bag of other denominations but it really hurt to put aside a half dollar so my set of those was never very extensive.&nbsp;&nbsp; Vending coins were great sources since kids in that time would steal coins from their dad&#039;s collection and use them to buy gum or pop.&nbsp; I found some nice coins.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I always thought it was foolish to pay more than face value for a US coin but my searching turned up duplicates of some which I&#039;d trade at a local shop for ones I lacked. For some reason I could pay 25 S mint cents from the teens for a nice quarter ignoring the fact that I could have sold them for more.&nbsp;&nbsp; In 9th grade I took Latin in school and noticed the coin shop had a dish of cheap Romans (50 cents for bronzes and $2 for silver).&nbsp; I started trading duplicates for ancients and soon lost interest in US coins altogether to the point I stopped searching those bags.&nbsp; My mother thought I was making a mistake when I wanted to sell my US to but ancients so she bought my coins for face value and started putting away all the silver halves she got in change (it was 1964 and she heard that the silver coins would be worth something someday).&nbsp; When she died, I got them back.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Now it is 50 year later and I still think it is silly to pay over face but perfectly OK to buy an ancient for hundreds.&nbsp; Along the way I had some tough times so I sold most of the ancients from the early days but still have three I had in 1963 when I took a photo of some coins including them.&nbsp; Because of my mother&#039;s intervention, I still have some of those early finds.&nbsp; Some I remember finding.&nbsp; Even in the late 1950&#039;s it was special to find a seated Liberty dime or three.&nbsp; I wish I had not sold those first ancients and wonder to this day where some of them ended up.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The story of my life in coins just has one chapter to go.&nbsp; My daughter says she wants to keep my Greek minor silver (fractional obols and smaller).&nbsp; I live in hope my only grandson will decide that the rest of them are interesting but so far it looks like they all may be up for grabs when I&#039;m finished.&nbsp; It is hard to have a hobby when everyone else in the family sees it as just evidence of my being a bit strange.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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