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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 24675102, member: 112&quot;]I guess you could say that I&#039;m kind of a mix of all 3 poll choices, depending upon what period of my life we are talking about. To help lend a bit of perspective to that, it all started in the 1950&#039;s for that is when my interest in coins was first kindled. My grandfather was a collector, he collected world coins and had for most of his life, and it was through him that I was first exposed to the hobby. We would sit and talk and look at the coins together. And by 1960 I had started my own collection, but of US coins because those were the ones that I could collect from circulation, at first anyway. But given my nature, I very soon discovered other avenues of acquiring coins I wanted and began using them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back in those days you could buy coins at department stores like Woolworths or JC Penney. And as chance would have it 1960 was the same year that <i>Coin World</i> came into existence. The library was my initial access to the magazine, but I soon began buying a copy at the newsstands every now and then. And of course the magazine made me aware of all the other options for acquiring coins, like buying from the US Mint, coin dealers via mail, and even private collector ads, and I utilized those as well. And being a voracious reader, even at a such a young age, I also read everything in the library that had anything to do with coins ! </p><p><br /></p><p>That period of my coin collecting life lasted quite a while, into my 40&#039;s. And by the mid 90&#039;s I had discovered rcc on the internet which had what to my knowledge was the first internet coin forum. By the late 90&#039;s the number of internet coin forums had exploded, and continued to do so, and I utilized them all. But in all of that time leading up to then, I rarely had any interaction with other collectors unless it happened by chance that I would meet one in the normal course of my life. And there weren&#039;t many. But at the same time, I wasn&#039;t shy or secretive about my collecting. To the contrary, I was quite open about it. By the 90&#039;s I had begun carrying a 1 oz AGE in my pocket, every day. At at every opportunity that presented itself that coin would come out. If somebody said - I&#039;ll flip ya for it - it was the AGE that got flipped. And as you might expect that would start a conversation among those at hand. And it wasn&#039;t unusual that those conversations would result in one those present becoming a collector themselves.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also by the 90&#039;s I had become aware of local coin shows, just small ones really, usually only about 40 tables or so. And every now and then I would attend one. That was really the beginning of my face to face interactions with other collectors. And by 2000 I was traveling to national coin shows. And there are members of this forum who will remember some of those. In some cases they were our first meetings, in others while we knew and were aware of each other via the internet they were the first time we met face to face. Eventually that got to the point that 2 or 3 of us would go outside and sit a table or simply gather a few chairs and sit and talk. And often our conversations would attract others who happened to passing by and they would find a chair and join the conversation. Before ya knew it there might be 15 or more of us just sitting outside talking about coins. And as the group grew people inside the show would hear of it and come outside to see what was going on. I&#039;m quite sure that [USER=11540]@ldhair[/USER] can remember a few of those occasions - they were good times, weren&#039;t they Larry <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, by 2000 I had started writing articles and they would be published on a website or every now and then in one of the coin magazines. I had also joined an internet based coin club, WINS, and I had become its Newsletter Editor for a couple of years, writing and publishing every month. Later I served a term as the VP for the club. And by 2002 CoinTalk came into existence, that is a story in and of itself, one that still continues.</p><p><br /></p><p>While there are many on this forum who are well aware of it, I am also sure there are many who are not aware, that by 2006 I had decided that I no longer desired to collect coins and I sold my entire collection. This happened because after almost 50 years of actively collecting coins I had finally discovered that it was my seeking the knowledge about coins, learning about them, that I truly loved, not the collecting of them. And that has never stopped, it continues even today.</p><p><br /></p><p>I no longer write or publish anything. I finally gave that up about 5 years ago, a few years after the book I helped write won the Numismatic Literary Guild award for Best Specialized Book of the Year On World Coins. But I still teach, I still help any and all others with their collections, and I do my best to share the knowledge I have accumulated over the 60 plus years I have been involved in this beloved hobby of ours. </p><p><br /></p><p>This is why I say I am kind of a mix of all 3 poll choices because at various times of my life each one could be used to describe me.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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