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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lordmarcovan, post: 2599998, member: 10461&quot;]Here are two other sentimental favorites (the first only worth a couple of bucks).</p><p><br /></p><p>In forty years, many coins have come and gone with me, but I have managed to keep these two since childhood.</p><p><br /></p><p>I found the 1936 Mercury dime shown below in my grandmother&#039;s sideboard while getting the silverware out to set the table for Thanksgiving dinner on November 25, 1976.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was excited by the find, because earlier that very day I had found a coin book on one of the shelves in Grandmomma&#039;s big old house (one of the cousins had collected coins), and I had looked at pictures of all the old coin types. Until then, I had been unaware of obsolete coin types and for all I knew, Lincoln had been on the pennies forever, and Roosevelt on the dimes. So when I found this old dime with a Winged Liberty on it, it was wonderfully exotic looking to me. Aged not quite eleven at the time, I thought a 40-year-old coin was positively <i>ancient</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, next month will be my 40th anniversary as a numismatist, and so I will have <i>owned</i> this coin for forty years. There is a nice symmetry to that.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>This is the coin which started my numismatic adventure.</b></p><p><br /></p><p>And yes, I still have it.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k173/lordmarcovan/1936MercLenoxRd.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><i>(It was basically white when I found it in 1976. I probably cleaned it at least once in my young novice collector days. The toning which has resulted since is kind of interesting.)</i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The only other to remain from my childhood is this 1827 Bust half. I received it for my 11th birthday on December 28, 1976.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k173/lordmarcovan/1827halfUnionSt.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><i>(The current plan on this one is to hold on to it until about January, 2027, if I&#039;m still breathing. By then it will be 200 years old and I will have held it for fifty years. I will then pass it on to a deserving grandchild, or, if there is nobody in the family who&#039;d appreciate it enough, I will pick a young collector who I think is likely to want to hold onto it for another fifty years himself or herself.)</i></p><p>I held onto a third piece from my childhood until 1999. It was a prooflike AU58-ish 1878-S Morgan dollar which my (other) grandmother had given me, saying it had come out of my paternal great-grandmother&#039;s desk. When my first nephew was born in 1999, I gave it to my sister to hold for him.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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