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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;HandsomeToad, post: 351731, member: 12965&quot;]<span style="color: black">I can remember getting into collecting coins and I was your age when I did. My best friend at school was into it and got me hooked (hint-hint). All those rolls of pennies and nickels and dimes I went through trying to complete my little collections, buying pounds of wheatbacks at the local coin shop, all the while dreaming of expanding into older coins like the buffalo nickels, or mercury dimes, etc. I vividly remember eyeballing that 1916-D Mercury at the coin shop, but $150.00 was more than I could afford, yet now that little sucker is worth well over $1,000.00. Someone said earlier - &quot;If I knew then what I know now&quot; - is a statement everyone makes as they get older and we say it more often as the years go by. That’s life!</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="color: black">What you need to ask yourself is: How much will a Gameboy be worth in 20 years? How much will that movie ticket stub be worth in 20 years? How much knowledge comes from the normal teenager activities? The knowledge you learn from coin collecting, especially today with the internet, is invaluable and will stay with you your entire lifetime but you should do some of the teenager things too. Remember the old saying about - too much of a good thing – and mix it up. </span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="color: black">You talked about peer pressure and I too I’m catching flack from friends, saying I spend way too much time on the computer with my coins but I will spot a coin I know nothing about and neither does the seller, the current bid will be lower than I think it should be, and I will run off on the internet and investigate that coin and sometimes I get lucky and find out it is worth quite a bit more than it’s currently going for and I’ll stick my bid in. Most times it isn’t a “find” so I’ll message the seller and tell them what they have that way I can share what I&#039;ve just learned - Sharing is caring! Then there is my favorite “game” of cat-and-mouse or, in our case, coin-and-mint mark. I look for coin listings that don’t have a mint mark on them, then peek at the coin to see if it might have one and the person selling it doesn’t know about mint marks and when it does have one, off I run to the price guide to see how much it’s worth. That happens all the time but every once in a while, I get that special one, like a couple of weeks ago when I ran across a beautiful fully horned 1917 buffalo nickel with poor pictures but at least there was an obverse &amp; reverse pic. The current bid was low so I put my bid in, lower than it would probably go for, but what the heck. I’ve seen many good coins not sell and the starting bid was way below what it was worth, including that gorgeous 1787 New Jersey Copper I let get away because I got busy when the auction was closing and never placed my bid and no one else bid on it. I’m still mad about that one! I even messaged the seller and let them know I wanted it but he had already given it to his son. Darnit! Anyways, getting back to that Buffalo, after I placed my bid I looked a little closer and there it was, that beautiful mint mark and off to the price guide I went. I gave it an F-40, even though it could go higher, and the 17-P was $18, the D was $175, which made me giddy, and the S was $225, which made me tingle. It didn’t matter if it was a D or S, I was going to make out either way so I upped my bid to the full book value for the P and I ended up getting it for $14 which included shipping which was still below book for the P coin. When it came in, I was like a kid at Christmas and the package was as reluctant to be exposed as a Christmas present, but there it was, a 1917 fully horned San Francisco minted Buffalo nickel. WOW!</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="color: black">I too, like someone else said, got out of collecting for quite a while and just got back into it a short bit ago when I realized I should do something with my money and have something better to do than watch TV. Now I’m having lots of fun trying to find those hidden treasures online (Ebay &amp; elsewhere’s). What else can you do that can give as much pleasure as coin collect, without wasting your money and having nothing to show for it, besides collecting something else? The only problem I see, is you need to figure out how to “pull a Tom Sawyer” on your friends that are giving you a hard time. What I mean by that is give them the bug, like my friend did so long ago. One way to do this is incorporating coin collecting into school assignments: History class report; that dreaded English class essay; and storytelling, like I just did. Show them just how kewl coin collecting is and see if you can’t get them to watch out for that elusive wheatback or buffalo in their pocket change, and pay them something more than face value for it, if it’s worth it, and that will help to show them coin collecting is more than just a hobby. I’d even recommend getting into buying &amp; selling (Ebay?) to make a few extra bucks to go towards your collection, but always grade the coin on the low side and never bid more than half the book value for that grade (include shipping in your bid). You&#039;ll lose more auctions than you’ll win but the ones you win you can make money off selling them during prime-time on Ebay (Friday night thru Sunday evening). That’s how you develop great business sense for your future. Movies? They have great popcorn and a short time later, you don’t even remember half of it but the knowledge you gain from coin collecting, stays with you a lifetime but a good movie now-and-then is good for you too. Remember to mix it up.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="color: black">Coin on!</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="color: black">Ribbit,</span></p><p><span style="color: black">Toad :smile</span>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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