The First Coin In Your Collection

Like many others I started by collecting wheats.

My grandparents used to play penny poker on the weekend and one day I noticed that the cent's they were using looked "funny".
I remember looking at them and thinking these were OLD...LOL
(most were from the 40's and 50's)

Well one thing led to another and now I'm an addict...uh I mean collector

 

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Thats extremly intresting to me, I at one time worked in a lathe shop and every piece weproduced needed to be stamped with our operator number, my operator number was 34. I had this habbit of stamping coins and either poping them in the soda machine or using them at the gas station or where ever, just to see if I would ever get them back.

 

My first coin was a 1880 indian head cent

 

My first coins were given to me by my Grandma. She said they were from here father and grandfather. They are a 1850 VF cent, 1853 G Three cent silver, and 1886 and 1931 Canadian cents. She also has a 1854 $3 gold piece that she has promised to give me someday.

 

Well, as far as my U.S. coin collection, it was a wheat cent, but I now collect foreign coins, so I guess my first true collector coin that started me off on my buying spree would be this one, although I don't collect finland, this is what got me started on collecting German and Austrian coins with the "classic" eagle design...

 

Ah yes my first coin. I was at a hospital walking around with my dad, I forget why. When all of a sudden I stumbeled upon an 1882 0 morgan silver dollar. I was five at the time, but somehow i managed to keep it and its still in my collection today. Also its about vf and has a good amount of detail.

 

Silver Proof SAE

 

When I was small--I don't know how old, but I guess about six--I was on the Belle of Louisville, a refurbished steamboat tourist attraction on the Ohio River. Some old guy I didn't know, and who in my possibly inaccurate 30-year-old memory of the event I recall as wearing a suit and a bowler and smoking a cigar, said, "Hey, boy, c'mere." I walked over to him and he said, "This is because you're a good kid," and he handed me a 1900 silver dollar.

It sat in a decorative bowl in our diningroom hutch for many years, but now I have it in a binder. In the words of the Mafia appraiser on The Simpsons, "It won't fetch much cash, but it's sentimental value is through the roof!" At any rate, it's still just about the most valuable coin I own--worth about, what, $10.00?

When I was eight or nine, my dad got me started on a Whitman folder, using numerous extras from his wheat penny jar and our various piggy banks. I've kept coins that interested me ever since, but it's only been in the past several years that I've tried to educate myself and actually become a collector instead of a random accruer.

 

Reviving an old thread here that I thought was an interesting topic. Do you guys remember the very first coin you ever purchased? I know I do. I know that I was 12 years old and Franklin Halves fascinated me, especially proof Franklins. So, I went about calling the only coin shop in our area at the time, Sheltons Coins in Chambersburg, PA. My parents dropped me off there on our usual Friday night trip to town and I bought a 1963 cameo proof Franklin Half for $6 dollars. It was my prized possession for years, but, I have no idea what ever happened to it. The man that owned the shop became a great friend and taught me alot about collecting. Thats how my coin collecting addiction got started.

 

Still remember it like it was yesterday, when i was 6, my grandpa gave me a 1859 indian head cent in VF+. Its still the highlight of my collection.

 

I guess the coin I've had the longest must be the start of my collecting.

One day in 1946 Red Skelton gave his paper boy a shiny new half-dollar to pay for his month's newspaper delivery. He told me to keep the change, but I went him one better. I still have that MS63ish 46D!

 

Let me get this straight. You got a 1948-D half in 1946? I did not the that Red was a magician as well.

 

Hey, the "8" is pretty close to the "6" on my keyboard. Posting corrected.

 

I began by pulling canadian cents out of circulation when I was a kid. There used to be quite a large number of them, but I rarely see them anymore. Occasionally, I'd get lucky and find a canadian nickel.

 

A 5 yen japanese coin.

 

im amazed no one said this but im 14 so i was 6 when the state quarters started so the delaware quarter was mine

 

Hmmm, I don't really recall what got me into collecting, but it would probably have to be a 1909 wheat cent I found in change. Been my favorite coin series since.

Phoenix

 

NOW THAT IS REALLY COOL HONTONAI!

 

Now,

Honestly I couldn't tell you. Probably a wheat cent. I do remember finding my first (and only "found" VDB).

No one in my family collected coins and no one but me does to this day. I just like old stuff and it started at about 6 (I'm 45 now). I'm one of those guys that will stop by an old cemetary on vacation just to look at the old stones and wonder what it must have been like back then.

That may also explain my fascination with type coins especially odd denominations. Perhaps I should see a shrink?