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Message:: [QUOTE="sonlarson, post: 1571946, member: 15488"]Somewhere in our past someone planted the seed to start us on our lifelong journey in our quest to collect coins. Perhaps it was your parent, a sibling, a relative,friend, or co-worker. In my case it was an uncle. Uncle Joe. Joe was the youngest of 12 brothers and sisters on my Mother's side. A large Sicilian family. Joe was 12 years old when I was born, so he was still a teenager when I can first remember him.He used to give my brothers( I have 4,and a sister) and I, his old comics. I recall an entire collection of“classics”, which no one seems to know what happened to. Plus all the original superhero comics from the 50's and 60's. Also lost.  When I was about 12 years old, Joe introduced me to his coin collection. Mostly cents, which was his favorite, but a few older coins that at the time I didn't recognize.He gave me a cent folder and explained that the object was to fill all the holes. He also taught me about the holy grail of cent collection, the 1909-S VDB, and the 1955 DDO. One of my brothers and I shared a paper route and collected pop bottles to make pocket money. No such thing as an allowance, we had to work for our money.My brother spent his on comics, which he let me read, but kept locked up to keep the others out. I began searching rolls of cents. Every roll I search I expected to find the 1909-S VDB or the 1955 DDO. We lived in a small town in Arkansas which only had two local banks. I would alternate swapping rolls. Sometime I might make two or three trips to the bank in a single day. I had to walk to and from the house to the bank, which was about a mile. Only one car in the family and Dad used it to go to work. My passion slowed down after a few years when I stared to noticed that cars, music, and  girls were more interesting than coins and that pursuit was also burning a hole in my pocket. There was also this “police action” in South East Asia demanding a lot of attention. I never really lost my interest in coins  but like most of us, it was on a back burner for over 30 years.In 1993, Joe died at the young age of 52. His estate was handle by another older uncle(he collected silver during the early 50's and 60's but is very private about his collection  It was about 12 years before my mother received anything from this estate. Somehow she got Joe's collection of coins. She gave all the coins to me. I can't say I got all since it was obvious several of the cents have been removed from the coin books, ( the other Uncle)but it was still a treasure chest to me. Nothing rare or exotic  but it filled a lot of my empty spaces and relit the fire.The passion came back stronger than ever. Two days ago, I spent an entire day cleaning out the attic. I came across the old suitcase that belonged to Joe. My mother(who lives with me) asked me about the suitcase. She said it used to belong to dad and that he gave it to Joe many years ago. I opened it and showed her the remnants of Joe's coin collection.A lot of empty boxes and empty coin folders. I removed all the contents and set them aside when she picked up the coin folders and asked me if their were any coins in them. I told her no, they were empty. She then proceeds to open them and found an 1899 Barber Dime in G4 condition. How in the world did I miss that? I also found a safety deposit key envelope with 5 uncirculated 1971-S cents. Mom asked if the coin was worth anything and I told her about $4. I gave the suitcase to Goodwill with mom's permission) and finished cleaning up my mess. I got an eerie feeling about the lost coin. Was there anything special about it? An omen? Why was it hiding up there all these years? The only significant thing I could attach to the coin is that on 11/26/12, Joe would have been 72 years old. Mom now has only one brother and one sister living. She is the oldest. I am putting that lonely 1899 Barber Dime in a special coin holder and giving it to mom on Joe's birthday.I think that would make it special and reveal why it has been in hiding all these years. I read an article last night in the October 2012 issue of COINage about an 1945 article written by Dr.Dean Miltmore. He reported after studying at least 1000 cases of mental illness, that not one was even remotely interested in collecting coins or any other object. “For the average person, with the cares and worries of everyday life, a collector's hobby should have a definite place in mental hygiene”. That proves that I, and all the rest of us are “not crazy”.    Thanks, for reading, and share the passion. Mike [ATTACH]215328.vB[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]

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