I'll admit I came into this from the stacking side — buying ounces, watching spot, treating it as weight. But somewhere along the way a coin stopped being metal and started being an object: the design, the date, the little die quirks, the history behind why it looks the way it does. For me it's been the early Seated stuff lately — I stumbled into a thread on the no-stars half dimes and couldn't stop looking at that clean open obverse. Something clicked and now I'm reading up on varieties I had no interest in a month ago. So I'm curious how it happened for the collectors here. Was there one specific coin — a type, a date, an error, something you inherited — that flipped the switch from "I own silver" to "I collect coins"? And do you remember the moment, or did it creep up on you? Post the coin if you've still got it. Always more fun with pictures.
I was a coin guy long before I was a silver stacker. My momma handed me a big Franklin half to buy my school lunch with... I went hungry that day and been eat up with coins ever since. I was a poor coin guy most all my life. I had too many mouths to feed to indulge myself in fine specimens but that was fine by me. Every coin I held told me stories of the wild west, stock market crashes or great wars. Coins were my storybooks...... I didn't allow myself to indulge in better coins until I was an old man. The coin in my avatar was among the earliest of the finer pieces I was able to acquire from a fellow here named @C-B-D and since then I too have been eat up with the seated series.
I'm in the same boat as Randy, except I don't remember the first coin. My grandparents were casual collectors, and some of my earliest memories are looking at the "funny old" cents, nickels, dimes, and halves. Welcome to CoinTalk!