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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1145824, member: 19463&quot;]If I were a middle school student and wanted to get into the hobby of ancient coins but knew what I know today, I would try the following:</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>1. Find an honest dealer who sells coins in your price bracket and might be willing to help you. Don&#039;t bother people who only sell coins over $500. They don&#039;t have time for you and wouldn&#039;t have a coin suitable for an absolute beginner anyway. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>2. The best place to buy a coin is at a large coin show that attracts ancient coin sellers. I&#039;m from central Virginia and could suggest some between Baltimore (the big show in my region was last weekend) and Richmond (show in May). I do not know where to suggest for other places.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>3. Join a local coin club but only if they have any members that collect ancients. The club in Richmond has about 2% of its members that collect ancients; there is a club in Washington DC solely for ancients. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>4. Write to mail order dealers like Frank S. Robinson mentioned above. Be up front/honest about your age and price bracket. Frank, for example has a fixed price section at the end of his auction list which sometimes has things a beginner should consider. Find him using Google or Bing. VCoins has a lot of dealers in all price ranges (I recently saw some beginner types in Connie&#039;s Coins stock) so you will have to search the site for ones that might welcome your business. Some are abolutely great people; some are jerks. Don&#039;t let the last type bother you. Write them and see if any write back. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>5. This is the hard one. Study. This includes working on your writing skills so you can communicate with dealers and make it clear what you want. A dealer is much more likely to respond to a middle schooler who obviously put some effort into learning the terms and writes in complete sentences than they are to one that shows no sign of being interested enough to bother doing the homework required to collect ancients.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>6. Everyone will direct you differently. My opinions are posted on my website:</p><p><a href="http://dougsmith.ancients.info/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://dougsmith.ancients.info/" rel="nofollow">http://dougsmith.ancients.info/</a></p><p>I especially suggest the Vocabulary section (gray box) and some pages in the yellow box site highlights (not the photo section or the &#039;bride&#039;). Realize that it would take more than one lifetime to learn everything about ancient coins so even experts make mistakes. Honest dealers sometimes get fooled by fakes but they correct their errors (refund your money) and really try to avoid questionable items. Some dealers know a lot while others set up a business when they can hardly tell Greek from Roman. As you educate youself, this will become more clear.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>7. Involve your parent/grandparent or whoever will be helping you with the writing of checks or has the Paypal account. Your chance for a good experience is much greater if you work together on a shared interest. I realize that my list of instructions is long and difficult but the subject is not commonly thought of as middle school material. I started collecting in high school. Does your school offer Latin as a language choice? Latin teachers may even be interested already. Ask.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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