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The Value of Friendship

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When I was a boy I once tried my hand at baseball card collecting, but the fact that I couldn't hit a baseball to save my life soured me on the whole thing. I once gave stamp collecting a go, but the fact that the neighborhood kleptomaniac was also an avid stamp collector made me reconsider philately. Ah, but coin collecting, the hobby of kings, that's where I found excitement, passion and, perhaps most importantly, friendship.

But let's be honest, coin collecting is not exactly a hobby that exemplifies the vim and vigor of youth. You don't exactly tell the girl who has a crush on you in middle school that you're a coin collector. Especially not in the absurdly shy and awkward way I did, anyway.

While I may not have been the most adept at social interaction in middle school, at least I had Adam, a friend who I could be a total geek with. Back then of our lives revolved around a love of history, particularly World War II history, Indiana Jones and James Bond movies, and scale models of airplanes; Mostly we'd focus on British and German fighters like the Bf 109 Messerschmitt, Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire. However our greatest collaborative effort was when we built a Mitchell B-29 bomber together. But coins were paramount to us, and despite our similar ages Adam was a much more mature coin collector than I was.

Every Saturday we'd ride our bikes (or walk if there was snow) over to the local Farmer's Market where a coin dealer would set up. While my tastes were all over the place from grubby shinplasters to modern Pieces-of-Eight re-strikes, Adam honed-in on specific series like Canadian large cents. He also focused more on quality over quantity, preferring a choice example of one coin over many lower grade filler type coins, which was what I would tend to do.

Adam also stressed to me that I really shouldn't play with my coins; for instance he told me that rubbing a coin with a pink eraser probably wasn't a good idea. Indeed he was right! You should NOT rub a coin with a pink eraser. At all. Ever. He took excellent care of his coins, all of them were expertly catalogued, and stored in a dry, cool place in neat little manila envelopes. Meanwhile a lot of my coins were shoved into cheap PVC folders.

Eventually Adam's good numismatic habits started rubbing off on me. I became organized, my coins became more properly stored, and I started focusing more on quality rather than quantity. I really think that it was Adam's maturity as a collector turned me from a mere dabbler in coins into a true numismatist.

In 1994 Adam and I paid our respects to the 50th Anniversary of the Normandy Landings in our own teenaged way. We watched D-Day TV documentaries and movies such as The Longest Day, we clipped out special commemorative editions from the local paper, and we tried to imagine what it must have been like to be one of the young men who landed on the beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. We eagerly anticipated what commemorative coins would be released to mark the occasion. While the Royal Canadian Mint put out a nice and solemn dollar coin depicting the National War Memorial in Ottawa, it was the Royal Mint in the UK that put out a commemorative that was pretty exciting; A stylized and dramatic 50 Pence coin depicting landing craft, gliders and gunfire.

Luckily my family went on a trip to the UK that year, and I made it my personal mission to get one of these commemorative 50p coins for myself and for Adam. I easily found them at a shop in York, and purchased two brilliant uncirculated coins in a glossy pamphlet featuring facts about the invasion. When our family finally came home after a very long flight, I still had enough energy and excitement to cycle over to my friend's house to give him his coin.

I remember paying about one pound, fifty pence each for these coins. They're not rare with a mintage of 6,705,520, and they have not increased in value at all since then. But that's not really important. Looking back at this coin, I can't help but think of the friendship I had back then, and how important it is for a young numismatist to have a pal to foster a passion for the hobby with.

Since then all of those model airplanes have long since been thrown away. The Farmer's Market where we once spent our Saturdays looking for coins has been gone for years. And now Adam and I live a continent apart from one another. But I still have a simple 50p coin to remind me of that friendship, and as cheesy and cliched as it sounds, that in a way makes it priceless.

If you have a story about a friendship in numismatics, or a simple coin with a lot of sentimental value, let us know here at the ezine.

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