How I Got Started in Coin Collecting - From Our Readers

Last issue, we posted a story by David Hall describing how his numismatic ventures began. We asked our readers to tell us about how they got started in the numismatic hobby. Your responses have been great! Here are some examples of what we received. Look for more in the coming months.

"When I was a young boy of eight, my friend had lots of plastic toy soldiers that I thoroughly enjoyed playing with during visits to his house. I didn't have any of my own, so I improvised with pennies and nickels, and would line them up and march them like Roman soldiers in various formations. After their hard-fought battles I took notice of the coins, their dates and designs. Soon I visited a nearby coin shop and became enthralled, and have been in love with collecting ever since. Visiting a coin shop is a favorite place for me to go and re-live my youth and the enjoyment of collecting all these 50 years now."

Randy
Daytona Beach, FL

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"My story is very similar to David Hall's. My father was a smoker and he would get his cigarettes in vending machines at work for 22 cents. This was in 1947 when I was11 years old. He gave me the pennies daily. They were not new and shiny, but I started to put them in a Whitman folder. I still have the folder and have only put in pennies I found, received in change or from searching rolls. My goal was to fill it up at face value. I have not succeeded. I still have to find these last few coins: 1909-S, 1909-SVDB, 1914-D and a 1931-S."

Steve Sass

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"I'm absolutely stupid about coin collecting! But with all the gold mania now on TV and elsewhere, I started to investigate the possibility of owning gold. Well, for some reason I lucked onto Blanchard & Co., and from them was educated by a very well-informed agent. He advised the pros and cons of collecting gold coins with vintage on them as opposed to the contemporary gold $20 coins. I was dumbfounded as to the historical information prior to 1933 and the reasoning why one should consider collecting prior to that date. I'm currently sitting on $10,000 of pre-1933 gold coins, all packaged and graded by PCGS. Learning about your company and the value of professionals was an eye opener for a novice. I'm hooked! Many thanks for just being there."

Sincerely,

Earle Goodwin

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"1957 - I was about six years old when my Dad came home from the cleaners and dumped his change out.

He and my Mom went through the coins/change. My Mom had taken the gray cardboard squaring one of his white shirts and took clear tape [ugh] and taped pennies on the board, listing the dates. When I climbed up onto a chair to see, I noticed all shiny copper, except for three shiny pennies which looked like dimes. I was amazed that these three pennies were different."

Hooked on it ever since.

Bill McPike
Attorney at Law

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"In my family, rumor has it that one day when I was very young (too young to remember) my grandfather handed me two handfuls of money. One handful was dollar bills and the other was a handful of coins. I tossed the dollar bills and kept the handful of coins to play with. From that day forward my grandfather would put a 50 cent piece in a jar for me.

As I got older, and really started collecting, I started (as most kids did), with Lincoln cents. I then gravitated to the Walking Liberty Halves because they were so beautiful, but I always wanted that $20 Gold Saint Gaudens. So bold and shiny, what a work of art... but just could never afford one. Then like most kids, as I got older and found other interesting things in life to see and do, coin collecting went to the side. As I approached my early twenties I began collecting again and you guessed it, one of my first acquisitions was that $20 Saint that I could never afford when I was younger!"

Thanks Grandpa!!!

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"My dad, who passed about 12 years ago, purchased Whitman coin folders on a whim for me when I was ten years old. This was in 1968. He had the idea to give me a hobby I could do at that age. My dad also liked to play quarter-anti poker with friends of his and my mom's. I mention this because when he would come home after a night of poker, he would take his coin sack and empty it on the coffee table and tell me to take whatever I needed for my coin books. This being 1968, there were plenty of silver coins to be had. He would always joke that I would take half his winnings."

Larry Linch