What Got You Started?

My grandfather gave his collection away to his five grandchildren when I was 13. They were all kept loose in a box and we took turns picking one after he piled them on a table. He had a lot of Canada George VI silver from the late 40s, as well as other coins from all over the world. We did a little trading afterwards and somehow I ended up with a 1948 dollar, among some other nice ones (47 ML dollar, 48 half, etc). When I found out how much it was worth, it inspired an off-and-on interest for life. My four other siblings and cousins, not so much. I've told this story several times here and elsewhere already but fresh threads are always good. Grandpa was librarian at the Chicago Tribune and people all over the world were sending him coins. I think reporters returning from overseas also brought them. Lots of coins from WWII era and slightly after.

I've answered this in similar threads in the Main part of the forum, but since my answer involves Canadian coins, I'll answer here too.

I collected stamps as a child - basically copying my big brother, who collected stamps much more seriously. About 1980, eight years old, the family went to a stamp and coin show - and I saw some world coins for sale that intrigued me. My parents let me buy some, then when we got home, they gave me their hoard of Canadian coins they'd souvenired from when they lived in Canada in the early 1970s (I had been born there, but grew up in Australia). The jewels in this small hoard were a 1950 silver 50 cents and a 1971 British Columbia nickel dollar. My parents said I could pick one, and my brother would have the other. Naturally, I picked the dollar, since it was clearly bigger and more valuable.

My brother gave me the 50 cents some years later. I still have both, and I still have that handful of foreign coins. My "coin 00001" in my database is a rather black (because it's made of zinc) 1950 5 groschen from Austria. It's number 00001 because, well, alphabetical sort, even back then; my experience with stamps had taught me that "Osterreich" was Austria.

Rather than start on my kiddie collection with an old penny in 1985 (A 1899 British Britannia penny). And that collection abruptly ended with them being stolen out of my car in 2001 by a group of fiendish hoodrats.

I will start on my collection restarting in 2018. I had been reading books on coins for years and fantasising about what I wanted to collect again. Besides NZ coins and change, the British Halfcrowns and Australian Florins stood out for me.

I had already been collecting stamps at a semi professional level and selling them since 2005, so was ready to dip my toes in the world of coin collecting again. I had been burned long enough by my carelessness back in 2001.

I had been saving change since 2001 and buying and selling coins off 2 ladies running a thrift shop, but never thought to keep them for myself until early 2019. The other change was that I finally had a permanent part time job for the first time in 8 years, no more contracts or "gig" jobs - basically the end of a precarious existence.

The first coin brought was my avatar coin, this 1929 halfcrown.




Originally brought as a one off, it basically made me want more of them due to the beauty and the state of it. From that point I never looked back.

Although looking at my photo history, the oldest photo I uploaded was that of a 1937 Australian Crown from May 2019. I still have both coins now.

That was great and I read the thread of yours from 2006, you would have been my age back then! Great you still have those coins too. None of my 2001 and earlier collection survives. My oldest surviving coins I own were bits of change and some collector sets I brought in Europe back in 2014.

Coin collecting has turned me old.

You guys are all old! (No offense)

I was 15 years old, way way back in December 2019, and I frequently visited my friend's house after school for a small group. He had a 1921-S Morgan dollar in his sock drawer that his mother gave him, and he showed it to me. He didn't really care for it, but I was fascinated. Everytime I would go to his house, I would go straight to his room to grab the coin. I just wanted to look at it and flip it around while I was at his house. December 11, 2019 9:16pm, he sold it to me for $13.27. That was my first coin purchase.

That same day, my Dad gave me his 20th century type set in a Whitman Album that he put together for his coin collecting merit badge. From there the coin bug got a hold of me and has not let go since. I have been buying and selling coins to fund the hobby since early 2020.

Early 80s, my grandmother had a pouch of Liberty nickels that I somehow got my hands on and took possession :) They had dates like 1897 and 1903, seemed like impossibly old, a relic from an earlier epoch, and I just loved them. To this day the Liberty nickel is my most nostalgic coin.