How Long Have You Collected?

My dad introduced me to collecting probably 4 or 5 years ago. I was never an extremely serious collector though. His collection has always been much more impressive than mine for obvious reasons, but now that I've inherited his and my grandpa's collections, I've been getting into more serious collecting and been coming here for quite a bit of learning.

I started collecting in 1972 when my grandfather split up his collection among his 5 grandchildren. He had been the librarian at the Chicago Tribune library in the 1940s (newspapers had extensive libraries back then), and his predecessor had friends/connections all over the world who sent him coins. When the predecessor died, the coins kept arriving for a few years. So my grandfather accumulated world coins, mostly from the late 1940s. Turns out the best of the bunch was Canadian silver. When we split them up somehow I ended up with the 1948 dollar and half, and the 1947ML dollar, quarter, dime, and nickel, all in pretty good MS condition, as well as a few other earlier Canadian coins. My collecting interest has since stayed with Canadian, and specifically George VI, although I accumulated whatever came to me in circulation in the US and during travels (like a 1947 florin I got in change in NZ in 1985), and I've gone through phases where I filled in some Canadian gaps. One thing that has bothered me over the years is wishing I could put my grandfather's collection back together if even for a short time just to see it, as I only got one-fifth of the Canadian coins, and I have no idea what my other siblings/cousins have. But their Canadian silver just sits in a box somewhere in their dead storage.

I started when I was 8 or 9 years old. I am 68 now. My favourite uncle, who was quite a collector, gave me Whitman one-cent and 5-cent albums. I completed the penny album as a kid but could not find a 1925 or 1926 nickel. My allowance at the time was 50 cents a week. I would go to the bank and buy a roll of pennies, pick through it and take a full roll back the next day. The tellers were very co-operative back then. My best find from that childhood coin hunt was a 1909 S one cent in very nice condition. I sold it to a dealer for $5 and thought it was a fortune!