What Coin Should I Buy As A Starting Collector?

Too late, he has got me hooked on Kennedys lol..although I did find a 1953-D Wheat penny today in some change :)

I just purchased my Kennedy half dollar folders from 1964-1984 and 1986-2003 :)

I try to buy as many halves from the bank as my wallet would let me but in theory you are not spending any money. But I would not save a bunch of halves. Keep some of the BU (coins that have original mint luster and little or no scratches on the coin). These are hard to get from rolls but it is possible to get them.

Casutherland- When silver was cheaper in 2009 and 2008 I purchased a lot of Morgans from my local dealer and on ebay. I also put out a lot of ads through various websites and hit the jackpot a few times- people that had Morgans that they just wanted to sell. I have acquired quite a few key dates in Morgans doing this. Problem is now silver is much higher than it has been in some time and thus the prices on Morgans have went up, though the key date ones haven't moved as much. ebay is something you have to be careful with though, as there are a lot of fakes out there that are well done. This is where I advise buying slabbed coins if you are buying a key date from ebay, you never know.

Roll searching is something I do every week. I hit up a couple of my local banks that I have accounts at and buy up rolls of dimes, pennies, quarters, and nickels. Surprisingly I still find quite a few wheats, war nickels/old sharp nickels, silver dimes, and rarely a silver quarter here and there. Quarters (silver ones in my experience anyways) are a lot harder to find in great condition in my area and again I don't hardly ever find a silver quarter.

Another thing- make sure your friends, co workers, and family know you collect coins- sometimes those people have things you may be interested in and will offer their stuff to you to buy or just give them to you. I have a co worker that I have talked about on here before and he has buckets of old silver coinage and a collection that would make most of us faint. I have been able to do trades with him for things I want and he wants, and buy some silver from him all the same.

Just to be accurate ASE are not the same as silver rounds.

Yes ASE are American silver eagles. They are 1 oz. silver coins made by the U.S. mint, to trade
as bullion. They also make proof and burnished versions for collectors. ASE are one dollar coins,but
will trade slightly above silver value.

Silver rounds are made by private mints. Some private mints are more popular than others, like englehard.
In my experience silver rounds trade, buy price at silver melt and sell price will be a little under.

With that kind of budget casutherland, I would save up a good $1000.00 and keep turning it around and around on coin roll hunting on JFK's, with good luck you will start to gather up a good amount of "junk silver" to finance your new hobby. :)