How Did You Get Started Collecting?

Let's start with some backstory, my grandfather had a great collection for some time that he had found almost entirely through circulation (I'm told some were from the 18th century even) until it was stolen before I was born. My dad had also been a collector to for a little bit, so I guess you could say I was pretty much predestined for the hobby.

Then around 2001 (yes I'm that young) I remember getting one of the State Quarters maps and I filled that up as much as I could and forgot about it. Fast forward to just about last October. Being young and jobless I was strapped for cash so I took a friend's advice and decided to find all the change I could and roll it up in hopes of bringing it to the bank. Then I found my first wheat ('45). From there it has all snowballed pretty rapidly and as of right now I'm working on my 7070.

My obsession with coin collecting began when my dad gave me 5 common wheat cents, a 1902-H canadian Half Dime, a german 1 reichspfennig, and a 1861 Foster & Metcalf CWT. The first thing I did was draw a box around the date of the CWT with an ink pen .

This was around 11 years ago, so I was about 7..lol

I have always "collected" coins in the broadest sense of the word. I kept wheat pennies, bi-centenial quarters half dollars, anything that wasn't "normal". It just put it all in a jar, I had no clue things were worth more than face value. My dad used to travel to Denver and Philadelphia for work a lot indeed buy me mint "cents" as I used to call them. But one day not to long ago I found a Buffalo nickel in my change, when I got home I showed my grandpa who lived with me and he went to his room and got another that was much better condition and he gave it to me. Now my grandpa was the type of guy that was too cheap to tip at a restaurant, so him giving me a nickel was a big deal. He passed away about two weeks later but he gave me all his old coins hours before he did and it sparked a raging fire.

Sadly I do not have my first coin. It was a Peace dollar. Given to me at age 5 from my uncle. Mom put it in a cup ... up high in the cupboard. Someone took it. Needless to say I was heart broken.

I caught the bug from my grandfather. His father moved to New York from Finland back in the early 1920s and brought a modest collection of world coins with him, ranging from a 1230s medieval coin to his pocket change. My grandfather was drafted into the Navy during the Korean War around April 1953, and finished his tour of duty touring the world and collecting coins to add to his father's collection.

None of his kids were particularly big on collecting, beyond the standard "save wheats, bicentennials, and silver". I spent a lot of time with him as a kid when my parents were finishing college, and I used to love going through the coins with him as he told me the stories behind them (or made them up). I was big on coins as a kid, and it was a regular thing to get a handful of world coins every year or two whenever anyone got back from a foreign country. When I was about 11 (late 2000?) my parents took me to a coin show where I got a bunch of cool freebies from a kid activity/scavenger hunt and bought a bunch of WWI era world coins from some dealer's junk bin for 25 cents each (a lot turned out to be silver).

Then I lost interest in coins until 2008 when I started working as a cashier. My eye for coins kicked in when I saw a 1947-S nickel in my till one day, and then I started keeping a handful of change in my pocket to swap out for all the keepers. I eventually found a 1938 nickel and a 1968-S penny, and set my mind on building a complete set of nickels and pennies from circulation. The rest is history I guess.

My 6 year old son calls wheat pennys "wheat breads." I hope he remembers how he got started collecting helping dad.

hmmmm,,, one memory I have is going to buy baseball cards.... and the owner also had a coin shop inside on the other side of his store.. and I wondered over and I was hooked. I remember buying silver eagles because they looked pretty neat and I liked the look of 1 oz silver lol

I still have those with me, I touched them as a young kid, didnt realize they would tarnish :/.. lol

then... years later I would be trading, investing, selling and buying gold and silver and other metals on a regular basis in the commodity markets....

thats my connection to metals and coin collecting. Its pretty neat to be able to understand how markets work, how prices work, see how, where and when they are doing something... feels good to be in control to a degree when I trade them... and even better when I know I am getting a good deal buying silver and gold coins for my collection.

... and while I dont live in that area anymore nor is that shop around, its longgggg gone... I have those exact coins with me.

i was 6-7 mom gave me Two Cents for milk with my lunch. saw one was 1919 wheat. no milk that day and water with peanut butter not good. and I still have that wheat.