My/Your Childhood Coin Collecting Recollections

Wonderful stories, howell - thank you for sharing them with us! Although a bit younger than you (just turned 64), I can relate to your tales of collecting coins from change. Of course, by the time I began handling money, most of the silver had long since vanished. An occasional one did pop up, with War Nickels being the type I most commonly encountered. And yes, wheaties were quite prevalent in circulation in the late '60s and early '70s, although they became scarcer by the year. I was able to fill quite a bit of my Whitman folder that way, although the coins were generally not much to brag about.
The first coin I recall collecting was this 50 Centimes from my parents' penny jar back in the late '60s. It was just the coolest coin that I had ever seen - so old and exotic! I asked them for it and of course they let me have it. To them, it was really nothing - about what a 1980's vintage Chuck E. Cheese or arcade token is today. I've held on to this beauty lo these 50+ years, through multiple moves across the country. I really regret never having asked them how they obtained it.
France 50 Centimes 1923 - "penny jar" find

I'm of the same era.
Began collecting a couple of years before silver disappeared from circulation. My dad would do the weekly grocery shopping on his way from work Friday evenings, and dump the change from his pockets; plenty of buffaloes (dates gone even then), mercs, SLQs and walkers; very few IHCs. On the east coast, S mint coins were far harder to come by than Philadelphia or Denver. I never filled that first Lincoln Whitman from pocket change, missing the S mint before 1916 if I recall, in addition to those other few key dates.

The elderley barber where my brothers and I were taken sold average circlulated older types to kids at low prices. That was my intro to large cents (and halves!), barber types (of course ) , seated liberty types, Two Cent Pieces (I bought all the easy dates there), Flying Eagle cents.

Each year in early December the family trekked to a mall in north Jersey where the Gimbels department store had a stamp and coin section. We were deposited there while the parents shopped, and given a budget used for fishing things from the 25 cent box. Got my first medieval that way, though lacking an internet or a catalog, it took me over 40 years to give it a proper ID (I had it as a French denier tournois, but it was a Crusader States denier).

My interest in foreign coins began when my dad handed over a plastic pouch with coins from his WWII deployment. What a story that told! North Africa, Iran, India, Dutch East Indies, Philippines and Japan. Once I had real income from part-time work (age 15), I began hitting mail order dealers for foreign coins. The summer of my older brother's junior year in high school, he traveled to Spain to study, and did a side trip to Morocco. He remembered his little brother and brought back some crusty 18th century maravedis and a Moroccan dirham from a flea market. What treasures!

Much of that collection has been sold off. In adulthood, my focus shifted to European medievals. But I still have a few things from that barber, most of the coins from my dad's WWII service and those coins my brother brought back.

I have posted parts of this story in another thread some years back also. I was born in Canada in 1964, and I don't remember not collecting coins. It was mostly pennies to start with. I remember being fascinated with how so many had maple leaves on one side, but a few had a bird instead of the maple leaves. And most of those had a lady on the other side, but a few of the older dirtier ones had a man instead. And then there was another penny that was completely different. It had an old guy with a beard on one side, and some strange rectangular thing on the other. The aforementioned Canadian pennies likely all got spent except for those with King George VI, which would have been absorbed into my collection, but the penny with the old guy with the beard is still filling the 1959D space in my Whitman folder.

As for silver, my dad realized that silver was getting scarce in our change around 1975 (age 11 for me), so I was late to the hunt, but I would watch the contents of cash registers when we paid for our groceries and if I spotted silver would ask the cashiers to exchange for it. Most were nice about it but one or two got quite annoyed with me. I had to learn to be more careful about who, when and how I asked.

Around that age I would also look through my parents' change, especially Dad's, which he left on his dresser by his bedside. Most of the time I would just exchange for anything I wanted, but one time stands out in my mind. In his change I found a well worn but still legible 1916D Buffalo nickel, and while I would have wanted it for myself it was such an unusual find in our part of the world that I insisted to Dad that he keep it with his small batch of coins that he set aside, as I felt he should exercise first rights to it. He did so, probably to humour me. That coin is mine now anyway, as he has since passed away.

For me at that age the biggest deal was what my oldest coin was. I had two 1910s that I was quite proud of: a Canadian dime that my grandmother found in her change when I was 9, and a Lincoln Cent that I found on the floor at school when I was 12.

As an afterthought, I also remember (around age 5) asking my mother who the old guy with the beard was. She told me it was Uncle Sam!

Like most kids in the 60's, I had a little box in a drawer where I kept the occasional interesting coin I would come across. There were some Mercury dimes, a few Indian cents, steel cents, and stuff like that. Then I got a weird coin in change from a coke machine. I recently posted it here.

https://goccf.com/t/491931

When I showed it to my dad, he told me his dad, my grandfather, was a long time coin collector and we should show it to him. He thought it was pretty neat, showed me some of his coins (he had a safe full), and gave me one of his old red books and a blue book. Pretty soon after that I was filling blue Whitman folders with cents, nickels, dimes, and quarters. Around 1967 I had filled my #2 cent folder from circulation except for the pesky 1954-P which was nowhere to be found. My dad took me to a coin shop over near my grandma's house where I was able to purchase a BU 1954-P for, I think it was 55¢.

Shortly after that, I went to my first coin club meeting with my grandfather. Among the auction lots was a Republic of Texas $50 bill, which I thought was just the coolest thing, ever. Grandpa bought it for me and I was over the moon. I think he paid about $15 for it.

My grandfather was also a long line truck driver. All he did was drive cargo and household goods back and forth between the east and west coast. He would often stop at small banks along the way to buy rolls and bags of coins which he would bring home to search during his down time. He also bought mint sewn bags of cents in Denver and Philadelphia when he passed through. We had some fun weekends going through mounds of coins, cherry picking the good stuff from the circulated rolls and error coins from the mint bags.

By the time I was in high school I was actively buying, selling, and trading coins with other kids in school and with adults at the coin club. Every month my dad would come home from a long day at work and drive a bunch of us too-young-to-drive teenagers to the coin club meeting, 30 minutes away. I'll always remember Mr. Mullendore at the coin club. Every time a silver dollar would show up at the auction he would bid $2. He got a lot of them!

As a very active young member of the coin club I was recruited to be a page at the 1970 PNG convention and show at the Baker Hotel in downtown Dallas. Talk about a kid in a candy store. Yowsah. I was tasked with walking the bourse floor while wearing a straw cowboy hat and being a go-for for the dealers. I'd go grab sandwiches, cokes, whatever they needed, so they could stay and work at their tables. The coins they had were mind blowing. The BEP billion dollar exhibit was also there with the uncut sheets of $100,000 bills and other amazing stuff. I think there was a 1913 Liberty nickel on display, too. I still have my solid brass PNG badge from the convention. I'll add a photo if I can find it.

College, marriage, saving for a house, work, all slowed my collecting for awhile, but I was very active in the 80's when I attended many big shows and socked away lots and lots of coins and Texas currency. Now I'm actively finding new homes for my stuff but I still enjoy "The Hunt" in my change and, recently, some boxes. I still have my 1965 "S" nickel and that BU 1954-P cent and I'll always appreciate the help I got from my dad and grandpa.