What Got You Inspired To Collect?

I guess it's just that I like old or interesting things from the start. But I guess the coinage in Indonesia is my biggest inspiration.

I was born and raised in Jakarta, and Indonesian coinage is a little strange at best. Circulating coins are practically worthless (except for Rp 500 pieces) and they come in two metals, aluminium (white) and aluminium bronze (yellow) with different designs. Also note that Indonesia started minting coins in 1971, so none of them are too old. Some are in extremely bad condition though, people don't care much about collecting them as I see. Yellow coins are older and much heavier, and people tend to not like to bring them around. I've mentioned this before in another thread but I'll say it again. A joke in Indonesia is getting a hole in your pocket/wallet/purse because of the weight of these things and the fact that you don't use them.

I tend to keep all the yellow coins I get because I feel that they are rare (except for the Rp 500 yellow 2nd version, which is still normal to find shiny ones) because they are harder to find and they are also mostly older than I am (pre-1997). I also keep denominations I totally can't use like Rp. 50 or Rp. 25 since they have too small of a value. I don't spend ones I don't find circulating anymore either. Some of them will be very shortly be no longer be legal tender anymore.
I don't remember much that I have anymore, but if anyone is curious I'll try looking up pictures of old Indonesian coins and see if I can remember. They're all sitting in a can for putting money in (what do you call that in English?) in Jakarta.

I also recently received a small plastic bag of coins sellotaped together and put into camera film rolls as a gift from my grandma. It's now locked up back in Jakarta, so it's not with me now. And I didn't have time to look at them yet, but I remember there being some small denomination Dutch colonisation era coins, some Rp. 5 coins, and a couple of "smelly money" ("uang busuk", what Indonesians call very worn, crumpled, starting-to-smell-funny paper money) condition banknotes.

I had gotten a few RCM coins when I was a child/early teenager.

But during my first of university, I was eating at a Chinese restaurant and got a 1920 penny in my change. That's when I decided to start collecting Canadian circulation coins.

'99/'00 Canadian quarters started it when I was 6 then going back to find the other quarters, then all the quarters the R.C.M. started pumping out. I since moved on to copper coins.

My dad first started telling me about steel Wheaties and mintmarks when I was younger. The forum just expanded my knowledge of what I was doing exactly.

My grandmother gave me 2 Indian cents, 5 world coins and one 1953 $2 USN when I was 9 years old and I have been hooked with coins and paper money since then.

When I worked in the US the State Quarter program was going, I also got a Buffalo nickel and loads of pennies. Then I took these back without too much interest and moved to Spain just before the Euro came in, so I collected the old peseta coins. Then When I when home I looked at getting an album and by the time the Euro came along I was hooked and then had to go get coins from my own country.

Travelling also helps. I've just been around southern Africa and got loads of coins from the 7 countries I visited, I've chalked up 51 foreign countries now, lives in 5 of them, and will probably be in some country or another soon, depending on if I stay in this hot place Thailand for too long (and not finding any commemorative 10 baht coins)!

I agree with CopperCastle- I love the history of it!

Boomer - a lighthouse was instrumental in my starting to collect coins too! When I was at Primary School, our teacher once told us that some pennies had lighthouses on them and others didn't. I then started looking at pennies and got interested in the different dates and the various kings and queens. Before 1971 you could still find British pennies back to 1860 in change. When I found an 1874 penny with both a lighthouse AND a ship, I was hooked! I haven't stopped since! Mind you, lots of other people must have started collecting around the same time as me, when the UK was about to go decimal. They may have sold their collections or still have them stashed away somewhere. I wonder how many of them are still out there collecting?