Do You 'Enjoy' Your Coin Collection?

I know what you mean by enjoying a collection. There's a certain joy of acquisition but then it kind of fades because the "mission was accomplished". Time to move on, right?

In all of my times of coming off the coin collecting band wagon, it has always been because of a frustration of not being able to acquire. Acquisition was always my goal. When the acquisition stops then outside pressures would pull me away.

Certainly, acquisition is part of collecting but it should never be the goal.

I'm a little bit older now, and hopefully smarter than I was before. Now my goal in collecting is to share rather than acquire. While it would be cool to have a complete set of Mercury dimes or Morgan dollars, I'm not going to make that a goal. I'd rather buy a pound of world coins off of ebay and go on virtual tours of the home country on Wikipedia. I love snapping picture of my coins and posting them here, even if the coin is worn, faded, and "worthless" as a currency or a collectible.

I think this is a good topic to explore because I'm sure a lot of people have come close to being burnt out and lose the joy of collecting.

-- Boris

Very interesting as I find myself in the acquiring mode alot of the time too. There's something about checking the mail and seeing that fat package, or coming home from a show with a fist full of 2x2's. I think alot of it for me is the hunt, organizing them and keeping track of all my coins. I also find myself grinning ear to ear when I look at all my Lincolns every time though. So I guess I'm about 50/50. I love finding great coins for a steal etc. I now enjoy getting more coins and showing my son, who isn't even old enough yet :)

I have tons of coins that I saved from circulation ten, twenty+ years ago that I finally got around this last year to appreciating and enjoying them, versus just putting them away in a lockbox like I used to.

I was a 'coin saver', not a 'coin collector'. Now I appreciate the history behind the coins, not just "I just got a (Wheatie/Buffalo/Silver/etc.), so I'll put that in a lockbox and never look at it again."

Until 2008, when I (and a lot of my old coins) finally 'saw the light'!

That's a tricky question for me to answer, I tend to juggle hobby's constantly, And once I'm done with one i'll move to the other in the blink of an eye.

First, I bought grab bags of foreign coins from the local coin store, To search through them to find any coins that dated from the world war 2 years, after scanning each bag, the (200+) foreign coins went into storage.

Then I went into hunting pocket changes as well as our passed down coin collection to try and find errors, RPM's, all that, That lasted a while

After that I then started getting into collecting Indian Head cents. I collected a few and also bought some books on them.

Now I'm taking much more respect for coins in general after reading the history of those old foriegn coins that I threw aside previously, After I did some online research I realized how much history I was holding, (And was also pleasently surprise to find a coin worth 150$ that was previous ignored.), So now I'm trying to do as much research on my old foriegn coin collection as possible.

Thinking about it, I guess I am guilty as well, seeing as how once I'm bored with one type of collecting, I move onto the other, the thrill of buying and hunting I suppose, haha.

Guilty - Really don't see that changing. I'm the type of person that needs to be doing something all the time. Searching for coins is only one of several hobbies that I have that keeps me busy doing something. Once I find them - they go into the collection and that's it, I'm off to something else. I really enjoy spending hours searching rolls. I've read some history but never been a history type. To be honest, if I pull out a 1970 P & D nickel and a 1971 P & D nickel (as example) they all look the same except for the date and/or mint mark so I have no desire to pull out a 1972.. it's the same too. I go to coin shows, buy - bring them home and usually put them into another 2x2 or album - looking at them one more time, since I look before I buy and toss them into the collection. It's fun and it keeps me busy.

This is an interesting topic for a noob like me. Since I've just started, I can't really be guilty of this...yet. Just about every night, though, I take out my Whitman folders and bring the kids over to the table to look at them. They're still little, so I'll say something like, "see this one, it says here that there were 5 billion of these made. This one here only had 2.5 million made. Which one do you think was more difficult to find?"

Then I explain the whole concept of rarity and why one is worth more than the other and why they are both worth more than 1¢.

They kind of get it and think it's cool. They absolutely love to roll hunt with me. I always keep a few wheaties free and toss them in when there are a few lousy rolls in a row to keep them interested.

This is a great thread b/c it reassures me that I'm enjoying the hobby, and keeping it just that: a hobby.

I have coins that are valuable, and coins that aren't. The valuable ones will still be in the bank, but I will be bringing a few home every now and again to remember why I bought them. Since I really started searching them again in the last few days, I have made some nice discoveries. I guess after 20 + years of collecting you are bound to have a nice coin or two, and some real 'what was I thinking?' coins as well.

Great question...

I just (re)started collecting about 3 years ago and have gone through the emotions both ways. At first, it was just to get something new and pretend I knew what I was talking about but after some bad purchases it turned around. As I started to learn more about what I was collecting and finding the small differences in what make one coin stand out over another one, the joy began to develop. Over the last two years I would say that I have really enjoyed my collection and look through parts of it a couple times a week and I know this is why I like the Dansco folders so much because I can see both sides of a coin and compare it with others.

My wife would most likely say that I hoard certain coins but she also knows the joy it brings to me to have them. Over the extent of my life I can look back and see that I was always collecting something at one point or another and that I would then move onto something else. I think the reasons I moved on were that I grew tired of something too easily, everyone else was doing the same thing, or it had to be a high grade to have any value. These items always had a price tag to them and not a pure excitement like when I buy a new; or old, coin. When I pick up a coin I start to think of the history that coin has gone through: who owned it? how far has it traveled? what did it purchase? did someone famous use this and if so, for what? If I put some kind of meaning behind it, it makes it move enjoyable, if there is no meaning, then it is just a piece of metal.