How Long Have You Been Collecting Coins?

Is only been a couple years for me. I always separated my coins and cashed them in when I had a lot, but I never cashed my cents in. One day I found a Wheat cent in my change and that started it all. I searched through all my cents that I had and found about 60 of them. Then I found CRH and started with rolls of cents. Quickly got bored and moved onto nickels and quarters.

43 years and counting, and I now own my dads collection he put sixty plus years in and his dad who had forty plus years in.

I just started about three months ago.
I was talking to a guy at work who collects and it got me thinking about a collection of Great Britain Pennies that I was given when I was 6 years old that belonged to my oldest brother who passed away before I was born. I started looking online for coins the fill the holes in the folders that he hadn't. Somehow this got me interested in silver so I started CRHing. While CRHing I found a became more interested in US coins. Well, then my father ended up in the hospital in really bad shape. I spent a month visiting,hoping,praying, and driving back and fourth from the hospital and home (I live 1.5 hours away) and trying to juggle my life with my need and desire to be by my fathers side. While all this is going on coins gave me an escape and something else to focus on besides the stresses of my life and chance to think about something else even if it was a few minutes to look for some double dies or something in my collection. I primarily focused on nickels for the first two months of my collecting. Dad passed away on April 2nd. While going through some of his stuff to find paper work and such I found two nickels that he had put away. A Buffalo and a Liberty nickel. He didn't collect coins so I found it ironic that he had two nickels which were what I looked through the whole time he was in the hospital. Sorry this is such a long post.

I started as a teen, and started roll hunting when I was about 16. That was right at the time the Hunt brothers started the market cornering in silver. I didn't have alot of funds back then, but I remember searching dimes, quarters and halves. The pickins were slim, as silver aproached $50. I returned the 40% halves with the clad, as the Hunts wanted pure silver and it must not have been worth the effort to refine those. Interest rates were around 15% and higher, and an employment and housing slump about 1980. Strange as it seems, I found much more silver when I got back into roll hunting about 2007, than in 1980.

I started collecting coins while I was stacking silver about 2 years ago. I enjoyed Canadian maples and began with that set and then moved to 80% silver dimes. Started CRHing for them. From there I figured maybe I should put those dimes into an album. I got to thinking, while reading others posts here about their albums, how the heck someone in the US would ever put a set together of one coin per year since they became a country. Is it possible really for many to do this? I got to thinking, well Canada isn't that old, I may have a chance to create a set of every Canadian coin. Since then, I have every coinage book on the go. Some are almost complete back to 1858 and others have just been started. I love Canada and am very proud to live in such a country, thus makes me proud to own and be part of collecting its history and hope to turn these sets into a family heirloom.

I would like to put write ups of facts about particular years. Things like mintages and why they are rare or special. My grandfather was off the boat from Europe. That makes me 3rd generation Canadian so I thought a continuation of family tree with coins might be nice. The first coins I ever got were given to me by my grandfather and both my father and grandfather helped me find the last few when I was a little boy. It never went past that until a few years ago, but since they are the ones that first gave me coins, I thought I might add a page with a picture of my grandfather, father and myself as the first 3 to be part of this and hope one of my daughters continue this tradition. Thanks for reading guys and gals.

Exactly 30 years.

It's been 5 months for me.

I remember when I was about 5 my dad telling me that they weren't going to make coins out of silver anymore. He went on to explain the new process of blending metals to make the quarters, halves and dimes. He also had a habit of winning poker games and coming home with jars of V Nickles and other odds and ends. I was pretty much hooked on the history and the coins.

In the late 70's I started spotting 1940's nickles that were made of silver and saved them. In the 80's I started buying straight from the mint. Usually it was just the uncirculated and proof coins. In the late 90's I started to look for more than the daily coins, and started collecting Walking halves and Franklin halves... and then I got into the ASE... and recently I am into the commemoratives modern as well as classic.

So I guess it has been about 50 years off and on for me.

Metzger22 - sorry to read about the loss of your father. I know that is a tough one.