How Long Have You Been Collecting Coins?

Approx 44 years. Too bad I quit for around 40.

In my signature.

How long have you been collecting coins?

I've been collecting since I was a child, so about 20 years. However, I only started treating it as a serious hobby about 2 years ago.

How did you get into it?

By holding onto loose change from holidays abroad. As for the gold and silver coins I've purchased, well I just like the look of them and I like owning treasure.

Where did you first start?

Coins from America. Quarters and Dimes, and then I started a precious metals collection with a purchase of one ASE.

Why do you do it?

I buy gold and silver coins because I like shiny stuff. I buy older coins because they're pieces of history and I love history.

Dad hoarded coins. When I went through his stuff after he died there were loads of coins just out of circulation but a few caught my eye. I went to the library to find a book to tell me more about the values and saw one on shillings.

Now I remember spending shillings when I was a kid. One would buy you an ice cream or even a cheap book. And I thought it would be nice to use some of Dad's coins to collect .. well, coins! Plus I like the size and look of them.

At first I decided to collect UK shillings going back to the earliest in the reign of Henry VIII, plus all the colonial shillings that were issued while Britain still had an Empire(!)

But after a while I started to realise that the earlier coins weren't going to be cheap, by which time I'd bought a book about the coins of Charles 1st and I decided to specialise on the shillings from his reign.

That might sound a bit limited, but for some reason the Mint made many changes to the designs in a short number of years. There are over 30 portraits and some 20 reverse designs, so a decent scope to work on. And every die and every coin was made by hand. No machinery to help engrave or to mass produce the things in those days, so each one is effectively unique with it's own character and appeal!

I guess I started collecting properly around the beginning of 2004, so it's nine years for me. And - don't laugh - my entire collection now numbers some ....... 63 coins. I said it was specialised!

Interesting how many of us got into it because of a relative!

How long have you been collecting coins? Approx 4 yrs

How did you get into it? My wife was collecting Lincoln cents for her father to put in the grandkids folders. We stayed up late several nights sorting the coins. Something hit me that I really enjoyed and have been doing it since

Why do you do it? I think of the coins as pieces of history, which was my favorite class in school. I love the intricate detailing on the coins.

The first coins I remember were a 1976 mint set my dad bought for me when I was six. He was a stamp collector, but really got into the bicentennial thing. Those didn't exactly capture my attention though. The first coin I remember being really interested in was a late '50s early '60s British 3 pence (probably KM#900- I should still have it lying around here somewhere...) which I believe my mom got from a British pen-pal she had when she was young. Not only was it a "three" of something (odd!), it was not exactly round (cool!) and had this medieval portcullis on it (vaguely creepy!). I was about eight. From there I assembled Lincoln Cent books from bags of wheaties my grandma gave me and even made some purchases in a local coin shop in the early '80s (I'm looking at a 1978 off-struck cent still sitting in its PVC-laden flip I have sitting on my desk- I bought it in 1981 or so!). Then, for a while, it was digging antique bottles and baseball cards (still have those darn things too!).

I didn't really start organizing my collection or taking it seriously until college and shortly thereafter, when I started travelling extensively to Latin America. I suppose that means I've been "serious" now for 21 years. I went on a buying spree as a grad student when ebay first got hot- that's when I acquired the core of my nicer Latin American coins (and lived on beans from a can as a result). The oldest backup of my collection "data base" (technically just an Excel spreadsheet) dates to about 2002, but then the first of two kids arrived and things slowed down some.

Now that the kids are brushing their own teeth and reading their own bedtime stories I've picked it up again. I've recently finished my spreadsheet catalog (it only took me 11 years!) and now, with a little more experience behind me, I'm going back and vetting and re-grading my coins. I should be done with that little project sometime in 2015...

Why do I do it? Well, for the obvious reasons- history, geography, technical interest in coinage and metals and their relative values, aesthetics (I love the odd-ball designs of 1930's Brazilian coinage and what I call Italy's 20 centesimi "flying naked lady"- KM #44). But I'm also just wired this way- My handwriting is a mess, my desktop is a mess, my hair is a mess (unless my wife recently cut it), sometimes I make it to lunchtime before I realize my t-shirt is on backwards, but my coins- they are in perfect order (or as close as I can come). Perceived immortality through localized reduction in entropy.

I also like the fact that my collection is worth something- both monetarily (though I do not consider it an "investment" in the purest sense) and as a project that could be handed from generation to generation- something to bond over, much like I did with my dad and stamp collecting.

Anyway, those are the first thoughts that come to mind...

cheers,
tbg

Collecting? About 30 years.
Interest? about 55 years!
My mother used to toss any foreign coins that came to hand into an old biscuit tin and I remember going through them with her periodically.
I started collecting them myself at about 30 years of age and them inheriting my mothers 'collection' on her passing. That's when things started getting serious!
I don't collect gold (too expensive) and silver only when they come to hand at a reasonable price.
Specifically because of my mother, I now have 15,000+ world coins and have loved every minute of my collecting.
Just the other day I got as much pleasure of finding a 1981 1 Sen Malaysian coin (a gap in the run of years) as I did when a friend of mine recently gave me an Elizabethan sixpence from the 16th century!
Bless you, mum.