Your Budget

Is this really a US Classic thread? :I

Anyway, I'm still in school, so I have $10 weekly of expendable pocket money. I try to buy at least one silver coin a week.

For me its near impossible to have a consistent budget. So whenever I see a good deal & have the extra money laying around. I jump on it. Lately I have been doing the not-so-recommended "window shopping" on ebay looking at paper currency. If you don't have good will power, you can easily go into debt doing this.

No reason to be rude though

Whatever I've got

money... what's that?

Five years ago at least I had a better idea.

Nothing.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time soon after my Dad died I was going through sorting his stuff and I found a load of coins. Just regular ones, but a briefcase full of all the same coin, plus a handful of others.

A few of them I liked, so I took the regular currency to the bank and cahed it and then went to a coin dealer and bought a few pieces. I guess I got the bug.

Anyway a few months later I had done some research (because everyone wants to know how much a coin is worth, don't they?) and in the process had found a book in the library called The Splendid Shilling.

Now a shilling is a British coin (I am British) that was demonetised, but that I remember from when I was younger. I could buy an ice lolly, or even a small book for a shilling when I was at school. And being British shillings had been issued not just here, but across the world in places like New Zealand, Australia, Fiji.

The idea of collecting shillings, just like the ones I'd seen in the book really appealed to me, so that's what I set out to do.

Trouble is, shillings have been issued since the reign of Henry VIII (the mid-1500s) so you can't just pick them out of change. You have to buy them. And the earlier ones aren't cheap!

Anyway, long story short, one day Wifey discovered how much I had spent on some of the coins. And she wasn't best pleased!

However, she did accept it was partly Dad's money (though now ours) and so decided to allow me a lump sum to spend on my hobby. We discussed what I thought I'd need to buy a decent collection ..

.. and I got half that!

And since 2004, that's what I've been buying my coins with. Of course, that money is long gone (and no, I'm not going to tell you how much). So now if I want a coin, I have to sell another. Or top up the money left with cash I get for my birthday or Christmas.

So I don't actually put any money aside. I have what I have and .. that's it. It's not a big collection (a few over 60 coins in total), but through making contacts with other collectors, learning about the things and a fair bit of luck and a good memory for images, I've done OK.

I have a collection I'm fairly happy with (yeah, there will probably always be some coins I'd like to upgrade and of course, the inevitable gaps).

I've had to narrow down my field of collecting to just the one reign now (or else I'd not even have a coin from each monarch, let alone anything close to covering all the varieties and types of coins issued).

But I have a collection thanks to Wifey and Dad. Which is pretty cool, I think!

You beat me to that reply.

how's that possible?: I have once paid 300 for one - a sort of rare variety it was, alright, but... "5"?