Introduction - Been Collecting Since 1983

Hello Everyone

I have been collecting US coins since 1983 with starting off with Wheat Pennies and Pre-1960 Nickels.

I was introduced to Foreign Coins in 1985 in 3rd Grade when a friend of mines dad gave him a cardboard checkbox full of foreign coins from all around the world to speak in front of the class about them and allow everyone to pick 1 coin out of the box. I picked out a 1906 Argentina 20 Centavos coin just like this one here: http://mlu-s1-p.mlstatic.com/fv-arg...122014-F.jpg

I then found myself trading matchbox cars and other toys of mine to get more foreign coins since I thought they were so cool. Unfortunately I didnt know at the time that they werent worth much and that the trades were really bad trades.

I thought I acquired my first Gold coin in 1989 when a kid named Dino showed me a California 50 cent gold piece. I thought I was getting a deal by trading the 1922 Peace dollar that I got for my birthday from my aunt to him for the gold coin. BUT I was only 13 at the time and got a sucker trade on a fake gold coin as for when I visited a coin shop a town over he said its a fake and Dino had already sold the 1922 real Peace dollar and spent the money.

In the 1980s I spent my money on bank rolls of coins to look through and cherry pick, as well as use to go to R & R Coins in Closter, NJ to look through albums of coins priced anywhere from 10 cents per coin to the better stuff in the hundreds and thousands that were behind the glass case.

The dealer named Ray was a great dealer. One of the best dealers I have ever met. He wasnt a crook, and enjoyed explaining numismatics to me. He also had a deal in place for me in which if I found anything wrong in his 3 ring albums of coins that I could have the coin for free. First coin was a 1946 penny that was written on the 2x2 as 1948 that I got for free. The next time it was a Buffalo nickel in a 2x2 labelled 1928-S and it was a 1926-S the low mintage nickel in VG condition. I brought this to his attention and he said after looking with his eyepiece that I was absolutely correct and here you go free on the house a 1926-S Buffalo nickel. I spent my weekly paper route earnings on coins and occasionally silver certificates for like $1.25 each for a $1 bill that I could look through the stack of bills and pick out the ones I wanted and I was trusted with a stack of $1 silver certificates that were about 3 inches thick to look through them and set off to the side the ones I wanted from the ones I didnt want. It was nice to be trusted with at the time felt like a ton of money in front of me. I never stole from him and it was a very good dealer/customer friendship.

In the 1990s my collecting slowed, but I would save whatever crossed my path as error, old, or unusual.

While working at K-mart in 1992 we got a bunch of new $1 bills and there was something unusual about them. The black ink on them were brittle. You could scratch washington with your fingernail and end up with dry black ink on your finger. I thought that these were counterfeit and so I brought this to the attention of my supervisor. My supervisor looked them over and said they look fine and continue to use them. That day I got 4 of them back as change from another register when buying some snacks. I looked them over on my break and noticed that these 1988 series $1 bills had a strange number floating out there on the reverse of the bill to the right of IN GOD WE TRUST. At the time there was no internet to look this up and I didnt have a dealer to contact at the new place where I lived 300 miles away from NJ. I ended up just spending these bills and handing them away as change in my K-mart till. Later around 1999 I met up with a dealer who opened up 15 miles away and discussed the strange bill and he said it sounds like the experimental web-fed notes and they where worth some money. I then with dial-up 28k connection and AOL 3.0 connected to the internet and found info on these web-fed notes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_notes I then started looking for them to pull out of circulation, but the 1988 series notes in 1999 were starting to become scarce as for paper falls out of circulation fast and so it would only be about 1 out of 100 bills were 1988 with occasional 1985 or 1981 and the 1988's that I was getting of 1 of 100 bills was the far more common regular non web-fed notes. After driving my local bank crazy with "borrowing" $1 bills $500 at a time to look through and trade back for others which at first they didnt mind, but as time went on I was making more work for the bank in them having to count the $500 returned prior to giving me another $500 worth of them, I finally gave up after only finding 2 of these web-fed notes out of about $15000 of $1 bills looked through. The funny thing is that I ended up getting my 3rd 1988 Web-fed note as change from McDonalds like 3 years after that and saved that one as well. Unfortunately, I did not grab these up when they were released in the early 90s crisp uncirculated and so the 3 that I have are worn. Looking back at the fact that they bring upwards of $25 each and a specific star note is in the thousands of these it was definitely a missed opportunity, BUT I learned from this opportunity that payed off later.

I bought up silver when it was around $5 an ounce spending about $100 of every paycheck on silver. I sold it when silver was $8 an ounce for a profit. Later I wished I still had all that silver when silver was heading towards $50 an ounce.

In 2003 the new Peace Nickels came out and I was in contact with my local bank to check to see when they were getting some in. They had a delivery and I bought up all that they were allowed to give me without shorting them from nickels that local businesses would need. I ended up buying $150 worth of them for $150 in fed sealed rolls. When the double-die was found, the value of these rolls went through the roof. I searched through $36 of these and found no double dies. I then decided that if I wanted to make money the time is now to sell the $114 ( 72 rolls ) of these nickels on ebay. I sold these for $720 on ebay for the entire lot of unsearched nickels to a collector in florida and made $606. Sadly I had to pay tax on this to uncle sam for that year, but it was still nice.

I then decided to buy and sell coins online and this was ok in the infancy of ebay in the early 2000's, but around 2006 I gave up on selling coins because ebay was becoming more costly for merchants to do business, my DBA Account had to be closed due to Patriot Act at my local bank, and the dealer that I was buying in bulk from to relist the items for a profit online went out of business.

Since then for a short while I bought coins off of ebay to try to cherry pick and make a profit. I did pretty well on buying 1500 of no-date Buffalo nickels dirt cheap and using Nic-a-Date acid to bring dates back in search of Type 2 1913-S nickels and 1916 double die. I ended up finding 3 Type 2 1913-S Nickels and sold them as acid dated nickels to people who needed them to complete their nickel set inexpensively. The money made on the 3 nickels offset the cost for the 1500 nickels and I was also ahead. So I sold off the acid dated teen nickels with D and S mint marks in lots and made more money and then the junk common nickels that werent worth much even if they had a date were sold off in one lump lot. At this time there seemed to be a demand or shortage for no-date nickels for jewelry etc or some other people jumped on board with exactly what I was doing when they saw my acid-date 1913-S Type 2 nickels selling for as much as they were selling for. I then pulled out of this method to earn money and spend my earnings on buying good coins for my personal collection.

When gasoline and heating oil prices went through the roof, my free money to spend on coins disappeared. Today as of posting this here, I finally came back after being somewhat dormant with collecting. I have a little bit of extra money that I can afford to invest in coins and so I will probably buy some 90% silver coins in bulk and cherry pick them before tossing them into safe keep as commons.

I have had a great 32 years of collecting and I am hoping that my children will take interest in numismatics so that I can hand down the fun of numismatics to them.

As for now, I am probably going to buy bulk 90% silver to look through and save as well as hit up my local banks to look over any half dollars they have for 40 or 90% silver that may have been turned in at face value. I got lucky back in 2005 at a small bank that I asked if they had any half dollars and they were like yes we do. They were in the vault and the bank manager had to let the teller in to get them. She said she had $382.50 in them. I said I will take them all. The bank manager was thanking me for taking them off of their hands as for they have been sitting in the vault for a while and were wasting space. When I got home with them I found almost $50 of them were 40% silver and 5 of them were 90% silver with 3 1964 kennedy's a single 1954 franklin, and a 1943 walker. I then was nice enough not to bring the clad half dollars to the same bank I got them from and have them to another bank instead to get cash for them vs a sack of loose clad halves.

Well sorry for the length of this. My specialty in coins is all US coins after 1793 as well as errors and cherry picking if anyone needs any help with that area. I collect VAM's, and all sorts of other attribute coins as well as my own attribute coins that I have picked up on like over polished die varieties of modern coins that are scarce but interesting to save.