What Got You Into Coin Collecting?

Jmferris - beware that having pictures won't be enough to cover coins under your insurance. I thought the same thing until I called. I was told I was covered up to like $100 (or something super low) on any coin or paper money. They told me I had to get formal appraisals on my collection and send it to them to be covered (for a fee of course). Another caveat is any single coin over a certain value ($500? 1000?) has to be individually appraised. Seems like a way for the insurance companies to screw people over to me..

My former wife worked as the office manager for a coin shop in San Antonio, TX. When I stopped in to just look around, I was awed by the sheer beauty of the early coin designs. The Barber coins, Capped Bust coins and Seated Liberty coins have always been my favorites. Morgan dollars are pretty nice, too.

Best to everyone with your collecting goals.

Alan

There were about 15 silver 18th and 19th century coins in my family for generations. I really liked to look at them when I was a kid. Years later (about 3 years ago) I looked them up on internet and stored them properly and that's how my fascination with coins started. (Those coins were of various german states and austrian empire)

When I was 13, my mother purchased the 1998 edition of Scott A. Traver's Insider's Guide to U.S. Coin Values. It seemed like quite an interesting thing to read knowing that older coins not just have value but also consists of these various "grades" and mentioned "never clean a coin" showing how clean coins are taboo and any restoration should be left to pros. Soon, I started to actively check my pocket change. Some of the earliest coins that I've found that were worth a bit more than "lunch money" as I might expect where a few wheat pennies from the 40's and 50's, and I can recall 1941, 1942-D, 1945, 1946, and a couple from the 50's as my first wheat pennies, along with some pre-1960 Jefferson nickels. I've posted this before, but a couple months later in school I received a silver 1962-D quarter in change and that's where it started from there. It was slow at first before jobs by saving allowance money. But eventually I started to CWR after I got my driver's license and then sold some of the duplicates (mostly 40% silver halves back when they were only worth around 1.5X face) at some coin shows, allowing me to build better coins. Then my parents got the Internet, allowing me to expand my horizons of collecting. I've never joined an official coin club nor association, but I still find it an enjoyable hobby on this day with a tinge of investing.