New Member Interested Mostly In European Coins

Hi, I'm Patrick. I'm originally from Florida but am a longtime resident of South Carolina. Fifty-five years old, married, no kids.

I started collecting coins back in the 1960s, mostly collecting coins from circulation, but I also got some help from my grandmother and bought a few things at shops and shows. Most of my collection was stolen in the 1980s, and it was about twenty years before I got into it again, in a small way.

I'm kind of a low-end collector. My budget for coin collecting is very modest, and most of my coins are 20th-century U.S. coins. Until recently I had most of my coins in boxes and folders, and I've only recently started moving them into albums. I'm interested in U.S. coins mostly to the extent of filling in and upgrading the collections I already have.

My main interests right now are in pre-decimal coins of the British Isles and in German coins, especially the coins of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

I'm also interested in the decimal, pre-euro coinage of Ireland and in the coins of France, Greece, and Italy, but I haven't started collecting any of those in any methodical way.

I have a keen interest in the coins of Hessen-Darmstadt and in the silver pennies of England and Scotland, but collecting those coins in any serious way is not within my budget. I'm interested in ancient Greek and Roman coins, but that interest has remained mostly 'on paper' so far.

I also collect random interesting coins issued in my birth year and the birth years of some of my family members. I hope eventually to assemble an album for each birth year.

Coins appeal to me as works of art and as historical artifacts, and in some happy instances, both.