I Think I'm Becoming Addicted To Coins

January, I like your approach. I too just made a haul from the local coin shop. I rarely spend big bucks on a coin, but I regularly fish the foreign melt bucket. This week it amounted to 140+ coins for about $8.

Addiction part 2 (June 1-2, 2016):

Total $25 spent on coins on June 1st, $60 on June 2nd. Both are rather huge amounts of money.

Lesson from the June 2nd trip: I'd better stay away from expensive bins (~50 cents and up). I always end up picking 20-30 coins from there and spending a lot of money that way.

OTOH, loads of new countries, and/or otherwise cool coins, for my collection (including a worn, corroded, and apparently dateless, but otherwise identifiable 2 para 3 kopek of Moldavia and Wallachia, and two more Siberian types - on one of them, the date had also long since worn away).

A lot of the coins I thought were rare turned out to be fairly common (assorted Chinese 1 fen, Paraguay 15 centimos, Algeria 1/4 dinar, among others).
One coin I thought was common (from the reaction of the seller - never seen this type myself) turned out to be rare (Sweden 4 skilling banco 1849 - Numista listed mintages are silly low, and other sites show higher figures, but even aside from that it's clearly not a particularly common coin).

A Chinese brass cash I thought was unusual is probably a fantasy (perhaps a charm) - Tai Ping Tong Bao on the obverse and the Manchu and Chinese for Fu (as in Fuzhou) on the reverse do not fit each other.
(The former belongs on Northern Song and/or Taiping Rebellion coins, the latter on the poem cash series.)
No, I did not (yet) find a reference anywhere for this particular variety, even as a fantasy.
For those searching: 24.0 mm diameter. Might try to make a photo later.

Lots and lots of other stuff (most of it cheap exotic coins). Might mention some later.

This happens more often than I'd like to admit... or.. not actually broke, but also budgeting other useful stuff. Usually it's solved by either (browser)window shopping or by going through some stack of coins that I haven't catalogued yet.

My name is Steve and I am addicted to coins!
I have been since I found this website 10 years ago.
There are worse things out there to be addicted to though,
so I don't see a problem (except not enough spare cash to buy more coins). :)

@ triggersmob I had no idea this was coin addicts anonymous lol

@UltraRant Sadly it happens to me quite a bit too. I generally try to stay away from window shopping, but I do things to work on my collection, read books on coins, study die varieties and well talk here.

Addiction part 3 (June 27, 2016):

Spent $30 on coins today. A good deal more than I expected. (I said that I should stay away from expensive bins, but that didn't really work out that well, unfortunately.)

The $2 bin (120 rubles) was all highlights: British Guiana 1 stiver token 1838, French 2 sols 1793-BB flipover double strike (only a little less worn that the 2 sols coins I bought before, so sadly the liberty year is worn away), Romania 5 bani 1882, and French IndoChina 10 centimes 1945.

Highlight of $1 (50 rubles) bin: British "dump" farthing 1717 (thanks to Numista for identification). Apparently very uncommon (though perhaps not in such a crap grade as this one).
Non-highlight of $1 bin: Saudi Arabia 1 qirsh 1959 (1378 AH). A lot more common than I thought it was.

Highlights of $0.5 (30 rubles) bin: Swiss 5 rappen 1919 and 1947, Romania 5 bani 1963 (one of the few Romanian 3rd leu types I still needed for my type set), Colombia 50 pesos 2012 (might be common but hey, I had no idea there were bears in Colombia), and an 1943-P nickel (which happened to be pierced, but hey, cheap silver). Oh, and a nice 1967 Canadian cent (and a slightly less nice one from 1940).

Other highlights: Mongolia 20 mongo 1945 (35) for 100 rubles ($1.5), and a huge copper 5 kopek 1759 with a large cut-off piece (the dealer said it was a clip, not PMD, and honestly I believe him, but it's probably hard to say either way) for the ridiculously large price of 350 rubles ($5).

Addiction part, um, 5, I suppose (August 7, 2016):

I finally reached the legendary big Moscow coin fair, and it was not what I expected at all.
I mean, sure, there was a lot of very expensive coins, and a lot of assorted Soviet and modern Russian coins, but not much of everything else.

So I mostly bought from that one guy with the Byzantine coin bargain bins - of course I ended up spending an incredible $73 anyway...


$12: Trebonianus Gallus AR antoninianus, 19.7 by 18.3 mm (the seller claims that the size is wrong for an antoninianus, and a denarius must have been involved; I don't believe this, but the coin doesn't look fake either)
$10: Tiberius Constantine AE 20 nummi (XX), Constantinople mint
$10: Michael III and/or Basil I, cast AE of Cherson, SB 1699
$9: Nabataean Kingdom, Rabbell and Gamilat, ca. late 1st century AD (apparently those are commonly faked, so I'll try to take photos and post them for authentification)
$6: Maurice Tiberius? 20 nummi (K), Thessalonica mint, year 2
$6: Justin II and Sophia follis (M), Nicomedia mint, officina B, year 6
$3: unidentified AE10, apparently with Arabic writing, perhaps Indian - I intended to take photos and ask for identification

Assorted highlights from the remaining $17:
Brazil 40 (countermarked on 80) reis, 1824 R
Guernsey 8 doubles 1864 (sadly scratched a bit)
Southern Rhodesia 1 shilling 1947
Japan 1 sen Meiji 18 (I think)
USA 5 cents V 1889 (very worn and sadly a bit damaged)
Ottoman Egypt 5 para 1255 AH (regnal year worn away)
...and an unidentified Chinese cash (another one for taking photos of).

Well done, january1may.