Collection Questions

I only show it off to peoople I trust and when I am not showing it off I keep it locked away in a safe place.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with displaying your collection. It is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. My advice would be not to let too many people know that you collect coins. It doesn't matter if you collection is worth no more than face value, if the wrong person hears you have a collection, you wont have a collection anymore. And believe me, it isn't so much losing your collection that will hurt, it is the fact that some stranger has come into your house and violated your property. I actually moved house once because I was broken into and the place didn't feel the same anymore.

Now, to your question. I display my loose coins in folders. I put them into 2x2s and put them into plastic pages so I can look at them whenever I want. "Packaged" coins, like proof sets etc I keep in a special cabinet that I can just take them out of and look at. Once, I used to have a display cabinet with a glass top that I could put different coin displays in. I would put bullion coins in one month, proofs another and so on.
As my collection has grown and become more valuable, a lot of my coins are in a safety deposit box, which makes it hard to appreciate them, but keeping the more common coins at home allows me to see and enjoy my hobby.

I just collect them and store them. Just don't show to people or let others know I have them. Mainly because, I may be able to trust some people, but can I trust the ones they may tell a week from now.
To me that is one of the real down-sides to the hobby. Especially if I take several hundred dollars, go to a coin show and purchase coins to fill gaps in my collection. Then I come home and take them out of the 2x2's, examine them, put them back in 2x2 toss them under the matris. It's almost like I have nothing to show for the money spent but a fun day at the coin show.
Here is a suggestion that has made things much more fun and enjoyable for me in the past. Join a Coin Club if you have one in your area. Even if you have to drive a long ways to get to it, they generally only meet once a month. You'll be able to see different coins, learn a lot and maybe show some of the coins you've had hidden away for years. Plus when you show them something, it will be to someone who has a real interest and not to someone who looks at it and says, "Oh that's nice how much is it worth".

Such questions are depending on where you live, who you know, how many you may tell and lots of other things.
First of all when in college if you take a course in phycology there is a first term test in most colleges. It is to show you the attention span of people and their ability to remember facts. 10 people stand in a circle. The professor tells a very short story to one and it is then repeated to the next and then to the next. The story is whispered so the next one doesn't know what it is. At the end the last person says this out loud. It usually has nothing to do with the original
By all that I mean if you tell someone you have $10 in coins, they will tell someone you have $100 and they will tell someone you have $1,000, etc. Eventually someone will hear about all your millions and you will end up with a home invasion. People are just people and if what they hear is not interesting, they will try to make it interesting.
As to those that laugh at you for collecting coins, people used to laugh at the Right Brothers, Albert Einstien was a idiot in school, Edison was a laughing stock and I'm sure Bill Gates was also nothing at one time. However, just don't bother to discuss subjects with people that know nothing of what your talking about. It is truelly a waste of time. I've tried to explain to people about Nuclear Power Stations since I helped design them. Most look at me as if I'm radioactive.
My suggestion is to continue collecting coins, stamps, fishing poles, rocks or anything else you want and just appreciate your hobbies yourself. Way to many morons out there to try to impress.

Another praise for Carl, great post.




Let them laugh, you do what you enjoy and don't let anyone tell you different. In 30-40 years, when your collection is worth thousands, you'll be the one laughing!

I had to chuckle at justcarl's story about the experience in psychology class. I remember well playing that "game" in first grade; we called it "Telephone", and it had the same result as in jc's psychology class.

Later in 8th grade, I learned a hard lesson about telling my schoolmates too much about my cent collection, which I brought to school to show another classmate who also collected coins. I don't know if the room was locked or not when off we went to recess, but when I returned, I found that the 1913-S cent, the most valuable one at the time, was missing.

People laugh at me when I tell them that I collect radio station coffee mugs. By the time I list all the other things that I collect (my basement is a computer museum, my second floor a library) and get around to telling them about my coins, their eyes are glazed over (mine get that way when I have to hear about someone's collection of plastic artifacts, and when I go to garage sales I see so much plastic junk that I just want to load it all into a recycling bin).

I'm definitely a low-brow collector; I like bronze coins better than silver, and I have absolutely no gold coins and only a few silver type coins, but I'd still feel violated if my collection suddenly disappeared, so I don't tell many people that I don't know extremely well about my coins.

Hello,

WOW, this is awesome, I'm thinking I can look at and enjoy my collection with other collectors or maybe my wife but not "Advertise" it. Unfortunately there are no coin clubs in my area but a lot of coin shows, which is awesome.

Thanks,
Rich