New Member From New Jersey, USA

Hi all, I've already been meeting some of you on the Modern errors subforum.

I started collecting pennies way back into the early 1960's. My friends and I would bicycle to the bank with our pooled money and get rolls of pennies. This was on a summer Saturday. We'd bike back to a house and search all of the rolls we got. We'd take out what we wanted and make up the rolls again to full count. Then we'd bicycle back to the bank and ask for different rolls in exchange for the ones we were returning. We'd repeat it until the bank teller told us we'd gone through all of their pennies.

Never went much higher than dimes. It was too expensive to save quarters and up.

One of my aunts asked if she could borrow my Lincoln Cent #1 book. I said sure. Didn't know what was going to happen. She returned it with a few of my blanks filled in: 1922-D, 1909 VDB and I don't remember any others. That was over 60 years ago!

Worked periodically with my father in his machine shop from 6 years old doing clean up and more. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau made me want to be an Oceanographer. Went to Florida Institute of Technology majoring in Oceanography and discovered its an engineering degree. Switched to Marine Biology. I have a BS in it. Graduated broke and was able to get a job as a Mechanical Inspector in the company of a friend of mine. Car pooled and worked there about 1.5 years until my father asked if I wanted to take over his business. Got into a 4 year Toolmakers Apprenticeship at a local Military Contractor. At the end of 4 years I saw I didn't have the "knack" my father had to be a machinist. Told my Dad I wasn't interested and he sold his business. I stayed on at the company as a finish grinder in the Toolroom. I did all of the very high tolerance work and really enjoyed it.

Move on to 1993 when the Soviet Union was breaking down. My company was laying off every Friday. I didn't want to get laid off and began looking for other work. I got a part time job at the first company I worked for out of college. I was grinding their carbide Turks Head Rolls used to roll round wire to square or square edge flat wire. Eventually I was hired full time to run the Electroplating and Water Treatment/Recycle department. That is where I stayed for 29 years. I retired in 2022.

I've always had the Tropical Fish hobby since the early 1960's. Love to garden indoors and outdoors. Used to keep bees. Rowed competitively in college for 3 years. That was a blast. Loved it and still do. Leader in the Trail Life USA troop at my church.

Got back in to looking at my coins and filling in some blanks when my 9 year old grandson started showing an interest. They visited a coin shop in Nashua, NH recently. He is currently really just interested in the oldest coin that you have. Got to start somewhere.