What started your coin collecting journey?

[Rosa Potatos]

Hello from the uk. I've never been into modern uk coins but had a few world ones when I was a child, I particularly liked the irish ones we'd get in change as they were similar sized to uk ones ; I remember the beautiful designs compared to ours. Later, I would look in shops' 10p boxes and have a few hundred different ones from that time that I now never look at. First I'd go for anything I didn't have, then only if they had a nice design as I got more discerning. They seemed so interesting in comparison to the local stuff, in looks as well as the geographical and historical interest.

One day I saw an ad in a coin magazine for early world coins, a catalogue from Robert Tye, and my world pivoted. Here was an incredible illustrated list of treasures from many cultures and empires from the beginning of coinage onward, with many historical stories for context, and many very affordable. These were the coins never usually seen in shops, sometimes crude but so fascinating. This got me into asian coins and I haven't looked back. His book "Early World Coins and Early Weight Standards" is available, and online I think, it's well worth a look! It's a bit like his catalogues were.

He is my hero, because he open'd a door to a whole new world of Coinage that I had no idea was there. It's given me years of pleasure ever since. I Never stop learning!

Thankyou Rob.. Now I have a many many ancient and old coins, and the 20thC stuff is in the loft....

[shanxi]

I never collected coins until March 1999 when I spontaneously bought this tetradrachm on ebay from Pegasi Numismatics. I still have it and will never sell it.

Attica. Athens
New Style Tetradrachm
Obv: Helmeted head of Athena right.
Rev: Owl standing right on amphora, Dioscuri left, holding sceptre and patera, A - ΘE flanking owl's head, MIKIΩN EYPYKΛEI ΣΩKRATHΣ magistrates, ME below amphora, E on amphora. All within wreath
AR, 16.22g,29mm
Ref.: Thompson 483 a,b
Ex Pegasi Numismatics, 1999

 

 

 

 

 

[maridvnvm]

For me it probably started when I was about 10 or 11. I am in the UK and my father was a builder, working on gutting some old Georgian buildings (dating to the early 1800s) that had been identified for modernisation. In the process he was tearing out the old staircase and found the remnants of an old cloth bag under one of the stairs. The bag contained a bunch of pennies and half pennies dating to 1797 and 1806. He gave them to me to see what I thought of them and became instantly fascinated by their very existence, the story behind them. 

I saved my money from odd jobs etc and started buying more coins and gravitated towards farthings as they seemed more in my budget range.

Over time I expanded my collection back through the start of milled coins and into the English hammered, ticking off names from history, George I, James I, Charles I, Elizabeth I....Henry III ... Edward I.... etc etc Most of these bough from old fashioned coin lists without photos etc. though some came from the thrill of the hunt at small regional auction houses who generally sold furniture but occasionally turned up something out of a drawer as part of a house clearance.

I paused collecting for a while and picked it back up again with a small but decent grade collection of Anglo Saxon pennies. This step change came about after having been working for several years and having some disposable income and and random coin list from one of the dealers I had bought from years before.

Whilst looking through a list from one of the newer set of coin dealers I had now subscribed to I stopped in the Roman section that I usually raced past to find the Anglo Saxons when I saw a denarius of Severus Alexander with the MARS VLTOR reverse type. This appealed to me on a very ego-centric level. My name, Martin, is derived from Mars and here he was depicted on a coin that was unbelievably old.....  I found it hard to believe that you could buy ancients for a small fraction of what I was paying for my Anglo Saxon coinage.

A few years later I parted with the vast majority of my English Hammered and Anglo Saxon coinage to feed my ancients habit and here I am today.....

I still have those George III coppers somewhere but here is that first ancient as I don't think I have ever done those original coins the duty of photographing them.

[ambr0zie]

For me it started when I was very young - around 5. I was fascinated by "foreign money" and "old money". My family gave me all the coins and banknotes they had (of course - all cheap). When I first held a very worn coin, form 1882, I was quite nervous.

There was no internet available back then, I didn't know any serious collector so it was just a child's play. However I keep all the coins and banknotes I gathered as a young child and cherish them deeply.

When I was 12-13 I stopped collecting (collecting - as in swapping with other children, as I had no idea back then that this hobby is very popular among adults and I didn't have the funds for serious collecting anyway).

After 15 years, my father had a friend who is a collector. He kept asking my father if he wants to sell my collection (kept in my room from childhood). Some extra money were welcome (... aren't they now too...) but I felt the offer he made was a joke. So I started reading about numismatics and became very passionate in a short while.

As years went by, I managed to fulfill my goal - I almost completed all the coins from my country's history (the missing ones are unapproachable) and also got a large number of banknotes.

But on a numismatic show these appeared in my face

The rest is history. I became greatly interested in ancient coinage and started a new path. Just in time, as I was getting bored with modern numismatics.

Ever since (almost 2 years) this is my only interest and a hobby that brings me great joy (and great holes in my pockets).

What I am very proud of - I am a semi pro (with GREAT EMPHASIS on "semi) as I collaborate with a house and attribute coins for their auctions. It's a start that might eventually lead to what I want - working in this area as a full time job.

Edited August 18, 2022 by ambr0zie

[Etcherdude]

My grandfather, who was an accumulator, used to take my brother and me out to the yard to “look for money” when he came to visit. We “found” Franklin halves or even silver dollars, coins you seldom saw in circulation. I wish I’d kept them but they were spent on candy or baseball cards downtown.

 

[expat]

I am a late entrant into this hobby. 4 years ago my Father in Law showed me his collection, I knew he collected but I had never seen them. He and his Father were both Ofiicers in the Norwegian Merchant Navy and collected coins from all the countries they docked at and had shore leave. His collection was over 3000 world coins half of which are Norwegian. That year he gave me for Xmas an 1883 CC Morgan Dollar in GSA holder with COA and packaging.

The following year he sadly passed. I was shocked to discover he had left me his collection in his will. I was sure it would go to one of his 2 daughters.

Since then I have been slowly adding to it as I learn more about the subject. However, it has considerably slowed as I have been hit with a sledgehammer called Ancient coins. A few months ago I was a fortunate winner of a competition. This is what I won

Now I can see the obvious adoration in all your posts about a subject I just skimmed past before. I hope one day to have a fraction of your knowledge, but I love them as much as you do already.

 

[Octavius]

On 6/8/2022 at 10:03 AM, John060167 said:

Hey! I would like to ask this question to the various numismatists old and new in this forum.

 

What got you into coin collecting? 

 

I always find it interesting to know what was the spark for someone to start collecting coins…

 

My story is as follows:

 

I was 8 and was in a flea market with my dad. I passed by this guy selling some US coins, and I started looking and was amazed to see these really large sized coins with old dates on it like 1795, 1885, etc! I asked the vendor if i could see one of the coins, it was a 1795 Flowing Hair dollar, and just holding it in my hands felt like something really special, to see what the old money of yesterday was like. The size, heft and peculiar design intrigued me, so I asked “how much”? The vendor said “for you, only $5! a steal!” Then my dad went and bought over 10 of them, some were Morgans, Draped busts, Flowing hair and even a  1906 American Silver eagle. So when I took them home, I stared at them for a while and become more and more excited and decided I wanted to add another coin to my collection not too long after.

My first (real) coin purchase was an 1899 Indian head cent on Amazon or something like that, for $5 plus shipping …when I got it in I was so happy and spent long periods of time just staring and feeling it up.  Eventually after some more researching I found some local coin dealers, and a month later my mom took me to one. When I went in, it was surreal! The sight of old coins and monies all over as well as the smell of these old coin shops(if you know, you know), I was a kid at a candy store! I asked the dealer if I could see a old toned up Morgan dollar, and I asked him “how much”? He said “$30”, I laughed and said “thats too much! I got some others which are nicer for $5 each” and pulled out my bag of 10 silver dollars I bought from the flea market and proudly showed him it with a grin on my face. When he looked at it, I saw him slightly smirk and he simply said “they’re all fake”. The more he smirked the more I frowned. He then explained to me the various issues with them, how some issues such as the 1795 dollar are extremely expensive, etc, and out of pity, he told me that he will give me the morgan for half off, that I could buy two for the price of what he would normally  sell one, so that I could finally own some “real coins”. And so I walked out of that store with two genuine morgan silver dollars and a bag of fake silver dollars. Then I told myself that one day I would own the real deal 1795 Flowing Hair dollar, my dream coin..the rest is history!

For me it was a bunch of fake coins and an overpriced 1899 Indian head cent that got me into coin collecting, and here I am today! Whilst I do not buy US much anymore after having purchased my dream US coin, I still greatly appreciate the US coins I have purchased and have owned/still own. Nowadays I mostly buy ancients as you can see from my post history, but yeah…. 

 

Anyway, whats your story? Please share!

 

Here are pictures of some of the fakes my dad purchased! Which one do you find the most funny? It is the 1906 ASE for me! Haha

 

Cheers! Cant wait to read the stories you all tell!

 

 

 John, your story brought back lots of memories for me as well. I started collecting American coins when I was 8 , mostly pennies ,buffalo nickels , mercury dimes ect. that you could find in change. When I turned 13, I began Latin lessons in 1966 and was fascinated with ancient history - especially Roman History. One Saturday morning my dad took me to the local coin shop and the proprietor showed me a box that contained about two dozen or so ancient Roman and Byzantine coins. I was amazed and completely mesmerized. It was the first time I experienced that special connection with the past that we are all familiar with by holding one of these artifacts in our hands. I timidly asked him if they were for sale and how much they cost, thinking that they probably cost a fortune. To my surprise he said " the small ones are twenty-five cents and the large ones are fifty cents"! My father bought me a handful of them and I subsequently went back to this shop several more times with my allowance money to buy up all the rest. The coin that grabbed my attention first was a beautiful sestertius of Vespasian with the depiction of the Colosseum on the reverse which my dad got for me for fifty cents. Well, as your first coins, this turned out to be fake as well, but I still have it after all those years. Most of the coins were Antoniniani of Gallienus, Aurelian , Claudius Gothicus, and there were several very nice asses of Divus Augustus, Tiberius, Vespasian, and some third century sestertii of Decius, Alexander Severus and others. I think the entire group cost me about $15. Only the Colosseum coin was a fake. (I wish it were the other way around). From that time in 1966 I never lost interest in Roman coins and continued to collect them to this day. They enriched my interest in history and pushed me to continue to study Latin for 5 years even though my majors were in the sciences. I have no regrets.