27 months ago I did'nt know a thing about coins but I have sure gained a lot of knowledge about how little I really knew.

In May 2006 when I joined this Society I owned 2 years sets of the gold and 2 years set of the Platinum Eagles. At that time I owned no other graded coins of any sort but had just inherited 3 albums - Large Cent - Indian Cent - And Lincoln Cent and a couple handful of loose coins. Of course each album was missing a few coins here and there but I came up with the idea of a signature set for one penny for every year since they have been minted. (1793 _ Date) I had it all figurered out that all I had to do was just ship all my coins to NGC, get them graded and fill in the blank slots with a visit to my local coin dealer. You can imagine his horse laugh when I walked in and started asking for a 1793 Chain, a 1799 Large cent, a 1872 and 1877 Indian head and several Lincolns including a 1922 no D. I quickly learned the first lesson of supply and demand as well as a very good lesson in economics all associated with coin collecting.

I was fortunate in the handful of coins I did turn up a 1909 S VDB MS 64 RD and a 1856 Flying Eagle proof that, even though it has enviornmental damage, was slabbed by NCS and is included in my signature set. Of course as my lessons continued I learned a great deal about Large Cents and body bags. As a Vietnam vet I was familiar with the term but always assumed the main cause was lead. I soon learned that cleaning, enviornmental damage, scratches, bent, corrosion and several other things are the real problems. This should explain to those of you who might be interested why so many of the large cents in my signaature set are NCS and not NCG.

In any case I would like to say that in slightly over 2 years I have completed all 6 volumns of this set. The face value of all the coins is $4.79 so I suspect I have been the victim of price gouging somewhere along the way. I must admit that I do take a great deal of pride is this complete collection which includes a MS Indian coins in the top 10 % in the registry and several Registry sets of MS and proof lincolns also highly rated.

(Some as high as # 2)

My local dealer told me that all I needed to enjoy coins was good eyes (MY senior eyes are 20-30) a good loupe (I have several and 30 or more years experience. (I guess I'm almost half way there!!) All I can say is that I am hooked for good and will continue to upgrade all my coins as time goes on. While I am the main beneficiary of this hobby because of the enjoyment the ultimate winner is sure to be my beautiful granddaughter who will someday have it for her own.