Please be gentle, it's my first time...

I suppose I should introduce myself. I started out as the reluctant collector by way of my father. He died a couple of years ago and left me a number of coins. He had tried for years to get me or my brother interested in coin collecting with little luck. My brother is a minister who does not have the resources to collect, but has always been interested in coin collecting. I on the other hand had the resources but not the desire to collect. My father called me the day before he died and told me that if anything happen he wanted me to "flesh out" his coin collection and give each one of the collections to his grandchildren, my brothers kids, when they were old enough to appreciate them. He died the next day and shortly there after I received his collection of coins. I had to aquire many books and read up on what turned out to be a Mercury Dime proof collection, a Roosevelt Dime proof collection, a Jefferson nickle proof collection and a Washington Quarter proof collection. I have managed in the last two years to complete the Roosevelt and Washington collections and I am well on the way to completing the Jefferson and Mercury. They are all listed here except for the Washington Quarter Proof Collection is it in Intercept Shield 2X2's in Intercept Shield storage boxs. I decided to keep collecting them in the raw because of the cost of putting them all through grading, since there are 177 coins in that collection alone. The rest are NGC & PCGS graded and slabbed. In completing this project for my father I became interested in coin collecting. I have quite a library now, I spent more that $1,200.00 just on books! I got interested in Ancient coins, Roman Imperial and Roman Republic's so far, with some facination with Ancient Greek coins as well. I have begun the classic collection of Roman Emperors, having just nine so far. I have them slabbed and graded by NGC. I am wondering when they will have an Ancient Coin collecting sets here since they now grade and slabb them. I studied Cultural Anthropology in college and the collecting of ancient coins brings that all back. The excitment of getting in a mint state ancient Roman coin is beyond words. I planed to complete the bust coins of the Roman Emperors in silver denari and double denari or gold, with AE coins for the ones who have no AR or gold coins known. I'd like to complete one project, collection, and them move on to another, but I am still working on my dad's coins and mine at the same time. My dad's coins are going to be a family collection, something that the kids won't be able to sell, just hold in trust. I will add my collections to the family collections as I finish them. In working with my dad's high grade proof coins I became enthralled with the perfectness of the proofs. I find myself trying to find the best perserved ancient coin that I can afford and I spend many many hours pouring over internet sites looking for that uncirculated, mint state coin for my collection.

I've got one of my nephews interested in coin collecting and signed him up with the ANA. He lives close to their headquarters in Colorado Springs and goes to the museum quite often, lucky dog! I gave him a coin album, half filled with Indian Head Cents for his first collecting adventure. He's in college at Colorado State studing Italian. I am going to keep his interest going with some 18th and 19th century Italian coins for his birthday.

Well that about brings me up to date. I am a member of the ANA, Collectors Society, PCGS and I plan on joining the local coin club here, the Metropolitan Coin Club of Atlanta.