A reflection of the year gone but not forgotten and a look toward the future

In my house there is rarely a quiet moment. Chaos seems to have taken up permanent residency but my wife and I seem to thrive on it. I find my quiet and reflective time early in the morning, like now. So this morning I find myself looking back on 2009 and looking forward to 2010. I don?t make New Year?s resolutions. Things will change as they must in the natural order of time. (There is a line to a song I find quite appropriate, ?If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.? Of course, I find great humor in another line that seems to fit, ?And you?re looking for direction from the genie in the bottle of Jim Beam and she LIES to you!?)

The year that has just ended was trying in many ways and exciting in many other ways. Sadly, there year will be forever marred by the death of my mother in a tragic traffic accident. My father has physically recovered but is still struggling with the emotional loss. 2009 also relit my passion for collecting coins thanks mostly to my youngest son. My father emptied out his safe deposit box of all the loose coins, mint sets, proof sets, and albums mom and dad had squirrel away over the years and gave them to me. My youngest son became enchanted with the state quarters particularly Alaska. This summer while visiting, I spent many wonderful hours with him helping him build his first set, state quarters, and sorting through and cataloging my father and mother?s hoard of stashed coins. This grew into my journey into the world of graded coin collections. Fortunately, my wife understands because I fear I have spent a bit more than we budgeted on top end coins over the past few months. (I really need to slow down a bit or we will not have any savings to live on during summer break. In the county where I teach, we do not have the 12-month pay option so there is no paycheck in July and August when school is out.)

2010 will see my first submission of my raw coins to be graded. I do not know when I will do this. I hope in February. I am carefully and meticulously looking over my coins, particularly my circulated Eisenhower Dollars and Kennedy Halves to find the very best. This is all a learning experience for me. I made the very conscious decision to start with ?Modern? coins because of the relative low cost involved with the educational experience. I am looking down the road toward moving my collection further back into earlier coins but as of now I do not feel I have the appropriate tools to evaluate their quality effectively but this will come with time and lots of homework. I will feel as though I have cleared a major hurdle when I start to feel comfortable populating sets of Indian Head Pennies, Winged Liberty Dimes (Mercury), Franklin Halves which are three of my favorite coin types. From there I suspect I will move into Peace and Morgan Dollars but that is still a good ways down the road. Three Cent Nickels and Twenty Cent coins also fascinate me. (Thank goodness I am a teacher and understand the value of education. Going off blindly, trying to populate these sets could prove incredibly expense if I take a shotgun approach rather than a rifled approach.)

I am only now realizing how prophetic labeling my sets ?A New Beginning? has proved to be. Everyday, it seems, I learn something new or pick up another piece of information that makes this hobby more interesting and exciting. It seems with the rebirth of my passion for collecting coins, I have found a long lost inner peace and tranquility. I will admit I like the feeling of being in a safe harbor with my coins. My wife, who has only a passing interest in the coins I collect, even enjoys sharing my excitement when I find a new coin to add to my collection. For me, I also am finding an incredible amount of pleasure and satisfaction in researching and writing about the coins I add to my collection. I have written a number of stories and informative descriptions to go with my coins, particular my State Quarter Proof Set. Learning how to take good pictures of coins has also proved interesting but I am getting better. These are aspects of coin collecting which are brand new to me and unique to my experience in collecting coins. I think it has elevated my collecting experience to new levels I never realized existed. The fact that I am not and never have been a great fan of quarters should speak a testament to how much enjoyment I have found in the documenting aspects of collecting. While many descriptions are still missing, I see doing the homework to write about each of those as my activity of choice in the early morning when the rest of the house is asleep.

And as the sun is rising and burning the mist from the morning air and the whitetail deer, outside my window are peacefully feeding on the bits of remaining foliage, I am once again reminded that we all have the opportunity for a new beginning and the future is what we make of it. So, I hope and wish that everyone finds peace and tranquility in this New Year.