There is nothing like working with a new collector to get new focus.

My 24 year old son came home from work the other day. He was quite excited, almost electric. He promptly produced 3 $2 bills he had traded out of the register. They we relatively new issues (I think 1976 and 1995) and in circulated condition but not terribly worn. I sort of chuckled because I had seen $2 bills before but these were his. I didn?t take long for me to figure out that he had that same look in his eyes that I had when I fell in love with the Eisenhower Dollar. The next thing I know the kid is scouring the internet trying to find out about US currencies. I remembered that in the stash of coins I got from my parents two years ago there was a sleeve of a few bills so I dug them out. I had never paid much attention to them because they were paper and I am a coin guy. () I showed them to my son and it was like Christmas in October. In this stash of bills there were a couple of very crisp first day issues of the 1976 $2 bill, an number of silver certificates of various denominations and from various years, some red seal bills and one gold seal $10 silver certificate. Well, I?ve learned something new about currency this week. The gold seal bills were printed especially for US military troops in North Africa during WWII as a precaution to the Germans capturing large hoards of money should things have gone badly for the Allies. With the gold seal, the US could have easily and quickly demonetarized those bills making them worthless. In today?s collectors market, those bills now carry a nice premium.

Anyway, with my son?s new found interest in currency I was feeling my own excitement not because I have any intention of collecting currency but rather because the two of us can enjoy collecting together and he can take the lead on currencies. We sat down the other night and I showed him where to find collecting supplies. I bought him a box of acid free currency pages into which he can put his new found prizes and then he really went and blew me away. He asked me if he could get an album for Mercury dimes too. (Of course, I said YES!) A couple of quick clicks of the mouse and the album got added to the order. I don?t think coins will be his primary focus but he is developing and appreciation for some of the older coins. I also happen to have a small stash of extra Mercury Dimes I will be more than happy to let him use to start populating his album.

Back to my collecting though, as I was looking through some of my coin literature earlier this week and still harboring some of the excitement for my son, I started looking at pictures of large cents. For the most part, I knew what they were and had a basic familiarity with them but never really thought too much about them. For some reason, they really caught my attention this week. In hind sight, I attribute this to my son and getting me to look at currency through a different set of eyes. I now had a new perspective with which I was looking at large cents. I spent several hours over the course of the week reading what I could find on the internet and looking at a large variety of photo galleries. I do believe I am enamored with these Early American Copper coins. One the first things I looked was the list of registry sets only to be shocked to find only 58 sets of All Dates. (My vote for best presented easily goes to the Electric Peak Collection.) I also started looking around the various auction sites for the coins both graded and ungraded. There just does not seem to be a very large population of graded large cents out there either. I pretty much confirmed this by looking at the Census Report. By large I mean relative to other older coins. The silver and gold coins from yesteryear clearly dominate the graded world.

Alas, I hear the siren?s call for a new adventure in coin collecting; I want a collection of Large Cents! It amazes me that these coins have been staring me in the face yet until this week I had hardly noticed them. I am under no delusions here. At the high end, these coins are far and few between and carry an extremely hefty price, most rivaling the cost of a new house, a very big new house. The lower end of the quality section makes these coins much more affordable but still quite the challenge for my limited budget. My objective here is to start and work on a raw set and hopefully over time add some graded coins in the VG to F range. I doubt very much I could ever afford anything higher than that level? (Sorry, mind wondering to winning the lottery again!) ? I also realize after having read a number of articles about Large Cents that shear number of recognized variations precludes my completing a set. There are collectors out there with far more available resources than me that have been working on their sets for years and haven?t completed them yet. With all this said, I did find an auction lot of three nice later dates on eBay for about $20 so they are on there way now. (So much for this month?s budget! I?m thinking I just may re-gift them to myself and put them under the Christmas tree this year.)

But wait!! That?s not the end of the story. I showed pictures of the large cents to my wife. And while I love my wife dearly, she has always been indifferent to my coins save for the occasional financial gain can delivery from selling some of my extra coins. Anyway, she sees these coins and her eyes perk right up. My darling wife likes the way these old copper coins look and she starts telling me about the American history that coincided with the date on the coin. Do you realize how disorienting it is to have your kid get excited about collecting and have your wife take an interesting your coins all in the same week?

Back to the real world, October continues to be a good month for additions to my modern sets. I managed to scoop up another PF70UC State Quarter and a 2010S PF69UC Lincoln Cent, both for under $10 to add to my registry sets and I even found an XF 1909 VDB in a roll of wheat pennies. I even managed to pick up a couple very reasonably priced proof sets. I still have my eye on my splurge coin and with any luck I will add it to my collection by next weekend.

Finally, in the vein of something different, I have included a picture of the $10 gold seal silver certificate just because I can. ()

Dennis