What got me started collecting?

I?m stuck at home sick and have been using the time to get back to my coins and it occurred to me it?s December 7th. This date has significance to my family and as I pondered that thought I decided it would be a worthy entry to my journal.

I was exploring the bios of other members thinking of getting one together for myself. After reading a few I could see that these collectors have incredible stories of what got them started collecting and posed the question: What got me started?

My Mom turned me on to collecting! She was always dragging us kids along on her hunts for antique furniture at every Marine Corp Air Station my step dad happened to get stationed at. If you are thinking of a station you may be intimately acquainted with in your past, I have probably been there for a ?tour? as a brat. We got to enjoy the public school systems at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, Kaneohe, Kailua, Beaufort, Paris Island, Cherry Point, and Havelock to name a few. When I turned 16 I went home to Hawaii graduated from high school and enlisted in the US Army at 19, which has been a tradition in my family.

Mom would tell us stories about hiding in the bushes on the side of the road when Pearl Harbor was being attacked December 7th 1941, she was 6 years old. How my Grandfathers boat was shot up as he was coming in to shore at the time. The Navy confiscated his boat and gave him a -script for cash that he never got. They put steel plate on it and used it as a harbor patrol boat. Never got the boat or the cash and until the day he died he griped about that. He joined the Merchant Marine and passed away in the 80?s from mesothelioma contracted from exposure to asbestos that they used to wrap pipes in those old ships.

As it turned out collecting antique furniture in the South in the 60?s was a good idea and Mom has been collecting what she loves for all these years in our travels across the country. Mom retired soon after 911 after a distinguished civil service career she started back at Paris Island and later with the VA working for Veterans?

So as you can see I have a Military background. My late uncle was one of the Marines exposed to the first nuclear blast tests in the Nevada desert. In 1959 my father was All ARMY undefeated heavyweight, 11-0 with 11 KO?s. He served as a Master Sergeant in the artillery in Germany. Another uncle is US Army Retired 2 star, my step dad is a retired Gunnery Sergeant with 2 ?tours? in Vietnam during the 60?s. I served 4 years in the US ARMY Signal Corp in the 70?s and the tradition goes on with my nephew who served with the Hawaii National Guard in Iraq & Afghanistan.

I love US history and collecting US Silver coins. I enjoy the history that the coins represent and how my own heritage is connected to those events. When I hold a raw circulated coin in my hand history comes alive and my imagination runs wild. I started collecting mint issued Modern Commemoratives that had military themes. Later I discovered raw Morgan Silver dollars and I just had to have them all, at least that was the goal, still working on 93?& 95?. American Silver Eagles and well you get the idea, a few years ago I started matching my raw coin collection with certified NGC & PCGS examples that intern led me to the registry and the rest is history! My history, your history, our history!

Thanks, LPJ

P.S. In a journal entry back in August I mentioned that I have a 250 Dinar note found in Tikrit, Iraq in 2003. Here it is.