Just wondering how fellow numismatists got started in the hobby!

[AHFreak]

For me, I was about 28 years old (I just turned 32, so this was like 2010ish) and when silver went nutso, I had recently began reading a lot about the dollar collapsing, silver to $2K/oz/etc.... Anyways, one night I was bored, my wife and kid were gone for a while, so I dumped out my change bucket on the floor in my closet, I had recently read that our U.S. coinage was comprised of silver up until 1965. So of course, I wanted to see if any of my coins were pre-1965. (I still cant believe that at the age of 28, I had no awareness of what money really is/was/should be/etc.. No clue that our coinage was based on intrinsic value of the actual metal it consisted of... I still shake my head at that one) Anyways, in searching my mountain of pocket change, I found a silver dime, and a silver quarter!!! So that set in motion a series of events that led me to discover coin roll hunting (CRH'ing) and before to long, I was doing it rather obsessively (my very first box of $500 worth of halves I ordered from the bank had 25 silvers in it... It literally took me an entire year before I finally found a better one by the way!), after that first box, and the giant score I considered it to be, I was buying $5K-$10K worth of half dollars from banks each and every week all in search of silvers... Silvas..... SILBAS!!!!! About a year of that, and I had a very nice pile of silver going, all bought for Face Value, as I pulled it out of circulation. In case anyone cares, at about that 1 year mark, I had amassed just shy of $5K worth of silver half dollars-based on silver price at the time. What started happening though, is rather than find a silver and toss it aside, I found myself spending more and more time actually looking at the coins.. when I found any UNC (or close to it) 1964 halfs, I would sit and gaze at their beauty, telling my wife, Oh my God babe, look at this... isn't it Purdy? Can you believe how georgeous this coin is??? -yeah as if the CRH'ing obsession that hit me out of no where wasn't enough... She had to deal with watching me transform into a real life nerd too (at the time, in my mind, only nerds collected coins... HAHaHa.... Now that I am a little older and wiser, I know that us coin guys are.... AWESOME. GENIUSES.... We are the smart ones!!! ..... back to my story, I found two 1964 Kens that were UNC, with varying degrees of rainbow toning, both in the same box. I still have both them! At that point is was less about the intrinsic, and more about the numismatic... little did I know but the shift was already happening.... I remember literally staring at those two toners that night for what seemed like hours... going back on fourth with pictures of UNC Kens online, saying, "I am pretty sure its UNC.. nah, it couldn't be, but it is... no way, yes way.. "(now that I know, one is an AU58, and the other is definitely UNC...MS62ish, pulled right out of box of halves, ordered from the bank.

 

That ladies and gentlemen was how I got started as a "numismatist"... The one other "life altering" event that really changed everything for me was when I found a dealer who had a box of 1960's era proof sets, all pre65 that he was offering to me for the cost of their silver weight. It cost me somewhere around $1700 for this box of proof sets, and that was based strictly on actual spot price of silver at the time... Well buying that box of what in my mind at the time was "junk silver".... ha ha ha! that introduced me to the whole cameo/ultracameo retardationinfactuation... After I searched for, and recovered what few cameo halves were in lot, I sold the remaining proof sets for grey sheet ask, which was something like $24 per set give or take.... So I made something like 4 or 5 bucks per proof set and also found a few cameo proofs for the low cost of just their silver value ( I still feel like a little kid on Xmas whenever I find a cameo proof in a set that I didn't have to pay a premium for), Selling those proof sets after being able to search through them, and making a little extra money , had all sorts of path-altering repercussions, non stop light bulbs going off in my mind.... The big one that stands out was, "hey, that was easy, and fun... I want to do that again,.... I am going to buy and sell coins for a living.....". (don't get me wrong, it isn't/hasn't been easy at all, and it took 2 years before I even believed it was even possible for anyone to get in like that, let alone me...) While that was all going down, and after it all happened, I spent the next 2-3 years studying and learning anything and everything I could about coins, the hobby, the business side, everything... If I was awake, chances were I was reading books about coins, or online studying. Everything, I couldn't get enough.. articles, forums, blogs, hundreds of hours on EB/HA/TT/GC/etc... searching auction archives, and following active auctions, etc. The pictures that Heritage Auction uses in their listings for Morgan dollars are what I would say allowed me to start learning to "Grade", Using those alone, I can honestly say I tought myself to "hold my own" without that resource, Im not sure where Id be right now. Looking back, It was all such a whirl-wind. I remember asking myself constantly, "is this even remotely possible, or am I just completely dillusional? Have I lost my mind, or am I on to something here???" It was an up and down roller coaster ride from hell... quite frankly, it hasn't been until very recently, maybe the last 6 months or so that I could really wrap my mind around it and say with confidence that there is a place for me in the business.... I am very thankful for the hobby, and what it represents for me.

 

 

Anyways, I appreciate any/all of you who read all that, and I hope many more will share about how you got started in the hobby/business/etc.... I am always fascinated about how other guys got started!

 

It felt really cool to write all that out and verbalize it like that, brought back a lot of the raw feelings & emotions involved, and now I feel energized.

 

I look forward to reading your stories....

 

 

Thank you

 

 

 

Chris

 

 

 

[physics-fan3.14]

Great story! I like threads like this. Have you had a chance to make it to any shows? I remember my first show still... like a kid in a candy store. No, actually, more like a kid in a candy factory.

[Nutmeg Coin]

I got into numismatics through coin publications as well as Aristotle's discussion of the development of money in "Politics", also as an alternative to Wall Street. It is a relatively easy field to quantify in terms of value if you know what you're doing.

[TonerGuy]

I was 8 years old and collecting Jefferson Nickels...

 

Somehow 22 yrs passed by and at 30 I was watching TV and stumbled across "The Coin Vault." They were selling 10 raw common date BU Morgans for one low price. I then remembered my grandfather's collection of Morgans that he pulled from circulation as a Merchant Marine in Panama that he gave to me when I was a kid.

 

I bought the 10 Morgans from Coin Vault and called my mom and had her ship me my grandfather's coins and here I am 15 years later.

 

Time certainly does fly....

[cpm9ball]

I got a Morgan dollar gambling at 9-Ball in the local poolroom in 1957 when I was 10.

 

Chris

[Tyler N.]

I collected raw stuff as a kid (10ish) and filled Whitman penny albums. I left the hobby for a while because of other activities, sports, etc., and I kind of forgot about coins until after college. Bored one night, I decided to take out the old collection. I researched numismatics more than I ever had when I was a kid (I'm 24 now) and got really into it. I discovered some of the coins I was given as a youngster were actually worth something. I submitted some of the coins to NGC and still have them (I'll never sell them because of the sentimental value - one reason I'd be a terrible dealer I get attached to my coins).

 

That's my shortened version on how I became so interested in numismatics.

[AHFreak]

Awesome to see some stories here, thanks for sharing.

 

There are some great ones already, keep em coming..

 

 

 

[AHFreak]

Edited to add, I meant to quote you Physics fan, so here is my coin show resume..... Haha....

I live in a rather small market, 5 or 6 local coin shops is all, and maybe a local coin show once a quarter give or take.. The shows here will usually boast a whopping 50 ish tables, (so far in 3 years, I know the largest has been just over 70 tables.). I actually remember how intimidating walking into the first show here locally was... The one good thing I realized about smaller shows is that by show #2, dealers were "remembering me", which seems to make a difference a lot of the time.

 

In June of 2013 I signed up for a grading class at the Long Beach show.... All I really knew is that this show was a lot "bigger" than what I am used to! I was so excited to be going to a "real show" finally.... I walked in to the long beach show, and pretty much spent the next 6 or more hours LOST!!! mentally, physically, figurative, literally, all of it... LOST. I became so completely overwhelmed that I literally forgot everything I thought I knew. What I still cant get my head around is that I have been told that there are some "really big" shows that are like 4 or 5 times bigger than Long Beach... It seems like there were like 1100-1200 tables at Long beach. Are there really shows with 4-5 THOUSAND TABLES??? I cant even imagine...

 

Overall it was an awesome experience and now that I am a little better prepared to deal ( I honestly was the worlds worst negotiator, in long beach, I even asked... two times, if "this is the price of the coin"??? Dealer says, well I can probably do a little better, no, no, I just wanna make sure it is really this low....")..yeah, that was me in Long beach. I plan on attending at least the bigger ones starting in 2015, now that I can have an effective conversation with coin dealer's.

 

 

 

 

[Walkerfan]

I was started by my dad when I was about 7 or 8 y/o. He gave me all his silver that he'd saved over the years mostly Roosies and Washies. He also gave me some circulated Walkers, Franklins and Kennedys with lots of wheat cents. I filled up blue Whitman folders with these different denominations. He also gave me an 1882 CC GSA dollar that I will never sell, as it is very sentimental to me. After a few years, I lost interest but got back into it in my mid to late 20s by buying XF/AU Walkers. I started my registry set in 2005 and I bought my first certified coin about 10 years before that.

 

PS--my uncle helped me, too. He was stationed in the Army overseas and used to send me European money from various countries.

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

I'm a nerd. Always have been. So when I was a little kid, I had this illustrated pocket encyclopedia that had a very brief section about world currencies. In fact, I still have it:

From there I became fascinated with world coins. Having any piece of junk coin from any random foreign country was like a rare treasure...like spoils from some world adventure...the bounty of a perilous jungle enterprise or treacherous desert excursion...they were the pirate's booty and pocket change of Indiana Jones/007 in one.

 

Ever since then, the numismatic hooks have been in pretty deep. And even though I don't have any interest in world coins anymore, I do have an example of the Great British 50P in the book there:

Pop. 2, 0 Higher

[AcesKings]

I started in the early '80s, still in high school. I remember the local bank offering $0.75 for a roll of pennies. At the same time there was a local dealer selling "unsearched" rolls of wheat cents for the same price. I got the brilliant idea of buying the rolls of wheaties, picking out all the "valuable" ones and replacing them with the pennies I received in change, and selling them back to the bank. I was thereby acquiring the "valuable" ones of free!!!

 

It dawned on me in order to know what was worth keeping I needed to buy some type of pricing guide. So, I bought a redbook and found out that coins have different values for the same coin based on condition. So, I bought a photograde book too. After about a month or so the bank stopped their offer and started paying face value for pennies. It was at this time I decided to buy some of the weird looking coins I seen in my redbook. My first single coin buy was a 1917 SLQ (which still resides with me). I've been hooked since then, buying on and off based on finances.

 

[DWLange]

It's nice to read that are some young people in the hobby. I'm coming up on 50 years of coin pursuit next year, and I sometimes wonder what will become of whatever my generation has done.

[Raisethis2]

I worked in a steel factory with a guy who lived in my neighborhood when we were kids. I think he was a year or 2 older so we didn't attend the same classes or anything but oddly, I knew his older brother even better.

 

Anyway, we would chat at work on breaks and such and I would attend the occasional coin show with him, (this was back in the early 1980's). I put away a bunch of high grade BU coins and proof silver, on my wages, with a family and a house, those were the economic priority.

 

My friend eventually bought an existing coin shop in Berwyn, Ill with a mentor of his, he'd work days at the steel company then afternoons in his store. He did ok as I understand.

 

I backed away from coins after I lost that job and shortly afterwards he developed cancer and died in the mid-1990's. My collection sat in boxes completely untouched for about 12 to 14 years.

 

When I lost another job in 1996 I was bored so dragged it out. What I remembered came right back to me and as I went through my things it was apparent that the things he provided for me have stood the test of time and were in the end the highest quality things I owned.

 

I dabbled in E-Bay selling just to fill the time and now buy and sell where I can. I'm just having fun and I'm learning better the lessons I was too dense to absorb back then.

 

I'll be forever indebted to my good friend Harry Leskauskas. May he rest in peace.

 

[okbustchaser]

1961...An 8 yo boy playing in a town park across the street from his house finds something neat laying on the ground...it says that it is a quarter and that it was minted in 1917.

 

 

Wait a minute...what's that? NAKED BOOB!!!! WOW, every young boy's fantasy. Of course, I'm in my 60s now and STILL like a pretty bust.

 

What 50 plus years as a pocket piece will do to a coin...

[Matt_dac]

For me it was a 'cool uncle' who collected coins and got me interested in it. He showed me his collection when I was young and gave me a few extra Wheat pennies. I got a Whitman coin folder and began acquiring them when I could from shows and wherever.

 

When I was in perhaps the 6th grade I was cutting grass around the neighborhood to make a few bucks. One old lady had some coins and she showed them to me. I really loved an 1853 Seated Liberty she had and she offered it to me as payment for mowing her lawn for a month or two. I continued to collect until about the start of college but kept my coins. Like many others I prioritized my time elsewhere.

 

Fast forward into my mid 30's and I decided to look at my old coins again. I checked out the current retail value on the 1853 coin from some online resource and I stumbled across the more valuable 1853/4 error variety. I bought a magnifying glass to look at the coin again. I have looked at this coin a million times from when I was a kid but the date looked a bit skewed and resembled the details described for the 1853/4. I decided to submit to ANACS for the hell of it to see if it really was the error variety. By God it came back EF-45 and was indeed the 1853/4! I sold it for $400 and used that money to start collecting gold coins. I have been collecting steadily ever since (now mid-40's).

[AHFreak]

1961...An 8 yo boy playing in a town park across the street from his house finds something neat laying on the ground...it says that it is a quarter and that it was minted in 1917.

 

 

Wait a minute...what's that? NAKED BOOB!!!! WOW, every young boy's fantasy. Of course, I'm in my 60s now and STILL like a pretty bust.

 

What 50 plus years as a pocket piece will do to a coin...

 

I love it.... what a great story... I suppose the young boy in me would have had similiar feelings/thoughts..... find weird looking coin the size of a quarter, pick it up...oh, it is a quarter... wait, is that a boob??? Hey everyone is this a booby? Guys look! A boob, its a boob!

 

it has only been in the last year that I myself learned about the 1916 and 1917 (type 1) S.L. quarters, and how the breast was exposed, leading to public outcry, which lead to the more modest 1917 type 2 obverse that was used for all the additional S.L. quarters struck. Still, at the age of 32, everytime I see a MS, higher grade 1917 type1 quarter (ive never personally seen a 1916 S.L. quarter... YET). I find myself awe struck... Marveling at the masterpiece, imagining a time when the process of minting coins in the U.S. was so artistic and beautiful. A time when coins and notes were so much more than what they are today.. a time a U.S. coin was designed with miss Liberty actually having an exposed breast... For me that type 1 S.L. is one of, if not the most beautiful U.S. coin ever made... A nice GEMMY UNC 1917 type 1 is high up on my want list.

[RWB]

Cousin Eddy’s Rare Coin Company

 

Started at age 4.

Rented small room at a local motel and ran ads offering to buy “illegal” gold coins. They weren’t really illegal but people snuck in to sell at half of face value. Had off-duty police in uniform at the door to intimidate folks. I had to sit on a couple of phone books to see over the table edge.

 

Then turned 5 and had to go to kindergarten where I sold extra graham crackers and ran a rigged game of “jacks” when the teacher thought we were playing.

 

 

[Mr. Smith Guesser]

Cousin Eddy’s Rare Coin Company

 

Started at age 4.

Rented small room at a local motel and ran ads offering to buy “illegal” gold coins. They weren’t really illegal but people snuck in to sell at half of face value. Had off-duty police in uniform at the door to intimidate folks. I had to sit on a couple of phone books to see over the table edge.

 

Then turned 5 and had to go to kindergarten where I sold extra graham crackers and ran a rigged game of “jacks” when the teacher thought we were playing.

 

 

I heard about you...The Counterfeit Kid

[Kurtdog]

I got a Morgan dollar gambling at 9-Ball in the local poolroom in 1957 when I was 10.

 

Chris

"You think this boy is a hustler?"

- The Hustler (1961)

[RWB]

...Later I collected quarters -- from parking meters by using a hairpin to pick the locks. My sister, Golda, got so good at it they called her Goldilocks at the police station and paid her to open locks the locksmith failed to open.

[cpm9ball]

I got a Morgan dollar gambling at 9-Ball in the local poolroom in 1957 when I was 10.

 

Chris

"You think this boy is a hustler?"

- The Hustler (1961)

 

I never hustled anyone, but I played a lot of guys who thought they were good.

 

Chris

[cpm9ball]

...Later I collected quarters -- from parking meters by using a hairpin to pick the locks.

 

How many hard-boiled eggs could you eat?

 

Chris

[RWB]

"How many hard-boiled eggs could you eat?"

 

With or without the shell -- or does that matter; same with shrimp and peanuts?

[cpm9ball]

"How many hard-boiled eggs could you eat?"

 

With or without the shell -- or does that matter; same with shrimp and peanuts?

 

I've eaten peanut shells, but I've never eaten shrimp or egg shells.

 

Chris

[World Colonial]

From my aunt's foreign change when I was living in Bolivia in 1975. These were coins my father brought back from our trips in the late 1960's. She also had a 1921 Morgan dollar, 1943 Mercury dime and 1956 Wheat cent which I thought were really neat.

 

I contined to collect for a few years when we moved back to the US later in the year but gave it up in high school due to a lack of money and other interests. Picked it up again on a couple of occassions between the late 1970's and 1998 when I resumed it again for good.

 

1998 was when I first had access to the internet (through work since I never bought a computer for myself) and I just performed a bunch of random searches for coins. First bought a few coins from World Coin Universe, later eBay and now also public auction and occasionally a few dealers.

[RWB]

A lot of us ran into the "lack of money and other interests" in high school....they were called girls.

[johnny9434]

my dad and uncle got me started in the hobby. i started with some canadian and it took off from there. sure did build a lot of good relationships thru the years

[Curry]

I was in 3rd grade and my dad was talking about coins. I somehow got hooked into it. At first i was looking at just old pocket change, then it escalated to going to the coin show in Honolulu and just buying some cheap items and 7 years later here i am buying high grade slabbed/ raw coins.

[World Colonial]

A lot of us ran into the "lack of money and other interests" in high school....they were called girls.

 

Yes, and now they cost more than ever.

[Walkerfan]

...Later I collected quarters -- from parking meters by using a hairpin to pick the locks.

 

How many hard-boiled eggs could you eat?

 

Chris

 

Roger is 'Cool Hand Luke'.