Influences 0

[Zebo]

No - not under the influence, but instead coin related.

What auction, book or person was the single most influencing factor in you becoming a coin collector? 

What auction, book or person was the biggest influence in changing or refining your interest and/or collection?

what is your favorite numismatic book? 

These have all been asked before, but haven't been discussed in a while - so to encourage new blood or motivate older blood - why not have the discussion?

[DWLange]

I discovered coin collecting from my older brother, who pursued it for about one summer and then lost interest. I was the lucky recipient of his very incomplete folders of Lincoln Cents and Buffalo Nickels. The latter could still be found in circulation then, though most were dateless.

After a few years of getting by with pulp coin guides from the supermarket checkout counter, I finally got my first Red Book for Christmas, 1968. It was an eye opener, and I nearly memorized the sections for cents through dollars over the next year or two. Even today, as a professional numismatist, I use the latest Red Book daily. I don't have a favorite numismatic book, but Ol' Red comes close.

[Insider]

1. Grandfather

2. Joe Gallo  - VA coin dealer

3. Breen, but I haven't read it completely.

[Zebo]

33 minutes ago, Insider said:

1. Grandfather

2. Joe Gallo  - VA coin dealer

3. Breen, but I haven't read it completely.

We're did Joe have his shop? How did he change your direction (or refined it)? Also Grandfathers and mothers have a big influence on many!

[Zebo]

1 hour ago, DWLange said:

I discovered coin collecting from my older brother, who pursued it for about one summer and then lost interest. I was the lucky recipient of his very incomplete folders of Lincoln Cents and Buffalo Nickels. The latter could still be found in circulation then, though most were dateless.

After a few years of getting by with pulp coin guides from the supermarket checkout counter, I finally got my first Red Book for Christmas, 1968. It was an eye opener, and I nearly memorized the sections for cents through dollars over the next year or two. Even today, as a professional numismatist, I use the latest Red Book daily. I don't have a favorite numismatic book, but Ol' Red comes close.

How does your brother view your chosen occupation? Did he ever become interested again in coins?

[Insider]

5 minutes ago, Zebo said:

We're did Joe have his shop? How did he change your direction (or refined it)? Also Grandfathers and mothers have a big influence on many!

Alexandria VA then Arlington.   

First coin shop I ever went to.  He taught me coin shop etiquette when I offered more money than he did for a coin being sold.   Joe sold all types of coins and had layaway.

[MAULEMALL]

1 hour ago, Zebo said:

We're did Joe have his shop? How did he change your direction (or refined it)? Also Grandfathers and mothers have a big influence on many!

Funny old guy

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/joseph-gallo-obituary?pid=193785685

[MAULEMALL]

Alan Hagar

Caveat Emptor

 

 

[World Colonial]

I got started when my family temporarily moved to Bolivia in mid-1975.  My aunt had an accumulation (not a collection as she was a hoarder), mostly of my father's circulating change from our travels in Europe and the Middle East in the mid-60's around the time I was born.

Favorite book is Gilboy's "The Milled Columnarios of Central and South America".  I use Yonaka's latest reference more now but Gilboy's reference eventually led me to dropping most other coinage for what I collect now.

I did visit one coin shop regularly starting in late 1975 when we returned to the US for a few years but no dealer or other collector has been an influence on my collecting.   I collected intermittently before picking it up for good in 1998 but didn't and don't bother with LCS.  They have nothing I want to buy, any of them. 

Seeing my step grandmother's collection once which was (is?) extensive was a lot more impressive to me that anything I saw in a coin shop.  One other dealer I visited sold coins she did not have but her collection covered most US series except gold, silver dollars and early silver type.

[Zebo]

2 hours ago, MAULEMALL said:

Alan Hagar

Caveat Emptor

 

 

The Musician? 

[Zebo]

2 hours ago, World Colonial said:

I got started when my family temporarily moved to Bolivia in mid-1975.  My aunt had an accumulation (not a collection as she was a hoarder), mostly of my father's circulating change from our travels in Europe and the Middle East in the mid-60's around the time I was born.

Favorite book is Gilboy's "The Milled Columnarios of Central and South America".  I use Yonaka's latest reference more now but Gilboy's reference eventually led me to dropping most other coinage for what I collect now.

I did visit one coin shop regularly starting in late 1975 when we returned to the US for a few years but no dealer or other collector has been an influence on my collecting.   I collected intermittently before picking it up for good in 1998 but didn't and don't bother with LCS.  They have nothing I want to buy, any of them. 

Seeing my step grandmother's collection once which was (is?) extensive was a lot more impressive to me that anything I saw in a coin shop.  One other dealer I visited sold coins she did not have but her collection covered most US series except gold, silver dollars and early silver type.

I wonder how many grandkids these days will be as impressed, or even the slightest bit interested, as you were with your grandmother's collection.  Maybe if we I time them with subject matter they like - sports, animals - and the like.

[bsshog40]

Know one in my family ever collected coins. I think I got started when I use to save wheaties in change back in the 80's. Eventually that small collection was stolen. Started back up again around 2000. 

[MAULEMALL]

1 hour ago, Zebo said:

The Musician? 

Thats Sammy.. Creator of Cabo Wabo...

[World Colonial]

1 hour ago, Zebo said:

I wonder how many grandkids these days will be as impressed, or even the slightest bit interested, as you were with your grandmother's collection.  Maybe if we I time them with subject matter they like - sports, animals - and the like.

I was 10 and loved coins.  She let me go through her entire 10X10 SDB once in December 1975.

The collection was very large.  The SDB was full of mostly Whitman blue folders and 2X2 cardboard flip boxes (holding 100).  As mentioned above, she didn't have gold, silver dollars, or early silver type (flowing hair and draped bust) but had most everything else, to my recollection.  I don't remember seated and barber halves or seated and barber quarters but she had several hundred LE Capped Bust halves and all the other series up to silver Washington quarters and FDR dimes.  Large cents back to 1794 and Bust half to 1808.  

Not sure about "key" dates in most series.  I'm assuming she did not have the scarcest dates but probably many of the semi-keys.  I wanted to take a complete inventory but she wouldn't haver it.

As a 10 year old, I never asked her how she came into it.  She came from "old money" born in 1906 and never did without a day in her life to my knowledge.  There were no high grade coins (which wasn't that important to most collectors when the collection was put together anyway), so I don't know if most of it was pulled from circulation, bought or both.  Her father was a lawyer and her first husband (died 1960).was a self-made businessman, so it could have come from either.  My suspicion is that it was mostly pulled from circulation over several generations due to the number of duplicates, age of what she had and coin quality but this is a guess on my part.

She died sometime between 2000 and 2005 but I might have seen her once a few years after my grandfather died in January, 1987.  As you know, I don't collect US anymore and haven't for a long time but I would still REALLY like to go through it if it were possible.

Edited August 31, 2020 by World Colonial

[DWLange]

21 hours ago, Zebo said:

How does your brother view your chosen occupation? Did he ever become interested again in coins?

He's pleased that I'm doing something I like. He has a few pieces of historic interest, but he's certainly not an active collector of coins.

[Conder101]

In 1965 in my school lunch money I came across a quarter that had a D on the back under the eagle.  I had never seen that before and I wanted to know what it was and why it was there.  So I devoured every book on coins in the school library.  I found the answers to my questions and developed more questions.  I couldn't keep that mintmarked quarter but I vowed to find another one.  I never did, and I didn't know why for some time.  Remember I started in 1965, the books I had access to were written no later than 1960.  Clad hadn't been dreamed of, and I was right at the start of three years with no mintmarks.  And silver coins were already disappearing from circulation.  Eventually I worked my way through all the books in the local branch of the library and then finally went downtown and read everything they had in the main county library.  Along the way I found the Redbook, and eventually the Coin World Almanac.

The book that influenced me most into the way I collect now was Sheldon's Penny Whimsy.

Favorite book?  I have no idea.  I have at least a dozen or more that I refer to constantly and which are seldom out of arms reach.

[VKurtB]

1) An employee in my dad's camera shop / photo lab was a collector and turned my dad and I onto proof sets in 1963.

2) It's a tie between former ANA President John Wilson, and former Farran Zerbe Award winner, the late great John Eshbach of Lancaster, PA.

3) My new favorite book (series) is the huge honkin' Mega Red from Whitman.

Edited September 2, 2020 by VKurtB

[Zebo]

1 hour ago, Conder101 said:

In 1965 in my school lunch money I came across a quarter that had a D on the back under the eagle.  I had never seen that before and I wanted to know what it was and why it was there.  So I devoured every book on coins in the school library.  I found the answers to my questions and developed more questions.  I couldn't keep that mintmarked quarter but I vowed to find another one.  I never did, and I didn't know why for some time.  Remember I started in 1965, the books I had access to were written no later than 1960.  Clad hadn't been dreamed of, and I was right at the start of three years with no mintmarks.  And silver coins were already disappearing from circulation.  Eventually I worked my way through all the books in the local branch of the library and then finally went downtown and read everything they had in the main county library.  Along the way I found the Redbook, and eventually the Coin World Almanac.

The book that influenced me most into the way I collect now was Sheldon's Penny Whimsy.

Favorite book?  I have no idea.  I have at least a dozen or more that I refer to constantly and which are seldom out of arms reach.

Very interesting - such an inquiring mind at such a young age.  

[Zebo]

35 minutes ago, VKurtB said:

1) An employee in my dad's camera shop / photo lab was a collector and turned my dad and I onto proof sets in 1963.

2) It's a tie between former ANA President John Wilson, and former Farran Zerbe Award winner, the late great John Eshbach of Lancaster, PA.

3) My new favorite book (series) is the huge honkin' Mega Red from Whitman.

Mega Red - I don't own one, but may one of these days. Funny how you life can be change by a single encounter.

[VKurtB]

Just now, Zebo said:

Mega Red - I don't own one, but may one of these days. Funny how you life can be change by a single encounter.

Since next year's Mega Red will most likely have an enhanced section on Silver Dollars (it appears to be 'their turn'), I predict stout sales and localized shortages.