How did everybody start collecting coins

[Chugly]

Great stories everyone!

I was lucky enough to get started in collecting thanks to a nice collection of silver that my father saved for me from circulation in the late '60's and early 70's. I really started getting into collecting at about age 8. At that time I was living in Alaska and there were so many long winter nights, that collecting and searching coins was a great outlet. My first job was even working at a coin shop in Fairbanks, Ak when I was around 14. I remember my boss, Dick Hanscom very fondly. He was great guy and he taught me a lot at an early age.

Somewhere around that time, the giant spike in silver of 1980 hit and I can remember first learning about roll searching and checking for silver in Halves. Boy do I wish I knew about ordering boxes then! Still, I remember pulling hundreds of 40 and 90% Kennedies for face then taking them down to Dick and trading them into better collector coins. I also packed home many $50 dollar bags of cents on the bus, but alas even if they were full of '55 doubled dies I would have missed them all. At that time, I could still pull at least 250 wheat's per bag and of course they were all copper.

Unfortunately, once high school and College hit I slowed down quite a bit, but I still knew enough to pull any wheat's or silver when I saw them. Therefore, I missed all the '83, 84 and 97 DDO's and DDR's(: After college, I kind of hoarded haphazardly, but I did manage to complete the wheat cent, walking liberty half and washington quarter sets.

It wasn't until the 1995 doubled die that I even had a clue about varieties. At that point I just went out and bought one, but it did get me started in looking for it in circulation, but I didn't really get hooked on searching and collecting varieties until the past 10 years. Unfortunately, most of that time was spent as a clueless wanderer - LOL.

More recently, thanks primarily to this website, I have become completely hooked on varieties! Searching for varieties and the prospect of being able to continue roll searching and still find cool stuff is such a great bonus! I had given up on that for so long once all the silver dried up Now, by being able to discuss and attribute new finds with everyone here, my collecting has risen to a new level of enjoyment. I could never imagine giving it up for anything! Thanks to all of you for contributing to that!

[coppercoins]

I started with a roll of wheat cents in 1975. I somehow came into a 1969 Red Book and a blue folder for pennies, and I was off to the races.

I learned about varieties in 1982 when I found a 1939 doubled die reverse nickel in my mother's change. I was hooked from then on.

In 1997 I was turned on to the idea of the internet and HTML, and decided to write a web page that cross referenced all of the known die numbers for doubled dies and repunched mintmarks. The "Lincoln Log" was born. It was a very simple HTML project that quickly grew into something that HTML alone couldn't handle.

In 1999 I met a friend who introduced the idea that large cents and half cents were collected by die. We decided to combine efforts and call it "coppercoins." About two years later he backed out and turned all the ownership over to me, but since I didn't know the early copper, I just continued developing the Lincoln cent side of the house. Of course HTML alone couldn't answer my needs, so I turned to college for the answer.

I started college in 2001 just to learn web development. I graduated three years later with a degree in CIS and coppercoins had become a school project. I backed it with PHP and MySQL and it turned into the powerhouse it is today.

In 2004, just after graduating college, I was invited to come speak at a coin show. They offered a free table where I could sell pretty much anything I wanted. I didn't have any coins I wanted to sell at the time, so I decided to write a few booklets on die varieties and grading Lincoln cents. I quickly found that this was more work than I thought, and since I already had a lot of information written, I just turned it into a book. One month after I started, I had finished "Looking Through Lincoln Cents".

In August that year I took cases of my books in the trunk of my mothers car 1,000 miles to Pittsburgh for the ANA World's Fair of Money. I was invited to sit at the author's table and sign books. That's where I met the publisher who published the second edition.

Since then I have had art work published in a few other books, and actually had the chance to draw portraits of Ken Bressett and Dick Yeo(man) for the 50th Anniversary edition of the Red Book. I presented the original of that art to Ken at the Denver ANA show in 2006. He prominently hung that drawing in his special room at his house. The following summer he invited me to his house to see that drawing hanging on his wall - it's there.

So we come full-circle...from a little kid who had an old Red Book found at a garage sale to pick through wheat pennies to the artist who drew the portrait of the authors of the Red Book and got to go into his home for a tour of an extensive numismatic library and to see his art hanging on the wall there.

Quite a numismatic life I've had already, and it's not over yet!