Old coins hold a special place for me.
My first memory of collecting coins is also a great memory of a time spent with my father.
This old treasure my dad and I found in the garden that day sparked my interest in collecting coins and perhaps even learning about history.
I was about nine years old. My father was using a roto-tiller to prepare our garden for planting. I was playing around and watching the weeds and grass being turned under and mixing with the clods of dirt that were churned up by the blades on the tiller when I saw something big and round appear from the dirt. I picked it up and looked at it, it was some sort of coin, a very big one. It was exciting and I felt that I had discovered some ancient buried treasure. I was sure that it was pirate’s gold, or perhaps it was just one peice of a huge treasure that had been buried on our farm in the old days!
I yelled for my dad (that tiller was loud) to look at what I had found and he stopped the tilling long enough to check it out.
He turned it over in his hands and wiped off some of the dirt. He said, “you found a penny from 1832!” Wow! I was really excited now.
“How old is that?” I asked and was told that it was more than 125 years old.
I learned later on that it was called a Large Cent.
Even though I had learned that it was just a penny I couldn’t believe how big it was. And to a 9 year old boy standing in a freshly tilled garden, 125 years seemed like a very long time; why that coin was ancient!
Since that day I have been fascinated with old coins. And now I have a grown daughter and a grandson who are both interested in coins. I gave my daughter the 1832 penny when she was still a kid to spark her interest and to get her started with a coin collection of her own.
Now, I give my grandson a nice coin or two on occasions like birthdays instead of a toy. As he gets older and shows responsibility I will buy even better coins for him. I tell him its better than a toy its an investment. He likes that.
Coin collecting is a good hobby for a child to become interested in. It helps them to learn about history and it can be a great experience to teach them about the value of money and metals. Collecting in general helps a child to learn about organization and managing but collecting something like coins can also teach them about investing for their future.
There are so many different coins and types of coins to choose from when building a collection. Some people like to collect coins from a certain country, time period, or for the kind of metal the coins are made of (for example silver or gold). Some like to build sets like year sets or type sets. A year set would be all the coins from a particular year and a type set would be like all the Lincoln Cents or Ben Franklin Half Dollars. Another method of ‘type’ collecting is when the collector attempts to get one of each type of coin.
However you and your child (or niece, nephew, grandchild, etc) decide to go with coin collecting it is a great hobby for you to share with each other and a great way to help them to learn and build something for their future.
Written by David Slone, Copyright 2011 CoinCollectorGuide.com , all rights reserved.