Abhishek Agarwal asked:


There are many people who enjoy the activity of coin collecting for their own personal fulfillment. Such people enjoy collecting coins as a hobby. Apart from being hobbyists, many people collect coins as an investment. These people invest their money in different coins of high value in the hope that one day these coins will turn in a profit for them.

Irrespective of the reasons coin collectors collect coins, this activity is a time consuming and endless process. There are literally million coins in circulation and different coin collectors consider collecting these. For instance, there are international coins, Statehood Quarters, limited edition coins and rare coins that are yet to be collected because they are still in circulation among consumers. Although a coin collector can collect just about any coin, most investors and hobbyists prefer to collect valuable coins.

But, as stated previously, finding these kinds of limited edition, rare and other such valuable coins takes a long time and needs a lot of patience and perseverance. Purchasing is the first factor that needs to be considered. There are a number of coin collectors who miss out on various options available to them while looking to increase their valuable coin collection. If you want to add valuable coins to your coin collection, the best way would be to meet professional coin dealers. There is also the option of using the internet and going to online auction websites.

Although it is ideal to seek help from online auction websites, coin dealers and the internet in order to increase one’s valuable coin collection, many people are not sure on how to select. The coin collecting software plays an important role here. There are many different formats in which coin collecting softwares come, but all coin collecting programs have a common goal; to make it easy for all hobbyists and professional coin collectors to collect coins.

One of the most frequently asked questions regarding coin collecting software involves the price. There are many softwares that are free and these are usually sought after. Although free coin collecting programs are available for downloading, these softwares are usually limited. There are many free softwar programs that provide the user with a list of coins that any enthusiastic coin collector will want to examine. Usually, these software programs give the user the option of checking out coins once acquired and added to the collection. From these points of view, free coin collecting software may seem ideal for organizations, but it is always a good idea to spend a little money, perhaps around $100, and purchase a professional program.

Coin collecting software, as stated previously, varies, but there are a number of professional coin collectors and hobbyists who prefer to pay for the software programs they use. These professional software programs, apart from outlining the worthiness of a coin, will also allow you to check off the coins that are in your collection. All values are kept current by regularly updating using the option of automatic updates like yearly updates.

As discussed earlier, all coin collecting software and in particular the paid ones benefit professional coin collectors and coin hobbyists. Even if you are not certain about using a software program to help you collect coins, it is always worth the shot to see what it is about. A few minutes online should do the trick as any ardent coin collector will not fail to see the many benefits of using a software for collecting coins.



TREVOR

icefire9387 asked:


so i have a pretty nice collection (or accumulation) i am getting bored now what? how can i get better? any tips?
thanks!

AMOS

Abhinav Sidana asked:


Ancient coin collecting can be loads of fun. It can be both a hobby as well as a source of income. Ancient coins do not come cheap and can be quite expensive. The price tag attached to them directly depends on their uniqueness and rarity. You will need to take into consideration a few things whenever you are on the lookout for ancient coins.

Doing a bit of research before you shop around for ancient coins is the best way to go about the entire process. As a coin collector you need to be aware of what exactly an ancient coin is and how to identify one. Being knowledgeable about these aspects truly helps since otherwise you can be duped into buying fake ones. Ancient coin collecting can be that much easier if you were to do your homework thoroughly.

You can always find an appraiser or a local dealer near you, from whom you can seek assistance. You can also try hunting for ancient coins at different auctions, either in person or over online sources too. There is a huge variety of ancient coins that you can collect from. Being focused on a particular era in history is a good way to start your ancient coin collecting endeavor. This will help you gain knowledge about a specific niche whenever you are collecting ancient coins.

You can start off your ancient coin collecting process by purchasing coins that are the least expensive. Try and make a list of the coins that you want. This will help you to arrive at your budget. You can gradually go in for more expensive coins, once your collection grows gradually over a period of time. Ancient coin collecting can be a really fulfilling hobby if you were to take care of all these aspects.



ARNOLD

Gareth Bray asked:


If you have kids who are into coin collecting, you can help them realize the full potential of their interest by teaching them more about the matter and explaining to them the implications, as well as the many wonders, of coin collecting both as an art and a possible money-making hobby. Coin collecting for kids should be fun and exciting - a learning experience that your kid could enjoy in many ways.

Like adults that are new at coin collecting, kids should be taught some of the basic FAQs and their corresponding answers. This way, they’ll have at least a relatively solid idea about what coin collecting is all about. A kid who embarks on coin collecting without spending any time or effort to study the hobby and the market is just like any other lazy and ignorant coin collector who is sure to end up wasting precious money on problem, counterfeit, or overly graded coins. Of course, you’d want to spare your kid from that kind of heartbreak, so pile up the questions and explain on the answers well.

Perhaps one of the first things your kid will ask you regarding his newfound hobby - coin collecting for kids - is where to start. These days, you can find several coin clubs that have kids as members. You can have your kid join one coin club where he can learn about coin collecting and where to get material for his own coin collection. The great thing about it is, your kid is sure to make new friends who will share his interest and with whom he can develop his hobby.

The first coins your kid can have for his coin collection are those in circulation. This will make getting started easier; however, you should remind him to avoid spending his coins. The next coins he can collect may come from a variety of sources, including coin shops, coin shows, flea markets, bazaars, craft fairs, mail order, and from sites on the Internet. If your kid’s coin collection is growing steadily and impressively, you could take him to auctions - the most elite source of collectible coins even to this day.

Major specialty auction firms put the rarest and most expensive coins up for grabs. You can even find some auctions being conducted online, making attendance easier and more convenient. Before placing your bid, you should make sure that the auction you’re joining is credible and that you check first the record of the seller. Bids can be pretty steep in auctions, so don’t join them if you don’t have the budget, your kid’s coin collection is not yet that noteworthy, or your kid has not yet shown his commitment to the hobby. Furthermore, once your kid shows genuine interest in the hobby, you can encourage him to trade or buy coins from other coin collectors. From the start, coin collecting for kids can be an adventure you and your kid can go through together.

Naturally, in coin collecting for kids, the proper handling of coins should be taught.



STERLING

Robert W. Benjamin asked:


Probably everyone at one time or another has collected coins. Some people save old wheat pennies they find in change and throw them in a jar. Other people collect state quarters, and some others collect certain coins like nickles or dimes, and try to build a complete collection over time. A lot of folks think coin collecting is the hobby of king’s and truthfully, it’s often called that. A king may be able to build a giant collection of coins, but I promise you, that the small collection a young boy has that may only be worth a couple of dollars, is worth just as much to that boy as a King’s coins are worth to him.

I can tell you right now, anyone can collect coins and you don’t have to be rich. In fact I have quite a large coin collection, and I have had a very low paying job all my life. There are a lot of ways someone can build a great coin collection over time, while still paying the bills.

Coins are so neat looking, I remember when I was a young boy, my grandad would go upstairs and open a safe we had, inside was a metal drawer containing some old Morgan and Peace Silver Dollars. My grandad would let me sit and play with the coins often. I would hold one by the edge on the table top and flip it on the side with my finger and the coin would spin wildly around on the table like a toy top. The coins were frosty silver or whitish colored and were beautiful to look at, they were large and heavy, not like the little coins we have today. I often wondered how many folks actually carried these things around in their pockets everyday, it only took a few of them to weigh quite a lot.

After my grandad passed away back in 1969, my dad sold the old silver dollars, I don’t think he really wanted to, but my grandad had left the family farm pretty deep indebt, so dad had an auction and sold about everything except our house and the barn, to pay off the huge bills. It wasn’t too long after that when dad got bitten by the coin collecting bug. At first it wasn’t coins but paper money that got dad started. I remember dad saw an ad in the back of some magazine, where a guy was offering to pay $2 for every dollar bill you sent him that had a certain treasurer’s name on it, that name was: ” Joesph W. Barr “. My dad looked in his wallet at some dollar bills he had, and sure enough he had one that had the signature ” Joesph W. Barr ” on it. Dad took the dollar from his wallet and kept it in an envelope in his old roll top desk, and after checking his money for several days afterwards, dad found some more of them. Sometime later dad mailed the dollar bills to the address in the magazine ad, and sure enough he soon got a check for the dollars plus an extra dollar each. Dad continued searching and sending in them ” Joesph W. Barr ” dollar bills for awhile, then after a period of time, the guy no longer was accepting them.

Dad then started buying a few Indian head cents and some buffalo nickels. Then as he got older and money seemed to get a lot more tighter, dad quit buying coins and turned to a new hobby, doing sweepstakes. But by this time, I was hooked, I just loved the look of the old coins, the silver ones and the old copper large cents, they just seemed so neat compared to the boring coins of everyday use. Now as I am writing this article, I stumbled across an interesting article about the ” Joesph W. Barr ” dollar bills from the ‘American Numismatic Association’ it said, the following: “At one time, it was speculated that the notes signed by Treasurer Joseph W. Barr would eventually hold a high numismatic value since he was in office for only 23 days in 1968-69. However, during that period, a total of 484 million notes were produced with his signature. The high quantity produced dictates that the notes will never be considered rare in our lifetime. Interestingly, in 1995, numismatic author Alan Herbert stated, “A $1 Barr note deposited in an interest-bearing account in 1969 would have been worth over $4.00, figuring 6% interest compounded annually. A circulated Barr note kept in a safe-deposit box for 26 years is worth $1 today.”

So that explains why that guy probably quit buying the ” Joesph W. Barr ” dollar bills, it seemed they might of been collectible for a little while, but they just never caught on. Today you can still buy them on eBay and other places, sometimes for slightly more than $1.00. Oh well, it is something that has stuck in my mind every since I was a little boy, I will always remember dad checking his wallet for ” Joesph W. Barr ” dollar bills. Now as I wipe the tears from my eyes, yes I am sad to say dad has been gone a few years now, and I still miss him very much, especially when I sit here alone and think about the times we spent together in the years gone by, oh well, at least it’s always great memories when it comes to you, dad.

Now as I regain my mental composure, if I ever had one, I want to say that I never lost the desire to collect coins. And as I got old enough to work full time, and live on my own I started and built a fairly large coin collection. I didn’t have much money as I never went to college or trade school, and I have always had a job working as a laborer, so I had to fine ways that I could build up my coin collection cheaply.

One day, I was looking in the back of a Coin collecting magazine that I had purchased at a local news stand, and I found an ad where you could join a coin collecting approval service. They would send you certain coins once a month, and you could select the ones you wanted to buy and keep, and if you didn’t want them all, just mail the others back to them, and the next month they would send some other coins for you to examine. What made this program better than the other approval services I had often seen was, you could tell them what type of coins you were interested in, and what price you were willing to spend monthly. I selected miscellaneous U.S. coins, everything from old large cents from the 1800’s to silver mercury dimes and buffalo nickels etc. And I chose to only spend $20 a month, for me this was perfect and for about a year or more I stayed in the program and over time I got a nice bunch of coins from them, then something happened and the company folded or went out of business, as I never received any more coins from them and I no longer saw their ad in the magazines.

Overtime I discovered other cheap methods to aquire some nice coins, one of the methods I still use, is something that anyone can do to start building a nice coin collection. Just start searching and examining your pocket change, I still find wheat pennies and silver war nickels, and many pre 1960 nickels, and sometimes a silver coin in pocket change. One time about two years back, I was at a local store and got some change back, I noticed two of the quarters I received looked kinda white in color, examining them closely after I got back home, I discovered they were both pre 1964 silver Washington quarters. I figured somebody must of needed money to buy some cigarettes or milk or something, and must of used some of their old coins, I was just lucky enough to had been there at the right time and place to get them in my change.

One place to find a lot of nice coins is to go to different banks and buy rolls, search through them carefully, and you will be surprised of the neat finds you may come across, plus just add a few out of your pocket change to replace the ones you want to keep from the rolls, and you can turn them back into a different bank for some different rolls of coins to search through.

Another place that is fairly good for finding some rare coins is at local flea markets, be careful though as many of the folks at these places are very aware of a coins value, and they often ask for much more then what the coins are worth. Read up on the coins you are interested in buying, or better yet, take along a pocket coin price guide with you when you go to buy coins, it’s better to be thrifty then foolish.

Anyway, now after collecting coins for fun over the years, I have almost every Lincoln cent that was made from 1909 up to present, and I have every Jefferson nickel from the first one that was made in 1938 to present, and I have a nice sized wooden chest full of miscellaneous U.S. coins, including silver dollars, mercury dimes, buffalo nickels, Large Cents and many more unique and rare coins. I figure the coins will make a nice gift someday, something to leave to my daughter and her children, and maybe I can spark that fire in them, that my dad started in me, the joy of coin collecting. So start checking your pocket change today, you just never know what rare finds you may come across.

There are several different types of computer software that are made for coin collecting. One program that stand’s out is ‘ Coin Collector Professional ‘, it is made for any coin collector, from novices to professionals, and it cost under $20. ‘ Coin Collector Professional ‘ may be downloaded and tried for free at this website address:

http://www.rb59.com/ccp

By Robert W. Benjamin

Copyright © 2006

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.



BILL

willwork4u2000 asked:


I HAVE A 1954 QUARTER, THAT HAS A NUMBER 4 STAMPED IN THE FACE OF WASHINGTON.ANY HELP IS APPRECIATED.

KERRY

Abhishek Agarwal asked:


Childhood is the ideal time to shape the mind, when it is highly mouldable. Young mind is curious and learns fast. By engaging the young mind with something educational and creative, you direct it to develop in healthy directions. It sure transforms the young kid into a responsible adult years later.

Parents can teach their kid to cook or to bake, and if the child likes it then quite likely he or she will become a good chef as an adult. By involving a child in hobby, we can teach how to concentrate on a particular subject and how to maintain focused on it. Coin collection is one such activity to engage kids (and adults too, for that matter).

Coins are just a form of currency for adults. They are commonly used to buy, say a newspaper or to make a local phone call. However, for children the coins are much more uyility than that. They can put coins in their piggy bank and later on use the collected coins to buy something special, Or for paying for expenses later in the college.

Piggy bank is the best way to get into coin collection. The parents can join the child in this activity and study the coins together. The year of manufacture of the coin can tells its own history. When the child learns about these details behind the coins, his interest grows. And this, further motivates him to grow his coin collection.

Finding a faulty coin — a coin with some missing letter, number or some type of misprint on it — can be very rewarding for the coin collectors. Because such things are not common, such faults greatly magnify the coin’s value disregarding what the face value is.

It is best to keep coins separately based on the purpose — coins that are for the purpose of collection and those meant for savings should be kept separately. When the later collection has grown up, this money can be used to buy plastic folders which are designed for storing coins. These folders are of two kinds — in one type you put just one coin in each folder and the other type holds several coins.

These folders are useful because the child can carry his preciouscollection, neatly organized in these folders, to his school and show to his friends there. This helps develop his self confidence when he talks about his “achievements” and his newly developed knowledge through the newly acquired hobby.

Through this hobby, the child learns the importance of savings — may be to buy some special item, gift or for a cherished project. Thus he learns to achieve his goals without always depending on the parents’ support. This is self reliance. Hence, this hobby of coin collection, if inculcated in the early childhood, will certainly develop the child into a responsible adult later.



COY

paul_in_boston asked:


I’ve just started Coin Collecting and would like to buy from a place that won’t sell me junk!

AURELIO

Spearfish asked:


Can anyone offer tips or a helpful site to help me get started? Thanks.

DEVIN

dork and proud of it asked:


groceries, should i just give up collecting ar should i keep on trying. also they force me to tell them where it is and i cant hide it from them

BARTON