What coin started your collection

I posted in a another topic about a coin I've had since a ten year old kid, and how I've just noticed it has a die alignment error of 90 degrees. I remember this being one of three coins I bought together that started my coin collecting. All three are George III  farthings, and I still have them.
What coin or coins started your fascination with numismatics

This one:

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces27013.html

Got it for free at a fair :)

1935 20 senti from Estonia.
I was either 11 or 12 years old. It was lying on TOP of all the rubbish in huge communal bin. And as kids do, i picked it up and kept it. Thought its worth a million at least and that i must be the only person who owns coin THAT old! I kept it for several years until suddenly somehow i started collecting. I still have this coin.

This one: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces14070.html

I got it from my mom when I was about 9.

Quote: Lotus07This one:

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces27013.html

Got it for free at a fair :)

Was it that actual one or one similar.  A good place to start anyway. Have you continued collecting Roman coins?

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces922.html

When I was young 5 or 6 I think. My mom and grandpa started giving me silver ben franklin half dollars. This sparked my interest, but a man I knew who was always real ill his whole life gave me the Japanese coin in link. I'd visit him seldomly, and each time he was more sick. He always would give me a random coin though. I still have them.

I was on the site of an old building that had just been demolished when I was about 8 or 9 years old and amongst the rubble I found and old british penny from 1900.  The feeling of holding something that was then around 85-90 years old was so thrilling.

I used to live in Austria as a child and the changeover to Euros a looking out for all the different ones is what got me hooked. (I still don't have them all lol)

I had to do a project in school about a country of my groups choosing. My group decided to do Ireland, so I did the economy and brought in some pre-euro Irish coins and some euros. I have been collecting ever since. I started off only collecting banknotes but after a couple years of that I started to collect coins. I have now been collecting for 7-8 years.

Quote: Richard 2

Quote: Lotus07This one:

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces27013.html

Got it for free at a fair :)

Was it that actual one or one similar.  A good place to start anyway. Have you continued collecting Roman coins?

Haha, not really, I have been thinking about it but I never got to the point when I actually started buying coins. Maybe I'll get some at in 2 weeks, then I'm heading to a coin fair!

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2148.html

Quote: Vladislavhttps://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2148.html

And what's the story behind it?  

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces4660.html

Not particularly interesting nor rare. Nor was it technically my first, but it was my favorite for a long time.

The coin that started with my collection was a 1835 - 1870 Tempo Tsuho 100 Mon coin I bought from a friend.

The first coin I kept though was when I was a kid.  I was in the hospital in 1972 & a nurrse gave me a new 1972 Dollar & i kept it ever since.  Even as a kid I never spent that Dollar.

I would have to say the large UK penny. I love them all

US wheat cent, when I was five I found it in a parking lot and knew it was different. I'll be the first to say, I don't have it anymore.

1963 Cyprus 5 Mils
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces976.html


Didn't actually start my collection, and has since been lost, but definitely got me interested in coins, especially for an 8 year old boy in the 1970's, who had never been abroad and had only ever seen decimal UK coins.

And now I remember the coin, I've just bought one from Ebay!  

I am from Serbia but I live in US since 2008.
I had a flight from Belgrade to London and from London to New York.
I was at the London airport and I went to a sandwich shop. I paid overpriced sandwich in US Dollars and they gave me change in British Pounds. I looked at 10 Pence and I thought in myself, hmmm this can be a great suvenire of my trip. So that is my first coin in my collection. I still have that exact 10 pence that I got  at the airport.

Mine was a 1928 Lincoln cent. I was eight at the time, it was 1978, and my brother gave me a fifty year old coin. I was hooked almost immediately.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces9100.html

It was an 1858 S that my grandmother gave me for my tenth birthday ..  Of which I still have in a bank deposit box ...

                                

  It was the ultra-rare 1937 twelve-sided Edward VIII three pence UK coin; my grandfather had one!
I think it was the first version above, with the trial design of the flowers reverse.

http://british-coin-price-guide.homelinux.com/ThreePence-Coin-Price-Guide_files/Page2414.htm
also  http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/three.html  see section Edward VIII

 So not the George VI coin also dated 1937 and with similar portrait.
However I do vaguely also think that the coin he had was a plastic 'play money' version. I saw it in one of his drawers when I was a child in the 1960's and always wondered about the coin. When he passed away decades later it was nowhere to be seen.  
 From then I started collecting, and in 1970's worked in a bank. When I became a cashier there I went through bags of copper-nickel coins and shook them to listen if there were any silver coins. In those days an antiques shop across the street from the bank was paying eight times face value for them; I sold them any I found that were duplicates of those I had in my collection. Shame that collection I do not have these days still, but I have got a pretty good new collection nevertheless.  

This one in 1972: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2013.html
I was - as a six year old - stuck with the dilemma of why a lion has two tails. - it took me over a decade to find that out in an era without internet.
(Received as gift in Easter celebrations in my mother's home village, which is currently in Slovakia.)

Quote: imrehThis one in 1972: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces2013.html
I was - as a six year old - stuck with the dilemma of why a lion has two tails. - it took me over a decade to find that out in an era without internet.
(Received as gift in Easter celebrations in my mother's home village, which is currently in Slovakia.)

That's a nice coin, I've always liked the industrial design of it and, just as you, I also like the lion a lot! Do you still have this coin btw? And if so, which date does it bear?  

I have all the double-tailed Czechoslovakian lions, my friend, I am a double-tailed Czech lion addict!

Kenya 10 cent, as big as an Aussie penny. Totally fascinated.

I don't remember my first coin, but I do remember how I got into it all....

I was about 10 years old living in Berlin, Germany (my dad was stationed there in the US army) one day, we had gone to the flea market, dad bought my brother and I a lot of old German coins that peaked our interest at the time.  We would also get other coins from dad's army buddies and swapping with our friends, that had started a pretty good sized collection.

Unfortunately, we lost all of our coins in the move back to the states and I never got back into coin collecting, until this last year, when my dad passed away, we were going through his stuff looking for his old Berlin brigade uniform he wanted to get buried in, I found one of my favorite coins in one of the boxes with his metals.....

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces8271.html

My Oma (German for grandmother) who used to translate the coins for me as a kid had also told us that she was originally from east Prussia before the war she had moved to Berlin.
which is why that old coin will always be my most prized piece,...
Now, I collect coins remembering them both...

Well, my uncle was/is a casual collector and my dad had some foreign coins left from when he was a kid, so that was enough to pique my interest. Then, someone gave my mom a Russian 1899 50 kopek as a gift. She was going to have it melted to make some new earrings, but I convinced her to save it. Still have it.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1292.html

As a kid, I was eating at subway, and in the tip jar, I saw a weird nickel, so I asked the cashier whether ge could trade me the nickel for another nickel. He said yes, so I kept it. When I got home, I realized it was a buffalo nickel, and a pretty rare one, too. (1924S) I was fascinated! How could anyone own a coin that old?! I have been collecting ever since.

eilan subway really. Thats can of strange. Right after my wife died. In change there i got a freanch indochina 10 cem 1922A Km#16. And last week got a 1959 dime in change there. I go now to subway once a month. I get two to three silver coins there, a year. war nickels and dimes mostly

I started collecting about 4 months ago when I noticed a 1984 Canadian penny in my pocket change...

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces6462.html

I got this coin from my grandpa when i was 13 .at that time I did not know that cleaning the coin would reduce its value  .so I cleaned it once every 3 months. I still have that coin but its condition is  not good.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces15276.html

I got this from my mother when I was a kid. This got me started. I remember my mother telling me "it's silver coin and worth much more than 10 Rupees"  

1900 Liberty Head (V) Nickel. My mom gave it to me 60 years ago. Still have it! (:

this coin
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces12389.html

and three 1mk 1963 banknotes started my collection in christmas 2011

These ones, from my grandmother :

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces7193.html
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1417.html

and some euros.

my grandmother gave me a bag with a few coins in it when I was young the most memorable being a 1918 GB penny

Hi! I'm new to the playground. I have enjoyed reading the responses to the question and looking at the examples of your collections.

I honestly can't remember what my first coin was, but I suspect it was a Canadian penny or quarter. I probably got it visiting my sister in Northern Minnesota sometime in the mid 70's. I'm sure I don't have that coin anymore, and I'm pretty sure I don't even have one like it. lol

I do have a few old russian coins, and some older American coins. I have a few Mexican Pesos too. I don't think I have anything of any particular value, except to me. I tend to keep things with more sentimental value, or with a particular beauty to me.

I don't even know where my small collection is at the moment, but when I find it I will add everything to my portfolio.

I actually joined this site because there is a particular coin I am interested in getting, but I am not sure where to look. lol I am hoping to learn more though, and would really like to expand my collection anyway. Thanks for reading!

When I was around ten years old, I was fishing with my grand father and I found a coin in the ground in our yard.
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1150.html
that started my collection I got a lot of coins from our vacations all over Europe. I think I stopped collecting around 2000. I brought my collection over to the U.S. in 2005 and put them on a shelf in my closet. My daughter had a project in school about South Korea and asked me if I had a coin from South Korea. This started my interest in my collection again. Then I found this amazing site and we started putting our collection in. When we started on this site we had 125 countries and about 3100 coins, by year. Pretty quickly we decided to collect by type and now are going over 200 countries with our next trade coming in. This is our story about our interest in collecting coins.

My Grandfather was a prospector during the 1920's thru 1940's (Northern Ontario and Quebec) and a Numismatist for many years longer. When he passed away, my father and uncle had to "clean out the homestead" and paid the the 3rd party a bonus..... a Wooden Nickel!!! Mom said he had tears in his eyes.

I remember Dad going through the jars of coins and I think that is when I caught the "bug". Equipped with my 1985 Charleton Catalog, I looked through change for the next decade and finally found a 1964 Canadian Nickel with an Extra Water Line.

Still got it. Not for sale. And 30 years later I'm back on the horse!!!

This was the coin that started me collecting:

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1083.html

I grew up in Alaska. When I was 8, I was riding in the backseat of a friends car going somewhere and I noticed this coin on the floor. My friends parents had no idea how it could have possibly ended up there, having never been to Panama, and told me that I could have it. Sparked a (continuing) 40+ year obsession.

a 1/10 oz platinum koala was my first coin when i was five or six.
(off course my parents looked after it)?

I suspect it was the 1942 silver Netherlands 10c piece I found in the alley behind our house... in northwest Ohio. I couldn't for the life of me imagine how it had gotten from the Netherlands in 1942 to an alley in the Toledo area in 1972 (or thereabouts).

The coin I've had longest as a deliberate acquisition is Old Number One, a 1917 Mercury dime that I got for a little bit of nothing, was coated with black gunk, and is one of the very few coins I have dipped... and the image shows the result -- I don't recommend dipping, but once in a very great while, it's appropriate.

And this dime has been part of my home for retired disks of metal for about 40 years now.