How to Start Collecting American Coins
One of the simplest ways to start collecting American Coins is to start with one denomination. In my opinion, the common penny is an inexpensive way to get started. It doesn’t cost much to gather a large group of coins to search through, and many people don’t pay nearly as much attention to pennies as they do the silver-based dimes, quarters, halves and dollar coins.
Start your collection with a $10 bill and a coin jar. Put the jar on your desk area at work, or a similar location at school. Let people know that you are collecting pennies for a hobby, and ask that they simply drop their pennies into the jar in exchange for larger denominations. Take the $10 to the bank, and ask to buy 20 rolls of pennies – hand-rolled if possible. While you’re there, ask for some empty penny wrappers.
Gather some plastic containers with lids. You’ll need about ten containers to start with. You’ll label each container with a decade, so 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. Anything from the current decade can be wrapped and returned to the bank, unless you notice a unique marking on it, or unless you want to collect current decade coins just for fun.
You’ll notice that it is tougher to find coins issued prior to 1970, as most have passed out of circulation. That’s what makes them more valuable. Once you’ve sorted the coins by decades, it will pay to take a closer look at them afterwards to determine if there are any high-value coins in certain years. I’ll discuss more on that in my next article.
In the meantime, it might pay to purchase a good book on grading and pricing American Coins.