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**** WINS Member Bio ****


As a young boy, I grew up in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is the middle 1960's and like most young men during this time, I had a paper route. My dad got me one of those coin changers you wear on your belt and push down on a lever to dispense a coin, filled it with ten dollars worth of mixed change as seed money for me, and I was in business. Having a paper route was a great way to get exposed to a lot of different coins back then. The conversion from silver to clad coins had happened two years before, yet there were a still a lot of silver in circulation. I do not remember ever getting paid with a silver dollar, but I do remember getting paid with a lot of Franklin halves. This was the start of my coin collection fever. On Saturday our route paper bill was due, so the evening before after I had went and collected for the paper, I would dig through all my money and pull out what I wanted to save that week. I remember my mother told me that the silver certificates folding money had been recalled by President Johnson, so I should save some of those as well.

And yet being young and foolish, and not really concerned about saving for tomorrow because things here today were so exciting, when it came time for me to be able to drive all I could think about what having a car of my own. So I emptied my saving account, and turned all my collection coins back into legal tender and got that first car. Little did I realize back than that many, many more cars would come and go over my lifetime, but those coins were gone for good. Oh, to be able to do it all over again.

Life's adventures took me to several places, a wife, a child, mortgage and bills so I never had the luxury of collecting money again for several years. However, I like hundreds of others, got back into coin collecting with the introduction of the state quarters. At first it was just pulling out the first state quarters out of circulation that I got in change. Then it was looking up these quarters on the Internet. It was when I broke down and purchased a set of states in uncirculated condition that I was once again fully hooked.

Like most collecting habits, whether it is collecting ceramic bunnies, or collecting tea pots, or yes coins, it tends to grow and take on a life of its own. Such is the case with my collecting habits.

In addition to the original state quarters collection, I have re-sparked my interest in Franklin dollars. Now to that I have also added the Peace dollar, and historical event coins, like the 1866 shield nickel or the 1864 two cent piece, first coin with the words "In God We Trust" on it. Recently I have been bitten by the Indian Head penny bug, and they are catching my eye (and some of my coin budget as well!) here of late.

I must confess however that it seems almost every time I look at coins on the Internet I am being taken over by the "darkside" more and more. It took me the longest time just to find out what this "darkside" everyone was referring to meant. Old world coins are rich in detail, make great history lessons, and usually are less expensive than comparable American coinage, even though their mintage numbers are far less. I find myself looking for foreign coins on eBay or at coin shows more than American coins these days. I have interests in Austrian, Swiss, and German coins (family genealogy is from these areas of the world) as well as Canadian. My best coin in the collection is a 1632 Austrian Leopold Thaler I recently acquired.

It was through following a maze of posts and links at CoinTalk.org that brought me to the WINS group. The Internet has changed a lot of things, especially coin collecting. Information about coins used to take weeks or months in print to get out. People were limited to purchasing coins only in their local area, if they had a coin shop. Examples of grades or varieties were hard to see and learn. Today all that information is passed on daily at the speed of light. Our WINS group is an example of such as a great source of information and resources.

Today I reside in Missouri with my wife of 23 years. The daughters are grown and gone, so I have a few more dollars for the coin budget. I work for a large hospital in the Engineering department, and I am college educated in Horticulture. My other interests are landscaping, flowers and yard work, as well turning big boards into littler boards and sawdust.

Anyway, that is me, and I am here to do one thing, and that is to learn, learn, learn. Thank you all for warm welcome comments, and I look forward to learning about each of you.





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