The Quick-n-Simple Guide to Coin Collecting

Are you seaching for a rewarding, exciting, fun hobby that you can easily enjoy? Then you don't need to look any further than the coins you have in your pocket. Millions of people engage in coin collecting, a hobby that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Starting up a coin collection can be quite easy. As a matter of fact, you can begin building a collection with the very coins you encounter every day.

What Does Numismatic Mean?

The study of coins, as well as other forms of money, is known as numismatics. Numismatists (those who study coins and currency) take their love for analyzing money to various degrees. While many people collect and study coins as a pastime, some make a full-time career out of being a numismatist. Many such people devote decades of their lives researching and studying coins and giving speeches, writing books, and conducting seminars regarding their area of numismatic interest.

Deciding What to Collect

Starting up a coin collection need not be neither difficult nor costly. In fact, there are many inexpensive ways that people can collect coins. You may be surprised as to how much you will be able to collect by spending perhaps only a few dollars--or less--per week.

Perhaps one of the most widespread and popular methods of coin collecting involves seeking every date and mint-mark (a mint-mark is the little "P," "D," "S," etc., for example, that is isolated from other letters on coins) for which a certain coin design was struck. An example of such collecting would be to collect every Jefferson nickel from 1938 (the first year that President Jefferson's profile was imprinted onto nickels) to the present, along with collecting one coin from each mint, for each year, that struck the Jefferson nickel. More recently, people have been watching their pocket change for the popular Statehood quarters. Statehood quarters are a good example of a coin type that would make a fantastic coin collecting project, because Statehood quarters are prevalent in circulation, and therefore obtainable at face-value.