What a Beginning Collector Can Look For When Starting a Coin Collection.

Filed in From Other Authors... on Jan.06, 2009

(All Auctions Shown are Ebay Results)

The introduction of the internet has completely turned around the way people find things to collect. Finding coins can of course also be done in the old fashioned way – newcomers to the hobby are often stunned at how many rare and valuable coins are actually still in active circulation.

One good starting point for new collectors is to look for “wheat pennies”. A successor to the Indian Head Cent, these U.S. pennies were made between 1909 and 1958. The name comes from the design of the wheat stalks to appear on the coin back with, of course, a picture of Abraham Lincoln on the front.

One especially interesting wrinkle is the steel/zinc penny from WWII. Because of a copper shortage during the war, the U.S. Mint produced pennies made from steel, then coated with zinc to prevent any rusting. Minted in 1943, they are old enough to be valuable due to age, but have the added rarity of a different alloy. You can tell them apart by their slight bluish gray tine and their distinctive sound when struck.

On examination of Lincoln wheat pennies, a lot of the them will have the initials of VDB on them, for the designer Victor David Brenner. The ones which were minted at locations other than Philadelphia are more valuable; most were minted there, as Philadelphia had the largest mint at the time. These pennies can be worth as much as $700 in today’s market, that’s not bad for a single penny! Many are worth $15, which is still a very nice profit for a penny.

You can look for pennies, silver dimes, quarters and dollars in perfectly ordinary places. These coins tend to travel from bank to bank without anyone noticing, due to coin countering machines being used. If you look more carefully at your change you have the opportunity to come across something you didn’t expect.

It only takes a moment to examine a coin; if you know your coins, you can easily spot VDB pennies, pre-1964 dimes and the new, collectible state quarters. It is possible that you might even find Eisenhower silver dollars.

State quarters starting being produced in 1999, with five different ones put into population every year. A new quarter comes out about every 10 weeks, with the program projected to end in 2009. All of the new state quarters have a state specific image on the reverse side.

The state quarters created in previous years of the program are no longer being produced, so they are sure to increase in value over time. Coin circulation runs about 30 years on average, many of the quarters from this time are already selling for around two dollars. If you start a coin collection now you will find they are very valuable in time.

Coin collecting is a hobby which involves long term planning. Your collection will grow more valuable with time; even a common coin from today could become a valuable collectible later in its life.

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