Making a life choice that sticks

I had an email from a reader who found some old copies of Numismatic News from almost 15 years ago.

The image was too dark to use here, but I could see the headlines.

Perhaps the most memorable one was about the discovery of the fifth 1913 Liberty Head nickel at the Baltimore American Numismatic Association convention.

For 41 years the hobby had thought that the coin had gone missing in a car wreck and would never be found.

Happily that was not true.

Happily, a great rarity was not destroyed and it re-emerged in hobby hands.

But 41 years is a long time to seem to be missing.

However, in the life of numismatics, 41 years is the blink of an eye.

Coin collectors are long-term thinkers.

I am sure I had no idea when I began collecting in 1963 that I would be writing about it in 2017.

Such thoughts do not occur to a child.

However, I knew that I had been touched deeply by coins and the endless possibilities raised through collecting them.

I probably would have said that I would always be a coin collector.

My parents would have reacted like any parents who had just been told by their child that he wants to be a fireman.

Some do eventually become fire fighters.

But for most, the idea is simply a passing fancy.

We coin collectors have been winnowed by time.

I had childhood friends who were also coin collectors.

Where are they now?

But for some of us, the notion stuck.

It has been a great adventure, one that is still unfolding.

I am excited to come into the office everyday to see what we coin collectors are doing.

It is just as much a part of me as that first drive to fill up all the holes in the Whitman album for cents dated 1941 to date.

I knew I had to do it.

I also know that, just like then, I have to keep collecting.

It is something I chose; I choose it now and will continue to choose it for as long as I am able.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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