Coin Collecting

Coin collecting is a hobby that people all over the world like to do. People who collect coins are called numismatists. Some reasons why people collect coins are:

The really good thing about coin collecting is that you don’t need a lot of money to do it. Sure, there are coins that cost millions of dollars to buy, but you can start a collection with only a little money.
To start your collection, you will need some equipment. You will need:

	A place to keep the coins. This can be a box or even an album. The box can be a shoe box or another kind of container. It doesn’t matter although coins shouldn’t touch any PVC plastic. "PVC's will eventually release an oily residue that turns coins green and makes banknotes look like they were actually soaked in oil." (Wise) You can buy albums at hobby stores.
	Bags or paper envelopes. You can buy special coin envelopes and bags at hobby stores. Coin envelopes don’t cost much money. You can also use plastic baggies as long as they don’t have any PVC in them. It’s a good idea, since these things touch the coins, to buy the envelopes from a hobby store because they need to be acid-free and they would have that kind there.
	A magnifying glass so that you can see the coin and its design clearly.
	Lots of light so that you can see the coin well.
	Some way to write down the coins and denominations you have. This could be a computer program or just a notebook.
	A price guide so that you can see what your coin is worth. Some price guides are online. There is an advantage to going online and that is that the prices will probably stay more up to date than ones in a book. How much a coin is worth is based on how many of them are in existence, how old it is, what kind of condition it is in, what it’s made of, and how many people want it. If lots of people want the coin, the price goes higher.

There are so many kinds of collections you can make but it might take you a long time to figure out which coins you like the best.
We wanted to see how many coins the people at our school would be willing to share with us. We put a note in our weekly newsletter and also on our school website asking parents to send foreign money into school. Envelopes started to come in and we saw so many different coins from all around the world! There were coins with holes in the middle, odd shaped coins, and others that had pretty designs. We were sorry that we had to return them! You can see the collection by clicking here.
The best place to go for coin advice is to a coin club or a hobby shop.