Okay, I’ll be the first one to admit it; I’m a new coin collector/hunter. I will also admit to becoming interested in collecting coins, like thousands of others, when the new state quarters were just starting to be released. I had contests with my friends to see who could be the first to get five of the latest state quarter release from both mints. I even cheated a little bit by e-mailing people I know on the east coast (I’m on the west coast) and asking them to send me coins with the “P” mint mark. Then I started hearing about the “error” coins being found and I went into a new frenzy looking closely at all my state quarters to find the one error coin in a million.

It didn’t stop with the state quarters. Soon I was hearing about pennies, nickels and even dimes with errors on them. I had to go through a huge amount of pennies I kept in a big clear plastic water bottle. Every time I bought something at the store, I had to look through the change they gave back to me. It got to the point where if something cost $2.07 I would give them $3.00 even if I had the .07 in my pocket because I wanted the change to look at. People started telling me I was just a crazy kid and I would never get rich if I depended on finding a one of a kind error that would sell for millions. I would come back with, “I’m just doing it for fun” and then ask if they could break a dollar. It doesn’t seem to bother me that I have piles of coins laying all around the house. Piles of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters I have searched through. Piles of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters I haven’t searched through. Piles of the assorted coins I haven’t sorted yet and piles of what I think might be error coins but haven’t had anyone look at to certify them. Many nights, I’m told, “you need to go to bed and stop looking at all those %&#@ coins”!

So what if I’m a crazy kid with error coins on my brain. It’s not like I’m doing drugs or abusing alcohol. Even if I found that one in a million error coin that would sell for millions I’m not sure I would sell it. There would be great satisfaction in knowing that “I’m the only one in the world who owns this coin!” So call me a crazy kid. That’s okay, I can live with that. Did I mention I will be 50 years old in October?