Some people go head over heels for Bust halves while others sing praises for Buffalo nickels.
But, I? What coin is it that I love most? It’s the penny – more specifically, the Lincoln cent.
Why did I become a penny collector? What is it about the little copper coin bearing the bust of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, that has lured me to collect these coins for most of my life?
Well, there was one prevailing factor – pennies comprised about 80% of the coins in my piggy bank back then, when I was only a kid.
I had already begun looking at the dates of the coins in my piggy bank when I was only 6 or 7 years old, but didn’t really think much about them – though I always liked trying to find the oldest Lincoln cent in any given piggybank haul – which I would then immediately spend the entirety on whatever LEGO construction kit or Brio wooden railway set caught my fancy that week.
A couple years later, around the age of 9 or 10, my interest in coins evolved to the point that I would start creating date runs with whatever Lincoln cents I had present. At the time, I didn’t realize that I was assembling bona fide date sets – I just thought it was neat to see how many consecutive years’ worth of pennies I could have before I hit a brick wall. I recall making a penny date set run from 1973 to 1991 – which to my 10-year-old self seemed like a pretty cool accomplishment