One from every country

Collectors of world coins are familiar with the acronym “OFEC,” meaning the pursuit of collecting “one from every country.” A recent discovery in an old storage unit reminded me that I was once an OFEC collector. Sealed for more than 20 years in a cardboard box, my first coin album is filled with 2x2s holding … Read more

Swiss Numis

1899 Switzerland 1 Fr Obverse

My wife is quick to remind me that I have expensive tastes in travel. I do, without shame, believe in the “swing for the fences” theory of vacationing, whereas she prefers to “walk in a run,” meaning for her, heading to the nearest beach or kid-friendly destination. Each spring I unceremoniously and ingloriously propose the … Read more

PNG YN Scholarship winner to speak

Tara Crosby who is the recipient of the 2014 Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) Young Numismatist Scholarship will be speaking at the November 15 club meeting. Crosby is a communications student from Alpharetta at Georgia Perimeter College. As the scholarship’s winner, Crosby attended the American Numismatic Association (ANA) Summer Seminar courtesy of PNG. She took the … Read more

Working at the car wash

Do you wash your car? We do! After we wash our car at a local car wash, we vacuum it. We always find change near the car wash’s vacuum stations and trash cans. Just last week, we collected 28 cents. Typically, I take it home and put it in our coin bucket. But, this time I was … Read more

Commems combine love of history and numismatic passion

Sweden 1938 2 Kronor

I reached an important milestone in my collection last month. After years of focusing exclusively on European coinage, I purchased—somewhat hesitantly—my first United States coin; a raw, circulated 1952 Washington-Carver Half Dollar. The alphabetized spreadsheet of my collection, which I assumed would eternally end with “Switzerland” (coins of the former Yugoslavia are listed under its … Read more

The Copper Hogs

There are not many analogies to be drawn between coin collecting and football. In fact, they seem to make an impossible literary pair. But, like flipping a coin before kickoff, we have to start somewhere. Gold is the quarterback; it is the face of the franchise, the most valuable player, and oftentimes the paver of … Read more