Coin collection existential crisis...

I'm having something of an existential crisis with my coin collection.

I used to collect as a child, and my collection back then was more geared towards the many different coin designs that were out there.

When my collection was stolen in 2004, I walked away from the hobby for quite a while.

My mother eventually requested that I return to coin collecting as her last wish, so I did and she helped me to source a good many coins before her death in March.

The thing is that I was restricted by Covid19 on what I could add to my coin collection for free the past two years, so I decided to diversify into collecting date runs so that I was still adding to my coin collection despite the dry period in foreign coins coming in.

I was able to get a full set of British 20p coins (minus the 2 years when no circulation coins were released) and she didn't seem to like that as much as she did all the different designs of coins that I had before my collection was stolen.

More recently, I've been pulling “pandemic coins” from circulation because of their significance in history and lower mintage figures… plus the fact that I am still in a drought of different coin designs - I'm not even finding any different £2 coins to add to my coin collection.

In the back of my head, I can still hear my mother complaining about all the “same old coins that I have” and that she wanted me to collect in the same way as I did as a child.

A lot of those coins are no longer circulating anymore, so I would have to land lucky on Ebay or something to pick them up again.

I know that you guys will say that it's my collection and therefore my choice on what and how I collect… but, does anyone have any tips on how to deal with the guilt that I feel as a result of not collecting in the same way as I did as a child because my mother's desire for my coin collection is hard for me to break free from - even though I was clear when I returned that I wouldn't be collecting in the same way as I used to do all those years ago. 

Easiest solution is to do both.

Spend any spare monies on the coins your mother would like to see you collecting, whilst still looking for space filler coins of your date run, from coins in your change.

A charge of “Not Guilty” would then be pronounced.

Although I have no guilt conscience, I collect foreign coins by type, (only one of each catalogue number), but my UK collection is by date.

Best of luck with your collecting, and welcome back to the world of numismatics

I don't get any money aside from what I add to my collection - so pretty much everything I have is either donated to me or found in change. My main problem was that I wanted to bulk out my collection during Covid times and my suppliers weren't coming so I had to work with what I had at the time.

I was able to gather a couple of coins during the more restricted days of lockdown because they were forced into a bottleneck. I got a Diversity 50p and an Australian 10p that way.

I even picked my way through my change bottles and got a couple of one cents, some coins from Jersey, guernsey, the isle of man and a one euro cent from Cyprus out of there.

Ideally, I would have loved to bulk out my £2 coin collection - but my mother wouldn't part with her £2 coins… not even when I offered to give her the same value in other denominations or notes - so she wouldn't be out of pocket.

I'm not turning coins away when they are offered to me - even if I do have 4 pages of them already… like some of my Spanish Euro coins. I just filter them into an overflow tin in the hope that someone may want to trade them for something that I want. My way of thinking is that, if I can make up the equivalent, then they can still spend them and not be out of pocket.

Where possible, I always try to make it so that people are at least offered something for any coins that they fetch my way.

I go to my local post office where the ladies behind the counter, save coins for me and other collectors, so you are swapping like for like.