I would like to hear stories and tips of how you learned about coins

I am learning the ropes of coin collecting and find it a little confusing at times. I would really enjoy hearing any tips you have for me to help me understand better. I would also enjoy people sharing stories of how they started and how they learned.

Greetings, jackals.  I started collecting coins when my grandmother gave me some of her old Morgan dollars, Peace dollars, and world coins 50 years ago.  There was no internet, cell phones, or consumer grade computers back then.  Information was really hard to find, especially when you live in a rural area like I did.  It wasn't until I moved to New York City as a college graduate student that I had much better access to information.  The very best reference I can recommend for U.S. coins would be the "Red Book":

"The Official Red Book ― A Guide Book of United States Coins"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0794850588

I would also recommend finding a good LCS (Local Coin Shop) in your area.  They can be a valuable resource.

I love that! Most of my life I have been fascinated by rocks, minerals, fossils, and artifacts. I used to live up in Minnesota where I could find agates like crazy! But now I live in Arkansas and do not know my surroundings and the land as well, and this is sorta why I am venturing into coin collecting. I have gotten into arrowhead hunting down here and have had good luck but it's very limited when there's laws in place now for hunting them. Since I have a metal detector I figured this may be my next hobby, if I ever get good at finding anything besides beertabs, lol . I am posting a picture of the “coin” I found that started this whole mess a few months back…..that coin turn my world upside down, and ended up talking to a lot of coin people, and it was a neat experience. Long story short, my quest ended at heritage auctions, where I got one last opinion and found that it is not a minted coin and they called it counterfeit…..my “pirate booty” dreams shattered to pieces!

You have two pictures here? 
 

you found this with your metal detector!

There are no tips or lessons to become a collector.
The history of currencies is just a picture of the fluctuations of world geopolitics. It is very similar to philately. Philately opens doors to many more vanished countries but suffers from a global disinterest due to the scarcity of exchanges by letter, so collecting stamps that no longer worth anything at all might become boring. The financial aspect of coin collecting is stimulating when you find old coins for next to nothing in European flea markets (the kind of flea markets that don't exist in the "new world"), but it's just to reassure yourself that you're not wasting your time in vain; it's not the main driving force of the collector.
In America you can easily and cheaply start collecting coins with state and national parks quarters, which remain among the most traded and sought-after coins in the world, and then instead of trying to get each years of pennies and nickels, you can open up to other countries, other civilizations.
And then the field of discoveries is limitless, you just have to consult the "identification" tab of the Numista site, every day there are old Indian or Chinese coins whose precise identification requires a lot of research on Google and on the documentation that you gradually build up. Little by little, you recognize the country at first glance, you learn to draw to identify an old Russian coin, and …  sooner or later it becomes a passion.

I wish everyone a nice day.

     During my youth - totalitarian Czechoslovakia.  it was really hard and messy to collect.

Even though our numismatic societies began to emerge more than a hundred years ago.  Our numismatic tradition has historical roots reaching back to the nineteenth century of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

     But it concerned the three biggest cities.  For a boy like me in a larger district town, the only place where you could find out anything was the town library.

Where books about coins could be borrowed for two weeks.  But often nothing was available because some people didn't return the book - they said they lost it in the park on a bench and paid a small amount of the value of the book according to its condition.

The iron curtain-guarded border prevented soldiers with weapons from going to Vienna to the numismatic shop.

I used to throw coins in my shoebox and I didn't have any albums.  It all started a year after the Velvet Revolution1989, when my father's brother - my uncle - returned from emigration from Canada, where he emigrated for political reasons in 1968 after the occupation of our territory by the Russians.

   He came home and brought me a bunch of coins and sets of Canada and also change from a trip to Europe because he landed on a plane in Amsterdam so from Holland.  Then he went on holiday to Spain via France and reached home via Switzerland and Austria.

And everywhere he stopped he slept, ate breakfast and brought the coins back to me and poured them into a pile and said:And start collecting.

Well, since then I have been collecting fully and with enthusiasm.

  But the more crowns I have, the less coins I buy.

Why?  Because I won't give money for overpriced things.  And now all the prices seem inflated to me - big, because of covid and big inflation.  It's just that silver has skyrocketed and I'm not able to accept it.

Nice coin collection.

Ivan