Memory Day: Coin Collecting

I don't really understand the draw of collection-based hobbies, like stamp collecting or Beanie Babies. To me, a collection only makes sense if:

1. You can use it regularly: Who doesn't want to build and play with the entire Lego Pirates ecosystem at the same time?
2. The collection is finite: Oh look, five hundred new types of Beanie Baby were released this year.

This is also why I long ago gave up on any video game goal requiring 100% completion that was really just a useless prolonging of the original game. I was too old to ever play any "Pokemon" games, but I'm sure I would have hated them. DON'T TELL ME WHAT I GOTTA CATCH.

For a brief time in junior high school, I decided that collecting pennies would be a valuable use of my time and money. This is proof that child brains are poorly developed, and was also around the time that I decided that wearing the biggest, most unattractive glasses possible would let me see more in focus without having to move my head.

Penny collections are very near to stamp collections on the useless scale, as you spend money on something that just sits on the shelf (touching them reduces their condition from "Fine" to "Good") while new pennies come out every year. Additionally, most pennies are worth... a penny, and always will be.

On some Saturday mornings, as part of the weekly trip to The Price Club for groceries, we would stop at the coin store in Springfield and I would look through the pennies. The crown jewel of my collection was an "Uncirculated" penny from the 60s that cost $4.00 and isn't even shown in the collection here because it had to stay in a special sealed sleeve to prevent oxidation. That penny is now worth a maximum of $1.

It was around this time that I realized there were other potential purchases that would actually be FUN to play with, like computer games and Lego sets, and redistributed my wealth accordingly.

What did you collect as a kid?