Mint sets

I started my coin collecting back in 1998. At first, I wasn't sure what I intended to collect so I just went with getting the US Mint sets. I started with the Proofs and added the mint sets next.

I learned a lot about the circulating and non-circulating coins then. For example, I didn't realize that the half-dollar coin (Kennedy) was still being minted as I hadn't seen one in circulation since the mid-1970's.

In the past few years, I decided I'd like to have the Silver Proof sets also. Those are actually super-nice.

The bad thing about collecting these sets is that I tend to look at them once and then I put them away. At least in my coin books I open them up and actually look at them and wonder who used them.  With the sets, I know no one used any of these coins. They are all sterile and without stories.

That's one of the reasons I started collecting Lincoln cents, Jefferson nickels, Roosevelt dimes, Walking Liberty Half-dollars, Franklin half-dollars, and Peace dollars (among others, of course). I started collecting Washington quarters because I tended to get a lot of them in change.

Whatever the reason, I still collect sets from the US Mint.