I grew up on a farm in rural Wisconsin, where the winter nights were long, dark, and cold and where summer days were mostly spent in isolation from other children of my age. Reading was my first love when it came to filling the time not devoted to farm chores. Coin collecting also became a hobby that I thoroughly enjoyed. When I was about eight or nine years old, I started collecting pennies - Lincoln Wheat Pennies to be exact. When I was nine or ten, I obtained a set of the popular blue Whitman albums. I diligently searched through pocket change to find the coins to fill each of the holes in my albums. I also added nickels and dimes to my collection about this time, and obtained a set of Whitman albums for those more valuable and more difficult to come by coins, as well.
When I was about ten or eleven years old, I came into the house from doing chores to find a stranger looking through my collection. He was a fellow coin collector, making the rounds of the area looking for anything of value. In my absence, my mother had granted him permission to look through my meager collection, which I silently resented. He found one Lincoln cent of interest, and offered to buy it from me for forty cents. Mom encouraged me to sell - if some silly city slicker was foolish enough to pay forty cents for a penny that could be spent for only one cent, why more power to him, she said. I refused to sell, partly out of resentment that my sacrosanct coin collection had been opened up to a stranger without my permission and partly out of a desire to be able to brag to my friends at school about the ‘rare and valuable coin’ I owned.
Now, the better part of six decades later, I still own that old brown penny. A couple of years back, I studied it carefully with a coin grading guide open before me. I felt pretty sure that it was at least a “very fine” grade and possibly even an “extremely fine” penny. Though I would not have been surprised if a professional would conclude that it was a notch or two lower on the scale of coin quality. Finally, this autumn, I sent if off to PCGS to obtain a professional grade and certification. And that was one of the better decisions that I have made in my numismatic career.
A few days ago, when I checked that status of my grading submission for the umpteenth time, I was thrilled to see that grading had been completed. There on the PCGS website was my 1924-D Lincoln Cent: XF45 (extremely fine 45). The PCGS value guide give a suggested price of $115 for my old penny. Some have sold for more, and some for less - one sold a few months ago for $154! Amazing!
So now I’m going to get my old “Mercury” Dimes out of the safe deposit box and take a careful look at them once more. Perhaps there I have another diamond in the rough hidden among those old coins. Probably not. But it will be fun to look through them again after all the years that have passed since I collected them as child.
After a lifetime of collecting coins, I have certainly owned and still own many coins far more valuable than my 1924-D Lincoln Cent - but none of them has given me as much pleasure and satisfaction over the years. And before you ask: No, it isn’t for sale - not now, and not ever. 
