My name is Aaron and I live in Glendale AZ but travel into downtown Phoenix each day for my job as a surgical tech.

I got to become a serious coin collector shortly before my dad died. He showed me his collection of coins and explained which ones were most important to him (1967 was my parents wedding anniversary and I remember wishing it had been 1964 because that was the last year they made silver quarters and dimes). Some of the other coins were from me and my brothers birth years (including mint sets and commemoratives) and finally some were from his dad. My grandpa owned a business and kept any special coins that came in. Unfortunately, due to 5 brothers and sisters my dad's share was pretty small but it did include a coin album of wheat cents dating back to 1909 that was more than half filled.

After my father passed, I gave the coins from my brother's birth years to them, and set out to complete the album of pennies. Over the next few years, I attended several coin shops and coin shows but I was in no real hurry to complete it especially because i knew that several of them was going to cost a lot of money.