Coin enthusiasts gather, share interests at Greensburg collector show

Don’t rustle around in your wallet just yet — the coins on display at the Greensburg Coin Club show Sunday were a little more unusual than your average pocket change.

Around 16 coin dealers and a whole host of coin-collecting enthusiasts gathered at the Circleville Volunteer Fire Department to show off and sell their wares or to buy that long-sought-after item for their collection.

Coins were the main fare, though some vendors brought other collectibles, such as baseball cards and trinkets.

Greensburg Coin Club President George Yonek said this year’s event was one of the nonprofit’s busiest in 15 years. The club has existed since 1959, and Yonek has been president for 12 years.

Yonek himself has been collecting coins since he was 16 years old. He took a break from the hobby during college but picked it up again later in his life, he said.

Coin collecting as a hobby has a number of facets, Yonek explained. While coins are an investment, they also have a historical side, too.

“I’m big into history and the research aspect of it, too,” he said. “You find something you don’t know, you consult manuals. You can’t find it in the manuals, so you go on the internet and start searching. Since I collect a lot of foreign (coins), people just bring everything to me and ask, ‘What’s this?’ ’’

Shows like the one Sunday are often frequented by retirees, but not everyone is the same age, he said, and new people get into the hobby on a regular basis.

One younger coin enthusiast, Dylan Magill, 15, of Trafford pored over the tables.

“My grandfather had a collection of coins a while back, and one day, I decided to look through it,” he said. “It was around a year or two ago.”

Dylan looks for Morgan dollars, a type of silver dollar produced in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when he visits shows like this one.

“The history about is just cool,” he said. “That is just what draws a lot of people in.”

Showing their wares

Across the show floor, display tables were set up with coins in sealed containers or lined up neatly in rows.

Coins must be kept in good condition. If they degrade or get damaged, Yonek said, trying to clean them can make things worse.

“Cleaning is generally a terrible thing to do,” he said. “A lot of coins in the ‘50s and ‘60s were cleaned, some more harshly than others. … That destroys the finish and reduces the cost.”

Some vendors chat with customers about their collections.

“We’ve done mostly online stuff, so it often looks like I don’t have a lot of stuff most of the time,” said vendor Jeffrey Shumar of Shumar Numismatics. He said he brings a small selection to shows.

Numismatics, Shumar explained, is another word for the study and collecting of coins and currency. Depending on their rarity, some coins can be worth more than their gold value, he said.

Collectors frequent shows for different reasons. Some are looking for physical assets, such as gold and silver, and some are putting together collections of specific types of coins in sets. Still others might be trying to sell coins that they found themselves in possession of, Shumar said.

“You have all of the people coming here because they inherited grandma or grandpa’s box of stuff, and they’re trying to find out what it’s worth and the value on stuff,” he said. “It’s really all across the board.”

Shumar said he became a coin vendor during the process of looking for specific coins for his collections. Nowadays, he mostly buys collections for resale, he said, though he does have a few sentimental coins.

“Most people at these smaller shows, they are buying and selling to have extra cash, to be able to buy the stuff they want to,” he said.