Oldtrader3's Bio
When I was a teenager, I worked with my dad who was a Canadian mining promoter. I started as a prospector and later worked as a diamond driller looking primarily for underground mineral showings of gold and silver. This was when I was 16 and 17 years old in the late 1950's, I used to spend Sundays out on old ore dumps, looking for overlooked high grade gold ore. I found some interesting pieces containing raw gold wire or small nuggets in ore veins.
After three years in the Army in the early 1960's, I went to college and studied engineering technology, completed a vocational drafting course and worked as a draftsmen while attending school. Eventually earning an MBA.
In a couple of years, I became a design engineer and started working at various aircraft factories on airframe design on the: 737, F-105, C-135, EA6B, F-111 and C-5. I even worked on the Apollo 11 tracking vehicle.
During this period from 1965-1969, because I had previous experience working as a driller prospecting for gold ore in Canada and in the US, I became interested in collecting gold coins. For the first year this interest was confined to buying (10) coin rolls of MS Saints for about $42 each coin. After this initial period of looking at Saints and learning something about grading, I began to buy mostly XF/AU better date gold coins in denominations from the gold dollar to double eagles.
This was during the period just before the use of the term Almost Uncirculated became part of the language of collecting and most of these coins were labelled XF. I was particularly interested in collecting classic half eagles from 1839-1908 and bought any nicely preserved coins.
I have pretty much continously collected coins since the late 1950's and am now retired from being a Manufacturing Director in the Medical Devices field, working all over the world. However my collecting interest is still high and alive and well but my income is fixed and that fact controls my colecting budget and purchasing decisions. I am still interested in collecting gold US coinage and do so whenever I can find a coin which I need for a set or a few purchases of discretionary coinage consisting of lower grades of gold coins from series which still hold my interest.
