Welcome on numista !
Quote: "Nathaniel"how much do you guys think you've spent on your collection in all the years you've been collecting?
I guess most of us don't really know how much we spent in this hobby and we probably don't want to know as well
I confirm the comments of Coinman1 and ArnoV.
Speaking about my personnal experience, I started collecting a bit younger than you but it was mostly due of the changement of currency in my country.
I asked my parents if they can picked as many coins as possible before they were wisdraw of the circulation and choose to keep only one coin per date of every type.
Soon, I noticed that many people did the same and they were started to collect the new currency (the euro) too.
Even if there is nothing wrong about that, I didn't like the idea of collecting the same things than other people around, so I started to think how I can differentiate my collection.
Few months after I decided to buy mixed lots of foreign coins.
It was relatively expensive for me (even if it was only 50€), but I got few kilos of coins with that and, even if their values were pretty low, I have no regrets.
Of course, speaking about money it wasn't a clever investment if I wanted to sell them back, but it wasn't the goal.
It was an easy way to be more familiar with modern coins from all over the world ; it was fun and I learned a lot from them because I had to do the research by myself to figure out where they came from and how to identify them properly.
I asked the World Coins for my birthday (now you can find a version of this book online, but it's not that convenient) and got few coins from my family as well (they mostly came from travels or were found in drawers).
From that time until 20, I was mostly looking for new coins on the flea markets and bought few other in coin shops : much more expensive but, as ArnoV said, we often have discounts when we are young so it was good deals after all and their values incraesed much more than I expected for some of them !
Then I stopped colleting for a while and prefered to focus on the studies.
Last year I put my nose back in my collection : the bug came back !
Of course, I had to do a lot of improvements and now I'm even specialized in areas I never collected when I was younger, but I'm 27 now and I'm still proud of the coins I get during this first period.
In short, collect what appeals you the most and fit in your budget.
The most important thing is to have fun !
Ps: I bet he probably won't need 50 years to acquire experience : Internet makes things much easier than before