First of all it’s very import to distinguish “collecting coins” from “numismatics”, which is the scientific study of money and its history. The act of collecting coins is something more complex because it can have many different conceptions and meanings.It started, as an art, in the fourteenth century with Petrarch, while collecting them because of their value, as a way of saving up, goes back to the beginning of capitalism. Everything started when Petrarch realized that the coins were much more than simple little golden medals, he saw more than material value in them and decided to start a personal collection. As everything Petrarch invented has become popular, the art of collecting coins started to be known as “the hobby of kings”.There are basically three levels that coin collectors can go through: casual collector, curious collector, and advanced collector. The casual collector collects coins just because it’s fun and because he likes it. Even a kid could be a casual collector. They usually don’t spend a lot of money looking for rare coins or preserving them, therefore their collection is made of random coins they collect by chance. When the casual collector starts to get more involved with his collection and start to want to go further, he becomes a curious collector.Curious collectors usually go look for non-circulations coins and they can spend a little money on them, buying them on eBay or other collection sources. They also start to study more about the art of coin collecting, buying books and frequently visiting coin themed web pages. If the curious collector starts to take his hobby as a way of life, he becomes an advanced collector.Advanced collectors usually focus on some specific interest, and they spend a lot of money in order to make their collection bigger and bigger. They can collect only coins that were in circulation in a certain determined period of history for example, or they can get specialized in a single country, or maybe focus on a specific coin theme, such as presidents or nature elements.Apart from what kind of collector you are, or even if you haven’t even thought about collecting coins, the art of hoarding coins just for pleasure and fun is itself a quite interesting hobby activity.The hobby can become a business. When that happens, the collector goes into a completely different world where people are capable to do such crazy things to reach their objectives. Professional collectors can spend real fortunes in order to achieve important, sophisticated and rare pieces to their collection. When a personal collection turns out to be an historically and politically valued one, it usually becomes part of a museum or an art gallery collection after the owner passes away. To reach this level of specification is quite difficult, because it demands time, patience, money and the most important thing: the collector must love what he does; otherwise the collection will always be an amateur one. That doesn’t mean you have to become a professional collector to make it worth it. Doing that just for fun is already a great way of spending quality time.So don’t think twice if you want to start to hoard coins, it can start as a small thing, but who knows you don’t become a professional and famous collector?