The Cent Folder That Got a Retired Shop Teacher Collecting Again

I was twelve when my grandfather set a coffee can of wheat pennies and old nickels on the kitchen table. He did not make a speech. He told me to look through it before I spent any of it. I have been looking through coin cans ever since. That can is long gone, but the habit stayed.

I am Arnie Szabo, 67, a retired high school shop teacher in Toledo, Ohio. I taught woodworking and metal shop for thirty-one years. Carol and I have been married since before I started teaching. I have collected US coins on and off since that coffee can, and seriously for the last nine years since I retired. My main run is Lincoln cents, with Jefferson nickels, Washington quarters, and a modest set of Morgan and Peace silver dollars in the spare bedroom I call the coin room.

Last spring I bought the Whitman Official Coin Folder for Lincoln Cents, Collection #3, 1975-2013. I did not buy it because I expected it to make anything rare. I bought it because I had three plastic bags of loose cents from that stretch of years and no good place to put them. The bags sat on the corner of my folding oak desk for months. Every time I moved them I heard coins slide against each other. That sound bothers me. Copper and zinc cents are soft enough without me adding wear.

The folder is 7.75 by 5.93 by 0.28 inches and weighs 3.53 ounces. It sits flat on my felt pad. It does not slide when I open it, and it does not take up much room in the desk drawer. The listing says three pages. That matches what I have in my hands: a thin folder, not a heavy album. I cared about that because my coin room is small and I do not need another bulky thing on the desk.

I use it the way I use any folder. I work at the desk with the lamp on, a felt pad under my hands, and a small plastic tray to my right. I hold the cents by the edges. For anything uncirculated I put on nitrile gloves, though most of what went into this folder is circulated. The folder is not a grading tool and it will not turn a worn cent into a better one. It is a place for the coins I already have. That is all I wanted from it.

The first Sunday after it arrived, Tyler and I sorted pennies at the kitchen table. Tyler is ten. He is my grandson, and he likes the sorting more than the sitting still. I gave him the pile from 1975 to 1989 and told him to read the dates out loud. I took 1990 to 2013. We worked for about an hour. He found a 1982 that looked different from the others, and I showed him the difference between the copper and zinc ones without making a lecture of it. That hour did more for my collecting than the previous six months.

The folder is 7.75 by 5.93 by 0.28 inches and weighs 3.53 ounces. It sits flat on my felt pad and does not slide when I open it.

Here is the part I would want to know before buying. This folder is for the 1975 to 2013 Lincoln cent run. If your loose cents are from the 1940s or the 1960s, this is not the folder for those. I have a separate folder for my earlier cents. I am not going to pretend one folder covers every year. The range is printed on the product, and it should be the first thing you check against your own pile.

I also looked at a coin album before I bought this. An album has pages and slips and takes more room. For the coins I keep in the coin room, an album makes sense. For the loose cents I sort with Tyler at the kitchen table, a folder makes more sense. I do not have to worry about a page bending back or a slip sliding out when a ten-year-old is helping. The Whitman folder stays flat and closed until we open it. That is the whole advantage for me.

I go to a local coin club meeting once a month and a couple of regional shows a year. I have heard plenty of advice about storage. Some of it is good. Some of it is a man telling you to buy a better safe before you have learned to hold a coin by the edge. My advice is simpler. Start with the coins you have. Put them in order. Learn the dates. Keep your hands clean and your coins off the bare table. A folder like this one lets you do all of that without turning the hobby into a project.

At the last club meeting I brought the folder with me. A fellow at the club looked through it and said he had the same run in a shoebox. I told him a folder would get the coins out of the box and into order. He laughed. I do not know if he bought one. I do know that my own cents are out of the bags, in order, and back on the desk where I can see them. That is the change I can speak to.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you came to my kitchen table with a bag of cents and asked me what to do, I would not tell you to chase a grade or a price. I would tell you to spread the coins on a felt pad, sort them by date, and see what range you actually have. Then buy the folder that matches that range. For a lot of people that will be this Whitman folder for 1975 to 2013. For others it will be an earlier folder, and that is fine. The point is to get the coins out of the bag before they wear against each other. Carol will tell you I am not sentimental about much, but I am sentimental about that coffee can my grandfather gave me. A folder is a practical way to honor it without pretending the coins are something they are not.