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My collecting habits were first stimulated around the age of 4 when my father asked me if I wanted a New Zealand 8d red export NZ lamb stamp – I still have it. Like many collectors, my first foray into coins was the jar of worn pennies given by my parents or grandmother to keep me quiet on a rainy day - no internet or games consoles in those days, in fact we didn't even have a TV. Date runs followed with the obligatory spaces left in the rows for dates that nobody thought to tell me didn’t exist, though I remember being told that a 1933 was very rare and that only 6 existed. Like every other person, I checked each penny carefully in case I found one. Some hope. Nobody told me they were all accounted for and that I was wasting my time looking!! Herein lies a useful lesson because novices pick up information, but usually only half the story, hence the rare 20p undated mule, or the Queen's necklace, or the unbelievably rare £2 coins that can only be found on eBay. All mythical "facts" that can be easily disproved with a modicum of research, but no kid of 6 or 7 does research. Collecting stamps and coins ran in parallel throughout my time at school. The first coin I actually bought was a high grade 1946 sixpence. I hesitate to say uncirculated, as I still have it and it certainly isn't, but was described at the time as such. Stamps took up much time because I had a neighbour who had the best collection of British and Australian stamps I have seen to this day with less than half a dozen gaps for both countries. He also had sufficient duplicates to run a business had he wanted and so one or two visits every month to look at the collection were rewarded with industrial quantities of cast-offs. This rather favourable arrangement was pursued with enthusiasm because there was no way I could afford the quantities given to me. When I left home, I donated my coins to my father as he was in a better position to do something with them and the stamps were far more significant due to the above, but I got them all back with interest when he died 20 years ago. Indecision reigned for a short time, but knew I had to make a decision and so knowing a good friend of mine had a serious collection of halfcrowns and pennies in high grade, decided to expand my collection (which now lagged the stamps by an even wider margin) and I settled on shillings and halfpennies as denominations. At the same time I made the conscious decision not to collect low grade material without a very good reason because I liked proofs and patterns as well as currency pieces and clearly there was no point having near uniformly FDC proofs alongside uniformly worn currency pieces. Trays of legible high grade material had considerably more eye-appeal than the grotty pennies of my youth. By this time I also appreciated the question of provenance because the best pieces are frequently well documented and so the library was born. The stamps went into hibernation. About 3 years ago I became disillusioned with the denomination collections because it was proving difficult to add pieces in a suitable grade, particularly hammered halfpennies, and the fact that full flan examples are difficult to find, let alone read, made me reconsider my aims. The serried ranks of full lustre or nearly so halfpennies and shillings also began to look monotonous and so I decided to expand the sundries department of the collection and go for a completely new set of targets encompassing the entire history of British coins with an example in the name of each monarch or (arch)bishop, every denomination produced, an example in each metal used, of every minting technique, from every mint location, by all the attributed designers and with every initial mark used. This eclectic list should ensure that there is always something available to add to the collection. More than a few coins are unaffordable, but there is sufficient scope to add to the collection for many years to come as the above list gives upwards of a thousand boxes to tick. By avoiding type duplication wherever possible, it means that I should end up with a broadly representative sample of British numismatics. I guess that makes me a mad, sad eccentric.