(Photo by Douglass Huxley) Al Woodrich talks to Kevin and Doug Holbert Saturday at the Marietta Knights of Columbus during the Parkersburg Coin Club’s coin show.

From gold and silver to baseball cards and antiques, the Parkersburg Coin Club’s latest show brought together 19 collectors and dealers from across the region for a day of buying, selling and trading at the Marietta Knights of Columbus Hall.

“We sponsor this event two or three times a year, and we have dealers from our geographic area that come in and they will buy, sell and trade coins,” Myles Danver, president of the Parkersburg Coin Club said. “We had a dealer here from Tennessee, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, from all over our geographic area.”

Danver said the over 120 attendees could find a broad mix of items to view from the many vendors.

“It’s any coins or tokens or medals. Of course, nowadays you hear about gold and silver, but there’s also non-gold and silver type coins, like your modern day circulation coinage. And historical coins and medals and tokens and different things — anything small and shiny.”

In addition to coins, Danver said some dealers brought other collectibles.

(Photo by Douglass Huxley) A rare, 1779 silver dollar was on display Saturday at the Marietta Knights of Columbus during the Parkersburg Coin Club’s coin show.

“There’s paper money, and some people have antiques that they like,” he said. “Some of the guys have some other memorabilia, like stamps or baseball cards.”

Danver said the appeal of coin collecting often starts early and is deeply personal.

“A lot of us started out as kids in collecting, or maybe you got that first penny from a grandparent, or, you know, something special that got you started,” he said. “Or where you had a book that you were trying to fill each and every date and mint mark and that kind of thing.”

Kevin Holbert and his brother Doug Holbert attended the event together and said this was their first time attending a coin show. Kevin said they were there for a couple different reasons.

“I wanted to pick up a few things for my collection but I was also looking to give away one of my collections,” he said.

(Photo by Douglass Huxley) Bills, coins and more were on display Saturday at the Marietta Knights of Columbus during the Parkersburg Coin Club’s coin show.

Kevin said his collection started when his father gave him and his brother a couple of wheat pennies when they were young. He said his father had his own extensive collection and when the pair grew older, their father gave them that collection.

“Before he passed away he gave them to us and said, ‘Take them, sell them, do something good with it.’ And that was 13 years ago,” Kevin said.

He said he picked up a couple of coins to help complete a collection he was working on but he was also looking for that specific person to give away that collection.

“I was looking for that young collector,” he said. “Most of these guys are at the end of their collections – they’re here to sell and downsize – but I wanted to find that younger collector to help boost their collection.”

Kevin said he unfortunately didn’t find that young coin enthusiast but said he was going to keep looking.

As the owner of The Old Corral, Kevin said he was also there to sell some of the unique bills and coins that he collects from his business.

“I’ve got some sequential 20’s that came out of a gambling machine together. $200 of bills that line up one after the other. And then I have some star notes,” he said. “Anything that really catches my eye.”

Star notes are U.S. currency replacement bills featuring a star next to the serial number, issued when a standard bill is damaged during printing. Because it is illegal to print identical serial numbers, these “star” bills replace the errors, making them scarcer and collectible.

“You find that bill that matches up to it, and it’d be worth a lot of money,” he said.

For those interested in learning more about coins or joining the club, Danver said the Parkersburg Coin Club meets regularly.

“We meet once a month, the first Thursday of every month in Boaz, at the Boaz Lions Club at seven o’clock,” he said.

The club also maintains a website with information on upcoming shows and resources for collectors at parkersburgcoinclub.org.

“We list our shows, and there’s some other links to other dealers and other like-type groups,” he said “We try to list some of the other coin shows throughout our geographic area.”