Renniks Coin Album - Red

Not every collection begins with a rare coin. Most begin with a handful of ordinary ones and the sudden suspicion that they might be worth keeping.

The Renniks Coin Album is exactly the home for that beginning — a padded, leather-look album in red, gold-stamped, held together with four brass posts, made in Australia. It comes with six clear pages in mixed pocket sizes (one 63, two 42s, two 30s and a 20) with matching backing sheets, room for 225 coins in all, across the range of everyday Australian denominations. The pages are Copy Safe PVC; it is honest, entry-level storage for circulated coins, the kind you actually handle.

It is the ordinariness that Jonah is fond of. His own start, decades ago, was an album not unlike this one and a tobacco tin of change rescued from a relative's hallway drawer — nothing valuable, nothing rare, every coin worn smooth by other people's pockets. He filled the pages slowly, learned to read a date and a mintmark, and discovered the particular satisfaction of a row completing itself. The coins were worth almost nothing. The afternoons were worth a great deal. Everyone serious started somewhere unserious.

It holds 225 coins, which is a surprising number of beginnings.

A first collection deserves a proper page as much as a famous one does.