When I started to swap banknotes with foreign collectors, I was only 24 y.o.  I worked as a teacher in PC courses and had a very low income. I really wanted to collect the maximum of banknotes from different countries, and the number of banknotes attracted me more than their quality. In every swap, I tried to get as many banknotes in the VF state as possible, because they were cheaper. I still keep the conditions of some deals on my PC and remember how happy I was when I was able to conclude a deal for at least $ 20-25.

Very often I was unable to make deals. Other collectors looked at my swap list and said that there was nothing of interest to them. Some swapped with me just out of politeness. That was my financial level, and that was my collector's level. I call this a BEGINNER LEVEL.

Over time I realized that I need to collect only UNC banknotes. When I started my own business (creating websites), I had more incomes. Then I set myself the task of gradually replacing all used banknotes with new ones. To be honest, some I have not been able to replace to this day. But, the exchanges became larger, I could even afford to order a complete current set from many countries. I received UNC Ukrainian banknotes from the bank and exchanged whole sets for sets of banknotes from other countries.

During this period, I began to refuse incomers, because they could not offer me something that I do not have yet. Most often this happened with collectors from common and large countries. There are many collectors with whom I have done a lot of deals in each of them. And I realized that I had reached another level of exchanges, an ADVANCED LEVEL.

In addition, there are at least two more levels of collectors:

- the DEALER’S LEVEL

- RARITIES LEVEL

Each of these 4 levels has a right to exist, and they almost never make swaps between each other. Any collector should understand this and always learn from those whose level is higher. And making deals is best and easiest with collectors of your level.

It is only important to keep respect for BEGINNER LEVEL collectors, because each of us once started with it.