The son of the numismatist Henry Christensen, Bill was born to collect and began as a child with toy soldiers and trains. Bill graduated from The Pingry School, in New Jersey, and Colgate University, in New York. Bill’s studies were in English and History, with a strong interest in legend and myth.

Henry Christensen was perhaps the leading numismatist in the world specializing in Spanish Colonial coins, and indeed held the first sale of doubloons from a wrecked galleon. After Bill completed his bachelor’s degree at Colgate University and had a short stint in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, he joined his father’s office and they together expanded it greatly.

Bill continued the business after his father’s death, until his retirement some years ago. Focusing his collecting passion away, but not far, from their business of coins, Bill took up his father’s collection of revenue stamps, building it to encompass all quarters of the globe, and paper currency. An anglophile at heart, he developed a fascination with Sarawak and his collections tend towards Britain and its former colonies.

While Bill’s branch of the Brooke family came to Maryland in the early 18th century, Bill liked to think of himself as a distant relative of the White Rajahs of Sarawak, and collected all manner of things associated with the Brookes and Sarawak. He visited Borneo several times.