Please help a newbie

Hello, I am new to the world of PHP and MySQL. My objective is to create a table, insert values in it and read it back. Here's the partial code to create a table from a PHP file: if (!$table_exists) { $query="CREATE TABLE contacts (id int(20) NOT NULL, name varchar(15) NOT NULL, address varchar(15),PRIMARY KEY(id) if (mysql_query($query, $con)) echo "Table contacts created"; else die('Unable to create table : '.mysql_error()); } I input the values from a HTML form. Here is the partial code. $phone = $_POST['phone']; $name = $_POST['name']; $address = $_POST['address']; $query = "INSERT INTO contacts VALUES ('$phone', '$name', '$address')"; if (mysql_query($query, $con)) echo "Values inserted"; else die('Unable to create table : '.mysql_error()); Now the problem that I am facing is that when I make my first insert, the id field shows a garbage value and not the number that I entered. Subsequent entries into the table show up just fine. It's only the first one. What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Rij