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 Replies: 19 / Views: 2,534 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
651 Posts |
I received my monthly issue of Coin Values and there was an article for collectors of all budget ranges including what they called those on a small budget. With rising fuel prices, utilities, inflation, etc. money has been tight for many people so I thought this was great timing for the article. The article started off with collectors on a low budget and interviews with various dealers on what they deemed good buys. What was disappointing was that they assumed a low budget collector ALWAYS has a $100 in their pocket ready to spend on coins. This may have been true a few years ago but many collectors have reduced their budgets to more like $20 to $50 on a trip to a coin shop, show or on-line auction and sometimes even less. And what about kids? There is always talk in the hobby that there are not enough young people in the hobby and almost every article in any coin magazine typically talks to coins that no way in heck a kid could afford to buy. I really shouldn't be shocked by this as the articles have to reflect items that their advertisers are selling but a continuous flow of articles about coins you CANNOT afford can really discourage a kid or make them think that their collection is worthless. Alright, I said my piece on this so let's get back to the article. As you read through the article, what you discover is that what dealers are recommending for a $100 budget is nothing except common year coins which they try to sell you on high grades as being a separator and very low grade common 1800's coins. Again nothing unique or special here for a collector that has only $20 or $30 dollars in their pocket. What about world coins you may ask? Nothing, nada, zip.it pretty much sounded like dealers were offering up ideas only on inventory that they can't normally move quickly. Needless to say the article got a little under my skin so I have some recommendations for collectors on a low budget: * Late 19th and Early 20th century coins in a grade of Very Fine (VF) - at this grade you get the best balance between coin design and wear. I personally like any coin from 1901 to 1930. * Unique Sub-varieties - Learn about a specific coin series and you'll discover over-looked varieties. Some coin series have die designs slightly modified over the series and many times these special varieties are rarely annotated by a dealer. * Cherry Picking - For just under $30 you can pickup the latest copy of the Cherrypicker's Guide that will help you search for gems in many dealer junk bins. * Roll Searching - Go to your local bank and buy a few rolls of your favorite coin and crack'em open for any hidden gems, error coins, or older coins. * World Coins - A dealer near me sells 100 different world coins for $5. Granted it's all modern material but the designs, shapes, and compositions are different. To prove this out I set out onto e-bay with a goal of not spending more than $10. I ended the search by picking up a 1901 Liberty Head Nickel in VF30 for $8.75. Most people not familiar with the series would call this a common year but its not. 1901 was not just a transitional year for the new century but also a transitional year for the reverse design of the Liberty head nickel. Prior to 1901, nickels had a reverse design what was referred to as a high leaf variety (or reverse style c). Initially in 1901 nickels were coined with this design but in late 1901 reverse dies were modified where the leaf just above the left top of the "V" almost touches, this is referred to as a low leaf variety (or reverse style ca). The coin I bought happened to be the low leaf variety so for just under $9 I now have a coin that looks good and has a unique annotation (low leaf variety) and the seller never mentioned the variety or knew this variety existed. With such a good experience for just $10, now I'm on the hunt for a 1901 high leaf variety and I think I'll stay with this low $10 target :))) Are there more affordable ideas? Probably and since my 6 year old son is into coin collecting he's always looking to stretch his $5 a week allowance for a coin purchase so any other ideas are more than welcome  Edited by Ken_3567
07/10/2008 7:26 pm
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Valued Member
United States
155 Posts |
Great post! I've seen a lot of the same kind of articles or insinuations in coin magazines and there really are tons of options out there to find nice pieces without spending a lot (to many people) of money. There's a lot of 100-250 dollar coins I'd love to have but to me thats a big purchase and not something I could ever do more than once or twice a year. I've gotten really into older foreign coins because of the amazing variety and low prices. I still for some reason like most US coins the most, maybe because I've been wanting them for so long, but when I can't afford a nice US coin it's nice to be able to pick something up thats just as interesting for a fraction of the cost. The Cherrypicker's guide is another good idea but I would even recommend books in general. It won't be the case for everyone but I like getting a good book as much as a nice coin. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
666 Posts |
Great Post...
One thing you might think about doing with your boy... Help him roll hunt. You bring home the boxes let him buy any coin from them for face value from his allowance. This way he's not in the position of having to come up with the money to buy the box in the first place.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
651 Posts |
Myst, You are absolutely correct that books are always a great buy. That's how I picked up the V nickel by owning a book on Shield/Liberty nickels. springcypress, I actually helped my son by buying his first few rolls and he simply returns and repeats the cycle from there. Its amazing if I do it at the same bank over and over they'd get mad but a cute six year old does it and the tellers love him for it. They even put aside coins for him now. Last week they gave him a 1945 two shilling coin that someone mixed in with half dollars and all they asked from him was 50 cents for it. Kid has some racket going on there |
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Valued Member
United States
155 Posts |
Note to self, when my kid grows up train them to gather coins for me =)
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Valued Member
United States
230 Posts |
Great post. I won't tell you where it is but so far my tellers have never given me a hard time about rolls. I have'nt got them setting stuff aside for me yet tho.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6326 Posts |
Great article....... And WOW !...  .your six year old son wants to use his allowance for coins !... You definately have a future collector in the making there !....  Edited by eaglefoot
07/11/2008 08:25 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
936 Posts |
You have to help young collectors, I know when I take my son with me to coins shows he is always getting free coins. It's like at work when we talk about our apprentices, if we do not train them to be the best and encourage them, who will be there to contribute to my pension when I retire? It is the same with young collectors, if we do not encourage them and help them out, who will be there to buy our stuff when we retire or go to sell our collections?
I know I started when I was young, my father encouraged me to collect (even though he collected stamps) then life takes a turn (women,school...etc) after I got married my mother brought my collection over and rekindled some fond memories. The memories I have of buying wheat rolls from the local coin shop, going through dads change and finding ones I did not have in the folder are still here, except now I pay a lot more for them rolls. I sit at the table with my children now and we spend some quality time together searching rolls. My son gets real excited when he finds an Indian, my daughter just likes stacking them or putting them in tubes (she is only 2), hopefully later on in life they will look back at this time and have some fond memories themselves!
I have thought about donating some coins but am still trying to figure out a way to make sure they go to children who would appreciate them.
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
3675 Posts |
Ken good topic. Being on a student budget, I mostly refuse to pay over 100 dollars, in fact less than 50 dollars on any coins most of the time unless it's a deal that is very difficult to miss or something that I'll never see again. That said, there are nice coins out there for really good value if you know what you are looking at. My focus area is overstrike coins and there are really rare key date out there for example a 1724 kopeck which I can assure you that it's almost impossible to find and if you did, it's easily several thousands of dollars! To give you an example of what an overstruck coin is, here is one: This is an original coin:  which is later overstruck to this:  For a mere dollar (no joke when the 1728 kopeck is easily a hundred dollars) Now here are some other interesting overstruck coins 1759 2kopeks over 1755 MMD 1 kopek over 1727 5 kopeks - I think I got this under 10 dollars  Normally double overstruck coins are quite scarce in this condition - chances are you'll never find such features if it's overstruck twice! 1757 kopek over Swedish 1 ore - probably about 30?  This coin looks like a normal kopek but if you know what you are looking for, this is NOT a common coin because the original coin is actually a Swedish coin! So far, there are no detailed studies of why and how Swedish coins got overstruck. This is quite bizarre considering that the relationship of Sweden and Russia back in those days are terrible. The reality is that while such coins are actually quite valuable, most of the time these get unnoticed because of the difficulty of interpreting them, much more on low quality images which I get from ebay. But being able to identify what it is makes it much more entertaining.  My partial coin collection http://www.omnicoin.com/collection/gxseriesMy numismatics articles and collection: http://www.gxseries.com/numis/numis_index.htmRegularly updated at least once a month. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
651 Posts |
Gx,
Long time no talk, I haven't been working the forums in awhile but it's good to hear you chime in.
You have been talking about affordable finds for some time now and you produced some great examples for this thread. Way cool pics of those over struck beauties by the way!
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
3675 Posts |
Ken, good to see you around. Hope that things are going well there! There are definately more interesting overstruck coins around the world for example China and Belgium. This is one Chinese 10 cash  which was overstruck over this Korean 5 fun coin  This Belgium 2 cents was overstruck over Dutch 1 cent   (NOT my coin - borrowed it off omnicoin user aglet) Both coins are not that expensive and surprisingly if you look extremely hard, can be obtained under 10 USD easily or even in a coin dealer's junk coin lot. The only exception is if a seller is to declare what it is which will definately increase the price. The key to it is to be able to identify what it is. Kinda like treasure hunt. It does get extreme hardcore here but the benefits are great as I take time to examine the details and appreciate history. Photography does get VERY technical and that's another challenge to take up. The list of overstruck coins goes so long that I haven't got the chance to compile a list of them - it's almost impossible to do so. That said, one famous and unique 1804 dollar coin was overstruck on a Swiss coin so overstriking has some interesting pedigree to it. Most people snub it because it makes the overall coin looks... ugly. But that's up to individual taste - I find the challenge to identify the underlying image much more entertaining. Or if it gets a bit too technical, why not get some nice silver coins such as this:   Ok I admit I'm cheating here as I bought it when silver was around 5usd/oz. But that said, I still see such coins in junk coin lots for perhaps a few dollars, no more than 5 dollars each even in such conditions. There are still some nice silver round coins but I think the objective here to get the best bargain for students like me. My partial coin collection http://www.omnicoin.com/collection/gxseriesMy numismatics articles and collection: http://www.gxseries.com/numis/numis_index.htmRegularly updated at least once a month. Edited by gxseries
07/11/2008 4:58 pm
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Rest in Peace
United States
2884 Posts |
Great thread and it certainly illustrates what has been said over and over again. Learning what to look for by doing the homework reading and learning first can go a long way to stretching your collecting dollar. Great to see the involvement within the family. This is a great hobby to share with your loved ones. I have great memories of my Father, Uncle and Grandfather helping me along when I started collecting. Mike |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
581 Posts |
Collecting becomes a lot easier if that's what you want to do - collect. I, too, am getting sick of everything costing a fortune and everything has to be a good "investment" and MS-9999 condition. How many of us collected pennies and nickels as a kid only to come back to the hobby 20, 30 or 40 years later and learn they were worth basically what they were during our childhood? Did that bug us? I don't think so. I have great memories of collecting as a kid. I'm sure I "borrowed" more than one nickel from that whitman folder to buy a pack of gum now and again...... Besides roll hunting and State Quarters, no one ever really mentions collecting just good old fashioned pocket change. Costs virtually nothing and you are building up a collection. I don't get why there has to be several rolls of coins involved before collecting modern currency becomes a possibility. If the six year old just collects memorial cents today, he'll have a book of very mysterious looking coins to pass on to his children. Who cares how much it cost or what it's worth! |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1837 Posts |
Great post Ken! Unfortunately, many coin magazines choose to ignore world coins alltogether. Here's a couple of Saudi Riyals that I cherry picked from ebay for $9.99 plus shipping:   If a collector is willing to take the time and look, there are tons of bargains to be had for under $10. Edited by snowman
07/12/2008 1:07 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
651 Posts |
Snowman,
Those are just a few dollars over melt. Nice job!
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Valued Member
United States
429 Posts |
Now the devils advocate... If you look at Coin Values you will notice it is for US coins only and that is where the main focus is. Also, the magazine seems to focus on collectors that have a little more money and more for an investment. I notice this more in the way they always have a coin they break down into the grading categories and it seems to be gold or some type of rare coin. Now on the bandwagon... I love the magazine and pick it up when I can but I do have to agree that the items they look at are way out of the hands of a normal collector. I do not remember the last time I went to the coin store and saw someone walk off the street and hand over a list of coins that would cost $100,000+. Personally I think if you look through the magazine you will notice it is not for the basic collector. All the ads are for high end coins, the supplies are for higher end pieces and displays the common person would not have and finally, the point they push graded coins more than common loose coins. I would love to open the magazine and have them do an article on how to add to your collection on a $10 visit to the coin store. There are a ton of coins out there you can do this on and they are fun and exciting. If I can walk in and out and pay a fraction of the actual price, I feel like I conquered the world that day. For example, last week I bought a complete set of LMC from 1940-1970 for $10 where almost all of the coin were MS63+ and the lowest grade was a VF (and that was only one). With this set alone I was able to exchange 17 coins into my nice set and save a ton of money. Here is a simple suggestion, maybe we all need to put our own personal information together and help out others on where to look. There are a ton of websites that most of us do NOT know about and there is always ebay to fall back on. I know it sounds bad but like others have said, if you spend a lot of time looking you can get some great deals. I know that is where I have bought most of my Large Cent collection and paid about 10-20% the actual value of my collection. Edited by penny pincher
07/14/2008 1:14 pm
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Replies: 19 / Views: 2,534 |
Posted 07/10/2008 10:14 pm
