Tips For New Collecters Thread Please Leave A Post Please

You know what I'm going to actually do that thanks a bunch Margaret

There is only one cardinal rule to coin collecting - everything else is optional:

Don't buy what you don't know.

The worst feeling you'll ever have is to buy a coin, only to find out it was overgraded, overpriced, or both. Even if you're only spending $10 on it, get $10 worth of coin. That means you have to learn to grade and price what you're looking for. There will always be dealers out there who would rather sell you a $2 coin for $20 than a $20 coin for $2, but there are also those who are selling $20 coins for $2. You won't know about them unless you learn the coin.

I do most of my shopping online, and I'm pretty well-versed regarding what I'm shopping for. Even so, I have a Heritage Auctions window open to see what similar coins have sold for recently, a Greysheet open from which I determine comparative rarity, CoinFacts.com to see mintages and conditional rarity, and I have a copy of Photograde always within reach to help with grading circulated coins.

I'm telling ya, this is a hobby that really punishes the unprepared.

One thing I suggest is patience..Not everything you want is going to come to you at once, even though you would like it to. Take your time and read about the things you want to buy BEFORE you buy them. I have never had another hobby where education about what you buying is so important!

Good luck!

Any time I go to the bank and get cash I always ask for half of it in coin rolls. Search the rolls for coins I want to keep then spend or cash in the rest. The best part since I've been doing this is that I have to go to the bank twice as much which means more coins to search through.

Consider the possibility that Unc. coins may no longer be the ideal grades to collect. In the 50's and 60's there were few grades. Both Brown & Dunn and Photograde stopped at AU. Anything better than an AU was just Unc. So, an EF coin may have cost $1 in 1960 and that same coin in Unc. may have cost $2. It may well have made a lot of sense in those days to "buy the best." The best was only two times the XF grade.

But now there're 11 Unc or MS grades and the best might cost you one hundred or even one thousand times the XF price. They say these grades are necessary and that "change is good." Yes indeed, it is good. It good for whomever makes the change. That is in fact why changes are made at all.

But is there a law that says we can't change the way we approach someone else's change? If side "A" of the equation is changed on us, why can't we change side "B?"

I don't see anything wrong with circulated coins. They cost a fraction of what a high grade coin cost. The MS65 coin has no more history to offer over the EF. In fact it has less to offer since it never even got out of the house.

Quality is important, but only to a point. After which, like ALL THINGS UNCHECKED, it becomes an absurdity. Look at how people pay thousands of dollars more for an MS69 that is almost impossible to tell apart from an MS68. That, IMO, is not--as they like to quip--"smart money." But money that is so stupid it should be taken down to the river and drowned.

SuperDave's post is excellent advice but I'd like to paraphrase just a little:

Don't buy what you don't like.

It may sound silly, but I've known dozens of people who started off enthusiastically only to lose interest because well-meaning "experts" convinced them to buy types that they didn't enjoy. The coins that I think are great may look ugly to you. If so don't buy them no matter what someone else tells you.

Learn patience. You don't have to have a complete set of something your first few years of collecting. There will always be another coin available next week or next month. Take the time to get examples of different coins and really LOOK at them. Sometimes even the tiny details can be interesting. Van Allen and Mallis didn't put together their book on silver dollar varieties overnight, it was the result of years of study. But it's not all studying, take the time to enjoy what you're collecting.

There are a lot of different coins out there, find the ones that YOU like the best and then begin to concentrate on those.

Best of luck.

Get your parents involved. Parents are a valuable resource. They will like the idea of sharing a hobby with you and the fact that you are SAVING money instead of spending every last cent. Never spend your collecton and they will see that it a good way for you to save money and they WILL help you out.

When I was a kid, I had no allowance, chores were just part of life. But during a visit to the local supermarket, my brother and I saw in the drawer Morgan dollar coins. The shopkeeper gave us two as change. We ran home to my parents who gave us three more dollars and we ran back and got three more from the shopkeeper. Between my brother and I, we still own those Morgan dollar coins.

PS. As we got older we did get an allowance of 5 cents a week. But we could always check through our parents change and keep any old coin for our collection with permission. Times may have changed but people haven't. Parents will help you with your hobby.