Mistakes You Have Made

Never think about a possible error in judgement. For all you know you may have gotten rid of coins that were worthless. Now you'll never know so just forget it.
When I comes to coins, the only mistakes I've ever made was not getting enough of them.

Once missed out on a Belgian 1844 5 Franc, NGC AU-55 that I wanted for my collection, as I was at a family function and lost track of time. Auction ended at $45, and I've kicked myself about it ever since. Now I pay very close attention to my auction end times ;)

That's all. I remember buying my first wife a Gold Charm bracelet with charms when Gold was $35 and ounce. One of the charms was a full ounce. I sure wonder what she ever did with that.

About 14 years ago, uneducated on paper money, I spent the red seal twenty that my client gave me in payment for some work I did for her. All I knew is that there was no "Hawaii" on it so why bother. After that , note to self: save "non-green seals" and fancy serials.

Everyone has regrets on the gold. As a young fellow, I should've picked up more silver at the bank and stuck them in ammo boxes, instead of depositing my $1.40/hour paycheck in the savings account.

Quite a few years ago a was rummaging through a dealers junk box and came a across a 16-D Merc , the problem was it was bent in half about a 70 degree angle .I just barely saw the D MM . To make matters worse the Merc was in about VF condition from what I can see . I ask the dealer how much are the silver dimes . I think back then he said 75 cents each . For some stupid unknown reason I didn't buy it . I might have been able to straiten it out enough to be a VF Details coin; very flip able .

I am guilty of this too. Though sometimes the more visually appealing coin would cost twice as much, so I shrug and move on.

I am wondeirng if some of the coins I am buying this year will be cheaper in 5 years when (if?) the market cools down. Trying hard to not enter bidding wars because of this fear.

Too many times to even think about over the past 35+ years of my collecting and dealing. Some stories I've told here previously.

Letting my Indian Head cent Lincoln Cent collections sit unattended for 5 or 6 years in a storage unit in Harco Albums, where they were found swimming in green PVC goop, many pitted and damaged beyond repair.

Passing on two fantastic coins at the second big coin show I had travelled out of state to attend. A proof pattern 1836 Gobrecht dollar lightly cleaned in mid AU grade for just under $5K and a 1793 AMERI. Chain Cent in nice EF40 grade for well under $3K. Instead I bought 100's of common and semi-key date lower grade coins so my coin cases would look really full back at the local coin show where I set up at.

Selling a bunch of 1943 steel cent planchet strips, I mean a lot, like 50 feet or more of them for literally nothing. Today a few inches often brings $100 or more. They were used in many homes in Denver, CO to hold insulation to the walls, I had a friend doing asbestos abatement that found a bunch of it and gave it to me in the late 1980's.

Tossing out at least a dozen banker boxes of old magazines, auction catalogs, duplicate books I was tired of hauling around. I now see every one of them selling at $5.00 through $50.00 each, I had hundreds, I had tried to donate them to schools, libraries but had no takers so they went into a paper recycle dumpster one night during a move I was packing for.

Trading my find of an 1878-S Long Arrow B1 Reverse Morgan to Larry Briggs at the Long Beach show back in 2001. It became VAM 72 and was a new VAM variety, I did get some nice coins in trade, but nowhere near the total value for a discovery piece, and the fact I missed it wasn't quite matching up to known varieties. I paid $7.25 for it, traded for around $700 in other coins, real value? Probably 2-4 times that or more.

Passed on a 1878-P 7/8 VAM 44 in ANACS MS62DMPL because I though it was too bag marked looking on the cheek, asking prices was $1250.00 at the time. Today? Maybe $25K+ A non DPL sold last for $21K in 2007!

Traded two of the best looking Morgan DMPL New Orleans dollars I've ever seen probably easy MS66 or 67 DMPLs today (pre TPG era) for two St. Gauden double eagles, one a 1907 but still in hindsight, nowhere near the same value today, grades were only BU, Choice BU and Gem BU back then nobody really using the Sheldon numbers occasionally you might equaled MS60, MS63, MS65 but that's it, and yesterday's MS65 was more likely only a MS64 in todays thought.

Not buying and putting away more of, my now biggest interest in coins, early American colonial, American and Federal issued coinage. It was cheap and hardly anyone cared about it until the 2000's when prices went crazy. 1794 large cents could be had in quantity for $20/each your pick from full cigar boxes at some coin shows I attended, same with colonials and occasional Fugios, condor tokens, Washingtonian items, medals, etc.

Sold a gorgeous 1867 Shield nickel with rays that looked proof but was NGC graded as MS66 and deserved every bit of that grade. Sold it way too cheap but in hindsight I couldn't justify keeping it either.


Sold my Two Cent Piece collection of business strikes and proof in 66 mostly brown, no 64sm Proof, had the 1867 DDO in 64RB. Bought most of the coins for under $1K each and sold for 1/5 of what they would bring today. That was done to cover medical bills my Dad had racked up during his fight with Parkinson's.

There were plenty more mistakes, and missteps along the way to the present. But that's enough for now.

Mistakes are part of the learning process.
We have all made them.
However, what I see among the responses are regret rather than mistakes. A "mistake" is caused by a lapse in judgement based upon complete or near complete knowledge. "Regret" is simply the "I wish I had" done this or that.