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Where to Begin - Suggestions for a Better Approach to Coin Collecting
By Mike Thorne, Coins Magazine
February 07, 2008 |
How do people get started collecting coins? Probably there are as many different ways to begin as there are collectors, but all the ways undoubtedly fit into just a few categories.
For example, one thing that often creates a coin collector is the receipt of an unusual coin or two (or maybe a whole collection) from a friend or relative. Perhaps this is how you started: Your father (or grandfather or uncle or other relative) died and left you his collection/accumulation of old coins. And you were hooked.
Another possibility is that you were invited to accompany a friend to a coin show and the sight of all those unusual coins turned you on to collecting. You may have gotten started by saving each of the new state quarters or the new Presidential dollars as they've been issued.
No matter how you began, chances are good that you quickly found that the possibilities for coins to collect are virtually limitless and constrained primarily by the size of your collecting budget. That is, you might have begun with state quarters and then quickly graduated to earlier Washington quarters and then to Standing Liberty quarters and Barber quarters. Of course, from Barber quarters you might logically go on to Barber dimes and half dollars. And if you like Barber dimes, then there are Mercury dimes and Roosevelt dimes. And on it goes.
So what do these ways to start collecting have in common? One thing is that they produce a collector who's interested in a little bit of everything - a generalist rather than a specialist. And this introduces a certain degree of disorganization.
Actually, coin collecting (and other collecting as well) quite naturally lends itself to organization. If you look at albums, you will see that they are rather rigidly organized: They start with the earliest date in a series and present each date in succession, with spaces for different mint products in a consistent and predictable pattern. That is, if the coins in the series were minted at Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco, virtually all albums will have holes for the different varieties in exactly that order P, D, and S rather than P, S, and D or S, D, and P, or any other order.
Similarly, coin books that focus on individual coin series are organized in the same way as coin albums, and the same thing is true of guide books of coin values but on a grander scale. Without belaboring the point, I believe that many things within the hobby lend themselves to organization, but collectors themselves generally tend to be somewhat disorganized in their pursuit of items for their collections.
If you look at most people's collections, you'll find that even if they've focused on just a few series, they still have a bit of everything. The collector who starts by putting state quarters in an album sees a nice silver dollar and has to have it. Or he reads an advertisement for inexpensive foreign gold pieces and orders a few. He goes to a coin show and sees a nickel three-cent piece that looks so unusual that he just has to have it. And so on.
Suggestion #1: Get organized early. You could probably see this suggestion coming: It will pay dividends in the long run if you can organize your coins early rather than trying to do it when you have so many that the task appears (or is) impossible.
The reason I'm offering this suggestion is based on my experience appraising coin collections that are often little more than accumulations. That is, the collector just bought or took from circulation whatever struck his fancy at a point in time, with no attempt to rein in his enthusiasms. The result is a hodgepodge of coins with no discernible organization.
Let's assume you recognize the truth of what I'm saying and see its results in your own "collection." What should you do now?
The first thing I'll suggest is to clean out all the "outliers." These are the coins that were obtained on a whim but are almost certainly not part of any set you might ever put together.
For example, you might have purchased a few foreign coins (or perhaps these are coins you inherited that got you starting collecting in the first place) that seemed interesting at the time but not any more. You could begin your housecleaning by selling them.
In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing right now with my own collection. Back in the early to mid-1980s, I bought quite a few silver foreign coins that appealed to me at the time. They were quite inexpensive then (generally less than $10 apiece) and are still inexpensive now because they weren't particularly scarce.
It occurred to me that one way to create more room in my lock boxes was to get rid of the foreign coins, as I don't plan to try to put together sets of the series of which they are a part. I've been selling them for the past few months on eBay and have found the process entertaining.
Also, I've discovered that some of the coins bring a lot more than their current catalog values, and, consequently, a lot more than I paid for them. Best of all, the funds their sales have generated can be used to purchase much more expensive U.S. coins I'm interested in that better fit my current collecting interests.
Other outliers might include the type coins that you bought at the last coin show you attended. Unless you plan to form a type collection that would include them, they're just taking up space wherever you keep your collection.
Rather than trying to list other outliers, I'll just suggest that these are the orphan coins in your collection, the coins that are almost certainly not destined to fit into your collecting interests in the foreseeable future. Moving them out now will help you organize your holdings and free up some money to spend on coins you really want.
Next month I'll suggest additional ways you can begin to bring order to what has perhaps been a haphazard enterprise up to now.
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