If I Can Only Go Back To A Newbie

I'm only three months in! That being said, I've already made a couple mistakes overpaying for lower quality coins. However, that's about all I can afford now. Perhaps that's why most beginners, as I've learned from this thread, focus on quantity over quality. Getting a load of AG's for the price of one MS seems to be a good deal if you're just starting a collection like I am. Then again, like I said, I'm only three months in and still have a lot to learn. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am still a new collector, but recognize the common demand on quality coins, and have shifted my interests in that direction. I do think that it is helpful to a new collector to buy quantity. It can be helpful to be taught the lessons of not overpaying and the value of research. By owning examples of many of the different designs and denominations, it also helped me to find out what I ultimately wanted to collect.

My biggest regret is not keeping record of the coins I have acquired. Wish I had kept track of all of my purchase prices and dates at the very least. Nice to know exactly where they came from as well. A close second regret is not taking pics of the coins as I received them. It takes forever trying to photograph an entire set, obverse and reverse.

I guess my major flaw was starting either too early, or too late. I got talked into the hobby about 5 years ago when silver was quite high. I spent double what they would cost me today. :(

I am still a newbie and think I may have to start over anyway. I have become interested in several things, really just too many options out there. But I think I have narrowed down to a few items and even within those it seems difficult. The Peace dollar set seems like a nice set, somewhat small, silver and available. But then I started with getting MS63's and of course in the non keys those are affordable but in the keys that is not the case and sometimes even the AU58's look better to me so should I refocus on a set of AU's.

Yea , most newbies fall into that e-bay trap. The only way to get out of it
is to get burnt a couple of times. then you will learn fast of what to
stay away from. some sellers will word their listings that prey on newbies
to BIN or BID on their inferior coins. however e-bay recently made these sellers change some of their wording so it wouldn't look like they (SELLERS)
are trying to pull the wool over buyers eyes. still proceed with CAUTION !

Yeah I feel like I'm getting a lot better. I've actually picked up some nice BU rolls on ebay now. The biggest "scams" I'm worried about now are cleaned coins. I know a lot of sellers show the coins at angles where you won't see all the scratches on the coin. For this reason I won't even take a risk on the Morgan dollars as it seems like they are high targets for counterfeits or being cleaned without noting that in the listing. ebay really is hit or miss.. great deals to be had and a great risk of getting something that isn't as described in the listing!