How Nuclear Would You Go To Complete A Set?

I didn't vote since to finish a set is not to important for me. My goals are to make sets sort of fun and not much interest in just finishing one.

If they are in price range, price comfort range, I don't mint paying extra
to get the last couple coins I need to complete a set.

Where's the "buy raw" choice? If your not selling them, no sense in paying for the plastic coffin.

When I reflect on my collection, I think more often of the one that got away than the one for which I paid over list.

Been there, done that.

I would be a black powder 'damp squib'.

I would more or less agree with Sap: Get the key dates only, forget the rest. I have done that before as well, when I built a type set with the rarest dates for type.


Now older and wiser, I would put the set aside, be patient, and go onto searching for something else, with the missing items at the back of my mind.
You will surely find the more common items later, and that will feel like a nice little bonus.

How many of us, looking for some lost non numismatic item, give up patiently, only to find the missing item later, when not looking for it?

It has been a fascinating journey reading & responding to the coments from all of you, here and ATS... Much like building this set!

I posted the same query and poll at CoinTalk (CT) and CoinCommunityForum (CCF) for a total of 53 votes. If you only know one of these two sites, you're missing out on the other!

Interestingly, just under half at both CT and CCF voted to go the extra 20%, but at CT it was because of the grading fees - nobody voted for conditional rarity. At CCF it was 12 votes due to rarity and only 5 because of grading fees. Between the two sites, nine people voted for satan. CCF had a strong vote (11%) for bargains. I guess that makes CT more high-brow...


The two items I'm looking for are very definitely the key and semi-key to this part of the series [my set], one is the lowest mintage and the other has a unique characteristic. Surprisingly, the mintage of the semi-key is closer to middle of the series in terms of mintage. BUT good ones are rare, they tend to be poorly struck and worse (and why it is a semi-key despite the mintage): "this is an issue beset by problems with quality - poor strikes and bad planchets are the norm, as is later numismatic abuse."

Surely, I had no clue what I was embarking upon when I decided to collect these in XF!

It's not like I was doing a short set of - oh - 1890s Indian Heads in MS63RD. For those, I'd walk over to Rick Snow or Charmy (The Penny Lady) and spend an hour, have dozens to choose from and be done... You just don't find this peculiar series for sale in large #s, nor in high circulated grades. Culls? Sure. G/VG - 1000s. XF... not many.


During the hunt, I've shopped the small shows (20 tables @ the VFW) and the big shows... always on the lookout for the key and semi-key, in addition to the other pieces I needed. I was at ANA 2013. At ANA 2014 I talked to about 100 dealers. There was one of the key - in any grade - on the floor and the dealer wanted 950 for it. I was at PNNA in 2013 & 2014 - nothing. ANA 2015 WfoM in Portland is where I picked up the last except for these two, but of them? None.

I've had a lot of fun and luck over 2+ years assembling the set. At least one piece came from Stack's West 57th St collection - 20 tons of circulated coins are a blessing for the circulated coin collector. Yes, I have one from the Newman collection (it was one of 24 items sold for under $100 in part II of the sale).

And slowly the set came together. "Completing" the set, I finally found a nice example - of the largest mintage in the series, naturally - at WfoM last month. Although the examples I have of the key and semi-key are below my target grade. So technically I'm now looking to upgrade, from a 25 and 35 to XF.

I haunt the "Auction" houses (many of whom also sell fixed price inventory) - Stacks, Heritage, David Lawrence, Great Collections. And I've talked to pretty much all of the good people & good websites: Dr. Eugene Bruder (typecoins.com); JJ Teaparty; Gary Adkins; Steven Musil; Vic Bozarth. Glenn Holsonbake; Angel Dee's. A couple of West Coast stalwarts: Coin Exchange of Treasure Valley, Tipsico and West Coast Coins (Revick).




Why I didn't list a raw option in the poll? Because you never see anything raw anymore for sale at the decent auction houses. Even on ebay, most of what you see raw for these is whizzed "BU" or culls.

There are 755,481 US coins for sale on ebay at 9:30am on Sunday, 5Apr... There are 22 for sale of the key (3 certified) and 31 of the semi-key (9 certified, 5 details graded). By comparison, there are 136 1912S Liberty V nickels for sale [a coin with a mintage only a little bit higher than my key coin has].

I should have explicitly mentioned I was looking for certified circulated coins. It may be silly, but it's what I'm collecting them as. The price point of these two is above the often said "$200" magic point, but not much above it. Why certify the others? Think of a collection of Morgan's - you have several 1000+ coins that you would expect to be slabbed, but if you don't at least use Coin World slabs for the $30 coins, the set looks awkward.

So for candidates for my set: if I buy raw, I will send it in. I'm not worried about that, I feel I'm pretty good at grading this series in these grades, although I can get fooled by old cleanings and NGC loves to call PIDT's bent. Otherwise everything I've sent in came back +/- one grade from my expectations (except an XF45 that NGC called MS62 and one - the key - that they called AU Details-Bent).


It also prompted me to go back and revisit my original assumption as to rarity with surprising results. A couple of years ago in a work situation, I snapped "Let's get some facts and handicap ourselves with them!".... you would think I would learn...

What did I find? Certified populations in this circulated grade don't actually follow mintages all that closely. The 5 lowest mintages are 2, 9, 1, 4, 12 lowest (respectively) in certified population in this grade out of 13 items in the set... that's right, the 5th of 13 lowest in mintage is the 2nd HIGHEST in certified coins. And no, it's not 1916 anything... One of the more common dates in the series actually has the same # of certified examples in my grades as the key, despite 10x the mintage.


So...

* I learned that mintages and certification populations don't follow, at least for relatively inexpensive series.

* I learned you can analyze something to death and still not know what to do.

* I learned I should not write the "Strike It Rich Buying and Selling Coins" internet textbook.

* I learned that the joke is true:

If I had told you in 1950 that I would have a box in my pocket with access to all the world's knowledge, you wouldn't have believed me.
And if you asked me what I would do with it, I would have to answer argue with strangers and watch cat videos.

[No I can't find the citation, maybe I jumbled two together or just made it up -- "The problem with quotations on the internet is you can't be sure they are true" ---Abraham Lincoln


The 1st of the auctions ended tonight and as of 5pm I was still not decided what to do. However, no fancy PALs or two-man rule or authenticators - it only takes a few seconds to push the button...

I didn't vote either..
I agree with 'justcarl' you have to make it fun or it's no use trying to kill yourself to finish a set.