I Coulda, I Shoulda, But I Didn't !

Too many to count but here's a couple...

——- In the early 70's I passed on many $20 Saints at 70$ each.

——- Sets of large bills ($1, $5, $10 & $20) in Unc for less than 50$ in the 1960's.

——- BU "O" mint dollars (Mostly 98, 99, 00, 01, 02 and 04) in the early 60's for less than 2$ each.

(We also need a thread on the good buys we did make! )

i shoulda stuck with buying gold buffalos... coulda... shoulda... but didn't....

In the late 1990s, in a big swap, I ended up with a 1920-S $10 Indian in a PCGS 55 holder, which I valued then at $9K. Sold it a few years later at $11.5K, thought I had done pretty well.

Well D'oh.

I'd say my white whale is the 1995W silver eagle. I wished I'd had the money to have bought the anniversay gold coin set in 1995 to get that silver eagle but couldn't afford it. Even the gold coins would have netted a nice profit lol.

Then there's the 2000 cheerios sac dollar. I wish I would have tried a heck of a lot harder to get one from a box of cereal but I didn't.

October 2010. I'm going to the Izmaylovo Vernisage to (among other things) buy some coins for my collection. I have about $120 in my pocket, which my mother allowed me to spent, this one time, however I wish.

I never find the area with all the best deals, never find the courage to buy any gold or large silver, and return home with a couple of very cheap (and, in retrospect, highly overpriced) coins and about $100 in my pocket.


Six months later, I do find the courage to buy some large silver, in a high-end antique shop at the low low price of about $40 per ounce. (It was admittedly technically under spot on that particular day.)

It took several years before I so much as doubled the "large silver" part of my collection beyond that one day in April 2011.
That one day in October 2010 was still the closest I came to buying any gold.

On business trips or vacations in the States, I've spent in the past a couple of dateless Buffalo nickels that I'd picked up in junk lots back home in England. If only I'd known then about Nic-a-Date! I might have filled two holes in my collection!

@jbuck: I just recognized you're collecting since my year of birth - funny coincidence ;-)
Startet collecting around the same age as you were (by finding this and that in the streets, collecting change on holiday trips abroad, etc.)
The first "wow"-moment for me was when I was about 13, going to a big money fair in Hannover (when I was living in near town "Laatzen", maybe you know EXPO 2000, this has been right there, the first time alone, without my Dad!
My budget was maybe 100 Mark on this day (and slowly I come to the subject of this topic)...
I remember a lot of stuff that was very expensive that time and what has turned out to be almost worthless today. The fact is - back then I had no idea about what is "quality". But I have to admit that still today it's hard to say.
Maybe I should have bought East-German-Commemorative-Proofs back then...? I don't know.

Yes but back then they were just worth a dollar. No one knew about the prototype reverse. And you would have had to buy dozens and dozens of boxes at $3+ each to have a chance at getting that dollar, that was worth a dollar. Back then you could have probably advertised that you would pay $5 for one still in the original packaging and been offered a bunch of them.