Coin Collecting Strategy

Specialize in an area that intrigues you! Ten years and two books later, it aided me in defining my area of numismatic specialization.











Google: POTUS sgm; Eisenhower Appreciation Medal, Kennedy appreciation medal, POTUS numismatic artifact, Presidential Medal of Appreciation,

Oh you are definitely insane....... like the rest of us!

A large percentage, if not most, collectors develop a specialty once they advance into collecting maturity. I personally collect Capped Bust half dollars. I know someone who collects any toned coins. And another who like affordable US Type coins. As long as you are wise with your purchases and don't go overboard or spend too much, you will probably be fine collecting in any style you want.

Does that actually make one a "collector," or something more akin to an "accumulator?" This is something that's been debated for centuries, but it seems to me that if there's no possibility to organize what one has in a logical way (whether one actually does so is another matter), then it's not a collection.

DrDarryl - impressive! That is a clearly defined plan!

Classic_Coin - you may be right. At least to me, a collection is a grouping of similar items, as opposed to random pieces. Unless you consider a coin, any coin as part of a collection of coins. Tough call.

Thanks all for your inputs! I don't plan on changing the way I collect. As long as I'm happy then it serves my purpose. This is a great place to learn all about a large variety of coins. It is also fun to learn how others collect.

My strategy is simple. If I don't already have a coin, then I want it.
I do try to stick mostly to circulation coins though.

I'm grateful for all of your responses. I think the definition of collector is good food for thought. I should say that I started coin collecting at the age of 5 when my uncle would give me his loose change. I became an "enthusiast", when I started buying coins from the US Mint in 1986. I tend to think that those mint purchases didn't really make me a collector, because I didn't put much effort into studying the coins in that process. My career allowed me to travel the world, so I have kept a bunch of international coins and currency. But I would say my true collecting started when I became a member of this forum. I've not purchased a single ancient without first researching the coin, the symbolism, the leader and what I consider to be a quality strike. I began collecting varieties (not interested in errors for some reason), and researched the difference between doubled dies and machine doubling/die deterioration doubling. I tried to learn what the mint processes were that would cause various varieties and errors. My first variety coin was a 1972 Lincoln Cent DDO FS-101 MS66RD. I love it. I knew the doubling was some of the strongest in modern cents. I also learned that you could pick up a 1995 DDO for a lot less money and still get great doubling DDO FS-101 MS67RD. I also learned a lot about rarity and how sometimes it matters, and some times it doesn't. I purchased a 1983 PR69DCAM "no S" FS-801 dime. In the past couple of years I have purchased some classic American coins. Again, I studied. I found that I was happier with the strike of a proof coin, than a mint state. Some years and denominations, proofs are quite rare. I also found that my favorite "look" of a coin was that of a proof cameo or a DCAM/UCAM. I track not only the mintage, but the mintage at the grade for most of my coins. So I now have a 1895 PR64CAM Liberty nickel and a beautiful 1882 Seated Liberty quarter PR65CAM.

This may sound crazy (there I go again) but I wanted to do coin roll hunting as a learning exercise. I had saved bags and bags of pre-1982 Lincoln Cents. In order to understand how to develop my own process for evaluating circulated coins, I went through thousands of these coins searching for Cuds, die cracks, rpms and more. Not because I wanted to collect mint errors, but because I wanted to learn. I still get angry when I see questions asked on this forum by people who didn't even try to understand the minting process, look the coin up on VV or doubleddie.com or worse, ignore the expert advice given on this forum.

So at least for now, I plan to continue learning. I'll probably keep buying coins that may vary from time to time. As others have said, I may eventually find a niche that I focus on exclusively. But I plan on having lots of fun along the way! Thanks for all of your advice and comments.

On the subject of a "strategy", well, personally, I don't have one, so I would say you don't "need one" to be a happy or successful coin collector. I have no fixed goals or even a wantlist - I sometimes write out a wantlist to take to a coin show but I don't know why I do this because once I arrive at the show I promptly ignore the list and buy whatever I want. This also has the added benefit of avoiding what I imagine would be the frustrating experience of travelling all the way to a coin dealer or coin show and then not finding anything there that I want to buy.

On the subject of defining what is or isn't a "coin collector", I don't think we should be too proscriptive. The grandma who knows next-to-nothing about coins but puts aside anything odd or unusual they find in change is, in their own small way, a "coin collector" - and the vast majority of people living in countries wealthy enough to have spare money just lying around the house are going to be like that grandma.

So the question then becomes, how "serious" a collector are you? This is something of a continuum, rather than a binary "are you a serious collector or not". Some collectors are more serious about coins than others. The grandma in the previous paragraph may be a coin collector, but I think we'd all agree she's not very "serious" about it. Here are some things that are good, solid indicators of the "seriousness" of your collecting:
- You can point to any coin in your collection and be able to explain to either yourself, another collector, or a non-collector, exactly why that specific coin is in your collection.
- You have catalogued your collection in some fashion, recording details and statistics like when, where, who, how many, and how much. This might even allow you to point at any coin in your collection and be able to tell exactly when, where and for how much you acquired the coin.
- You happily spend considerably more than either face value or scrap metal value for a coin, and have a good general idea of the "fair market value" for coins generally and for your area of interest specifically.
- You're an active member of a coin club (or maybe even more than one, if your area has them), or are actively involved in coin forums.
- You are a numismatist. Note: "numismatist" isn't just a fancy Latin word for "coin collector" - they are two separate but often overlapping things. But you can be a coin collector without being a numismatist, and you can even be a numismatist without being a coin collector. A numismatist is all about knowledge, studying coins and the people and societies that made them. So they are likely to have a large library of books and/or a large number of numismatic websites bookmarked. They may even have written books or articles of their own. They may also have a large amount of numismatic trivia committed to memory, likely making them insufferably annoying at coin club quiz night.