The Naked Collector - A Minor Rant

In theory. Just as reading the book first would be a good idea. But in real life it just doesn't seem to work like that!

Plus, I suspect we all make mistakes with our collecting. Particularly those of us who buy our coins. But I think we need to make those mistakes to learn. And maybe better to do it early! (I am still trying to get rid of the last few coins I bought for too much money when I first started 10 years ago!)

Books, loups, scales etc are all fine, but until you actually get your hands on a coin (who knew how big and heavy a silver dollar was before they started!?) it's all theory.

So yes, I'm a big fan of plenty of reference literature. A set of digital scales is important for me, plus a lens (I have a couple of eye glasses and find really I don't need anything over 5x, though mostly 3x is adequate). The camera is handy to keep records and for images to post online, but it's just a basic point-and-shoot with macro.

But I wouldn't want to put anyone off starting collecting because they don't have this or that.

The real necessities? Curiosity about coins and a bit of passion. Plus it helps to have a few other similarly interested folk in a coin club or online like here.

The rest can be added later IMHO.

I'm sorry, but the OP comes across as incredibly pretentious, like if you don't have any use everything on that list, you aren't a real collector. I don't have most of the things on that list but I think I'm doing just fine as a collector. I don't collect any high end stuff that I'm worried about being fake, and I don't sell any of my coins online, so I don't see the need for most of that stuff for me personally.

I got all that except for gloves. The one time I tried using them I dropped the coin. I handle them much better with my naked fingers.

If I could put them in order: references, tubes or albums, light, loupe, and scale (not really that important).

I don't find that calipers are necessary. I've never had to measure my coins for any reason, but I do have one by Mitutoyo: go big or go home. 20cm metric oh yeah baby! And NOT digital. If your eyes are that bad get yourself a microscope.

Best EDC: the loupe - best tool ever. Recently I've had the idea to buy a new one, this time with a LED light for when I'm on the road. Even at coin shows you can stare at a coin and not notice little subtle hairlines that would otherwise disqualify a coin from a collection. Last coin show I went to I bought a sweet toned nickel (1927) that I put at EF, very very close to AU. Just now 2 months later I noticed that it's cleaned! Hairlines all over the place! Be careful with EF and AU coins, they are so tricky! So now I want to carry an LED light as a second light source in case I'm not convinced. The reason I didn't have one before is that you just get used to seeing everything in the same light and certain things go over your head because the look different under better light sources like the SUN. Best home tool, then, is a window facing North.

I have all the tools mentioned.. my scale goes to .1g
I actually bought a 50 pack of white cotton gloves off the internet.
I use them when handling silver coins because I don't want to take the chance of finger oil being permanently attached to the coin.
I have a Red Book and a blue book and bought the CoinWorld guide to grading "Making the Grade" for 9.00 incl. shipping it was a great deal.

I still know so little about coins in the grand scheme of things. All my foreign coins (which have all been gimmies), I look up online to find the K number. I couldn't afford the world coin books, they are so expensive.

For coin collecting is a replacement hobby from stamps, and to be honest, there is more long term value in coins then there is in stamps.
So I enjoy cataloging my coins, I have software from EZCoin that I use to keep track of everything. It relaxes me. I am not into the coin albums so much as they are so expensive, and I learned that lesson as a stamp collector. You can spend thousands on "supplies and albums" very easily. For example I looked into buying the extended Kennedy album. It has two pages and cost 25.00. So I just decided to get a 3 ring binder, some flips and some coin pocket pages (the stiff ones). I can keep all my new Kennedys in that. Same with all my year sets... Pennies have their own section, then nickels dimes and quarters... after 1980, each years worth of coins are just kept together. Except for the silver proofs which I keep in the OGP along with all proof sets from 1959 on down. My friends tell me my 1953 proof set is worth much more in the OGP then breaking it out.

So, you buy what you need to buy when you need to buy it. I wish I had a better photo setup, I like showing you guys coins I get and asking opinions. But I can't or won't buy a 1000.00 camera.

As for Safes, I think that if your collection is worth more then a couple of hundred bucks, you should have a safe to keep them in. Even if just for fire protection, it would be awful if all that hard work were lost in a fire. Plus, you can get a really good Sentry fire/waterproof safe from Walmart for less then 120.00, talking about the half height safes.. like 2cf size. They are very heavy and some you can bolt to the floor to keep a couple of guys from carrying it out. (one person can't lift it, too heavy and bulky).

Yep! This is supposed to be a hobby, but if someone lets the hobby stress them out, then I guess that's their way of engaging in it.

Not necessarily supply related, but I think everyone should clean a couple coins in their first month so they can see why it's a horrible idea and never be tempted again. I know I learned a lot from my recent failed coin cleaning attempt. Luckily I don't own anything very valuable so I viewed it more as an experiment. I spend $10 in supplies and 4 hours turning a $15 dirty large cent into a $5 ugly off-colored one. Even my kids said, "what did you do to that coin!?!" Made me laugh at my own stupidity. My acid bath 2010 quarter experiment looks like a strange aluminum copy of a quarter now, too. Pretty funny I thought I was smarter than 90 sites on the internet saying DON'T CLEAN COINS YOU MORON!!.

For a beginner I would scale it back to a magnifier and a basic reference. Some storage supplies would be nice as well. You can go a long way with just those.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come off as some sort of uber rich elitist, that's certainy not my style (or reality). Take out the digital camera (the least essential item on that list) and you're talking about an investment of less (probably well less) than a c-note, so I don't think I'm suggesting anything beyond most people's means, coin collecting being a hobby that presumes some disposable income in any case.

Somebody made the point that there are plenty of ways to collect, and I get that. If the hobby for you is roll searching, or filling a Dansco album, buying only certified coins, well, then I concede maybe you don't need any of these things. But here's where I'm coming from. How many times here do we see that the first purchase a person is contemplating involves spending hundreds of dollars on a "rare" Morgan offered online? That's an approach to collecting that's essentially assbackwards (pardon my language, probably offending someone again) and fraught with peril. So I'll stand by my list, albeit with the following qualification: if what you're doing is going to involve any of the elements of authenticating, evaluating, or grading, this is the stuff you ought to have. If you want to beat me up over my conviction in this regard, so be it. I'm a big boy and can take it.

With respect to other responses here:

A halogen lamp is recommended because it allows you to see hairline scratches that betray a coin's having been cleaned or improperly packaged. Someone else suggested direct sunlight, which also works for that purpose.

I agree with the comment that gloves, which I feel compelled to use occasionally, mostly only result in my dropping the coin. I've taken to instead religiously washing my hands before handing unencapsulated coins, to get the secretions off your fingertips that will eventually mar a coin, even the edges.

Online resources were brought up, but I'm not certain they, while convenient, always totally replicate what some of the better books can teach you. Of course, one of the best online resources is this forum, and there's knowledge and advice shared gratis here that's not in any book.

Storage arrangements have been mentioned in passing. You probbly should have a scheme for keeping whatever you collect protected and organized. Some folks just leave everything in the 2x2's they came in and put them in a shoebox, and I guess that's okay as far as it goes, but there really are better options.