Five Cents Silver Album Completed, Er, Well Almost

for sure!!
Thank you for sharing all these beautiful pictures!

Awesome collection of silver five cents! Would normally ask this question by PM but I can't because I'm a new member. Could you give me a broad idea of the cost involved in this multi-year adventure? Really looking for ball park figures here. I'm thinking of starting either a collection of silver dimes or silver five cents and I'd like to get a general idea before making my decision (knowing that grades, key dates or not, etc. will influence greatly)

Be aware that 95% of the value of the sets will be in only a few coins in the series. If you don't care about grade, you can get most of the 5 cent common dates for 5-10$.
If you are patient I bet you could put a low grade 5 cent collection together for around 1500$. That would include all of the key dates minus the 1921. The 21 would cost you at least 3-4000 dollars in low grade and that's if you could find one. There's an over-graded VG8 for 6000$ on ebay right now.

The 10 cent collection is much the same with a huge portion of the cost in a few coins. They don't have the equivalent of the 1921 but there are some very difficult coins to find. There are more key dates than the 5 cent series overall and I wouldn't be surprised if the whole set cost double or triple the cost of the 5 cent collection.
I personally do not collect 10 cent pieces besides a few that I've picked up here or there so someone might be better to give you a bottom end price for a whole set.

To answer the question about the cost of the set that I put together, coins ranged from $5.00 US to $616.00 US, most of which were purchased before the market collapsed. I found some really good deals on a few which were cherrypicked and I paid strong money for some of the scarcer pieces.

The real challenge was finding these coins in the first place. Quite a few came from scouring all sorts of coin shows, both in Canada and the U.S. A couple came from purchases made on the PCGS Message Boards BST, one was purchased at a flea market and several came from ebay. I limited myself to ebay sellers who were able to present decent photographs.

And speaking of photographs, here are the next 6 pieces for your enjoyment....

Congratulations on your set completion! I'm happy for you but happier for myself, as now there is one less collector out there to outbid me on ebay.

I do have a couple of questions. My Whitman folder has two spots for 1884 and three for 1885; but I only see pics of one 1884 and two 1885's for your Gardmaster set. How many total spots are there in your album for the silver nickel set? My Whitman has 63 spots (plus 3 more for obverse views).

Personally, I'm irritated with having to get all the various varieties to complete sets, and would gladly buy different folders that DO NOT ask for the 'wacky' coins.

Also, now that this set is finished, which sets of the other five you are working on is 'on the top' of your list; or do you work on all of them basically all at the same time?

Here's another half dozen coins photographed. It's getting down toward the end.

Here are the rest of the photos, 1911 - 1920. It has been a pleasure presenting these to you for your viewing pleasure.

By the way, if anyone has any suitable pieces to help me upgrade some of the earlier low-grade coins, please feel free to let me know.