What Do You Consider A Large Collection

Helping out at a local coin shop, for over a year now, has made me think a lot about how I should be collecting.
But it is still hard to break early collecting habits.

Most collection I see come in are small in size and dollars.

It is the large collection that make me wonder about the direction I have been taking.

In the past year I have seen large bullion collection from $300,000 to $500,000.

As for coin collections, some of the larger collection I have seen are more in the $15,000 to $30,000. I spent three of four days last week sorting a collection that the shop bought for $26,000+.
It had less than 10 coins that I would like to have in my collection.

This past year I have evaluated a collection that when it sells it will be over $80,000. That collection, while massive is made up of many low grade coins .. and not many I would like for my collection.

For dollar amount, last year I saw a small collection of currency (four notes) one note sold for over $50,000

So that takes me back to Super Dave's response of
More "keepers" are what makes a collection impressive.

I think I will have to go over my collection and list what I think are real "keepers" and try to purchase more coins like those .. more often.

I keep telling myself, I am not going to start anymore sets, (I have about 35 Dansco albumns) and just buy good quality coins. For some reason that is easier said than done.

What makes a coin a "keeper" though?
The parameters must be different for everyone.
I collect circulated coins of the world, by denomination, by date, by mint. So if I come across any coin that I don't already have, then it goes into my collection, no matter what the condition. If I find a better one later, then I will replace it. I have about 5600 coins that are all different.

Steve

Interesting topic.

While quality is paramount for most things it's not always possible. I have (I'm pretty sure) the largest collection of Roman Provincial Coins of the emperor Diadumenian in the world. (hence I wrote the book :) ). The ancient city states / regions which minted his coins minted about 650 different types of which I have about 500. Most are in reasonable condition - - some are mediocre - a couple are just about recognisable - but they are the only known surviving example - hence they are a keeper and very much so.

So set in contect this is a large collection even though a lot of the other indicators of a large collection may not be met.

One thing that stands out to me that no one has yet focused on, is: How is the collection displayed?

Sure, you can have box after box after box of thousands of various all-different majors or minors or 'junk silver', or all keepers, or whatever, all neatly housed in 2x2's or plastic albums.
But to my way of thinking, that's ok but it's not a display, it is effectively just a nice dealer stock. Because that is the way most dealers display their coins.
If, however, you have a modest amount of nice coins, well displayed in commercial albums, or better, in handmade cabinets or custom albums you created yourself like some I have seen on this site, that would be much more impressive to my eye than all those 2x2's with their semi-legible handwriting and nasty staples. It means you really care about the coins you have, and not so much about the pure accumulation factor.

50 years from now, the coins that we see as worth little more than their metal content may shoot up in price. I'm hoping that is the case with the barbers. every now and than I get a few decent coins for spot.

hmmm, I dunno. These bags are about 34 lbs. each, and when I bought them the dealer said they were about 2,500 to a bag. So maybe there are more than I thought. Haven't actually counted them.

They're prolly standard 5000 count bags. 34x147=4998