Morgan Buying Strategy - Question

This is an interesting topic. My Morgan dollar set is in 2 Dansco albums, although I have several slabbed morgans as well. I have shifted my focus onto the $2.50 Indian Set for which I have one coin the 1914 P, but the set is manageable. The hardest coin will be the 1911D of course. Good luck with you're Morgan dollar set.

I would personally not begin an omnibus collection of Morgan dollars. That's putting all your coins in one basket, as it were. Given your $125,000 'investment fund', however, I would select from the key dollar and crown coins of the world, including Morgans, Peace, Seated Liberty, Canada, Britain, Europe, etc., etc., and get outstanding examples of as much of it as you could. As long as you enjoy it, it's still collecting. If you wanted to stay with just US coinage, there are lots of 19th-century minors to look at.

I would avoid any 20th-century US coins, and most foreign items post-1950.

The keys may drop a bit in a bubble, but they are key coins and insulated by rarity and desirability from taking the losses that the common coins would suffer.

The thing is we are in the American market and certain American coins will always be most sought after coins in USA. What I think is that as soon as you see your coins in investment terms the fun goes out of it and you might as well be buying stock or houses or anything to make a buck. People spend millions on art and antiques as investments or to show off to people to impress them. This is just not fun to me.

I'd add 1921 and 1928 $1 as options to go with the 1901, or 1904-S as well.

I don't have $125k to play with though. Otherwise I'd love such a set...

He may mean the Peace dollar 1921 and the 1928 Peace dollar. I might get a 1934-S Peace dollar in MS64. The price more than doubles in MS65 and this coin in high grades is sought after because it is scarce. Get the 1921 Peace dollar in MS65. All the Peace dollars are pretty cheap in MS64 except for the 1934-S. We could go on and on with our favorite coins.

My Morgan collection plan is a date set, except a more high quality date set if you will. All years with CCs will be a CC (1878-1885, 1889-1893). I will look to get at least one MS67, one MS66 PL, and one MS65 DMPL. Most will be mint state, except for certain years.

I'm not going to be too strict on my plan, if I see a coin I like but may not fit my plan, I'm still going to buy it. Have fun with it, like I just said, these coins will be big purchases, so don't buy the first one you see. Be patient, the perfect coin will come.

I like to look out for old holders where the coin obviously exceeds the grade that was given by the TPG, as most of the time they will be cheaper than what the coin is really worth.

I have 15 Morgans left to complete my Date/mint set. They range from the 1881CC to the 1903-S. I am going to try and buy the majority of them in AU if possible. There are quite a few that I will have to get in EF and some 93-S, and 95-S that I will get in any condition I can if they look decent. "Coins" magazine has a list of ten great and sometimes overlooked Morgans in various grades. "Coins" says that 1894 is a bargain in AU condition as is the 1895-O 1886-O, and 1897-O compared to MS grades. I have bought some very nice coins in AU50 and AU55 that look great for a fraction of the price for the same coin in MS63. I showed one of my AU Morgans to LCS owner and he was mighty impressed. I got a 1899 and 1899-S in AU and they look perfect to me. I will post them in their slabs because I bought them off ebay in slabs and I think that is where they will stay for now. Only 330,000 of the 1899 were minted and you can buy one AU for $200 and one in MS63 for just $300. The 1899-S has mintage of 2.5 million and goes for $500 in MS63. I need to read more to find out why mintage seems to not mean all that much with these coins.