How Long Did It Take You To Find The "Key Coin(S)" In Your Set?

I find it pretty easy to find key dates for Morgan dollars. The hard part is being able to afford them in the condition I want. I have 7 to go to complete my set and all are expensive even if XF condition and I want AU. I will never get them all in AU condition so I will settle for some lessor coins if I ever want to complete the set.

Bill

A 1893-S Morgan in AU is affordable for die hard collector. People spend twice as much restoring old cars. Of course, you can drive a 93-s.

That I'd like to see.

Most people collect coins that are not particularly rare. If you want to buy a High Relief Saint and you have $35,000, you could probably find one in a few weeks. As Bill said, there are really no difficult to find Morgans, its just that they are so popular that they are expensive. A 1909-S VDB cent is a common coin, as is a 1911-D Quarter Eagle. Neither of those will take you more than a couple weeks to find in somebody's inventory or at an auction. Now if you collect Bust dimes by variety or Bust halves by Overton number, you could wait years before some of the tougher ones come on the market. Lots of Patterns are very rare and come up at auction infrequently. Some of them are not even terribly expensive, its just that there are very few collectors of them.

I just finished a Bust Dollar set in VF/XF. It took me nearly a year before a good, no problem 1798 Small Eagle with decent strike came up at auction or in dealer inventory, and last night I had my pick of three of them.