I Coulda, I Shoulda, But I Didn't !

In 66 when I first got interested in coins, Uncirculated Conder tokens were 50 cents to a dollar each. I didn't buy any because I didn't really know about them.

In 72 when I actively started collecting Conder tokens in Unc were $2, Mint red $3, but the reference book was virtually unobtainable and over $200 if you could find one. So I didn't buy them.

In 1992 when I started collecting the Conder tokens reprints had brought the book down to about $100, and the MS Conder tokens were now $20. I did start buying was only interested in one per county so I didn't get too many of them.

In 1997 I branched out into the ones actually issued by merchants for circulation. MS pieces were running $40.

Today there have been four more rounds of reprints of the book (which are STILL hard to get), a collectors society has formed, and low MS pieces, for common ones, are around $200.

Too many to count but here's a couple...

——- In the early 70's I passed on many $20 Saints at 70$ each.

——- Sets of large bills ($1, $5, $10 & $20) in Unc for less than 50$ in the 1960's.

——- BU "O" mint dollars (Mostly 98, 99, 00, 01, 02 and 04) in the early 60's for less than 2$ each.

(We also need a thread on the good buys we did make! )

i shoulda stuck with buying gold buffalos... coulda... shoulda... but didn't....

In the late 1990s, in a big swap, I ended up with a 1920-S $10 Indian in a PCGS 55 holder, which I valued then at $9K. Sold it a few years later at $11.5K, thought I had done pretty well.

Well D'oh.

I'd say my white whale is the 1995W silver eagle. I wished I'd had the money to have bought the anniversay gold coin set in 1995 to get that silver eagle but couldn't afford it. Even the gold coins would have netted a nice profit lol.

Then there's the 2000 cheerios sac dollar. I wish I would have tried a heck of a lot harder to get one from a box of cereal but I didn't.

October 2010. I'm going to the Izmaylovo Vernisage to (among other things) buy some coins for my collection. I have about $120 in my pocket, which my mother allowed me to spent, this one time, however I wish.

I never find the area with all the best deals, never find the courage to buy any gold or large silver, and return home with a couple of very cheap (and, in retrospect, highly overpriced) coins and about $100 in my pocket.


Six months later, I do find the courage to buy some large silver, in a high-end antique shop at the low low price of about $40 per ounce. (It was admittedly technically under spot on that particular day.)

It took several years before I so much as doubled the "large silver" part of my collection beyond that one day in April 2011.
That one day in October 2010 was still the closest I came to buying any gold.

On business trips or vacations in the States, I've spent in the past a couple of dateless Buffalo nickels that I'd picked up in junk lots back home in England. If only I'd known then about Nic-a-Date! I might have filled two holes in my collection!