Mistakes You Have Made

A couple of years ago I went into my safe deposit box to "visit/commune" with my coins. When I was ready to leave I failed to check the floor under the desk I was working at. As a result, I'm pretty sure I lost a gold 2017 American Liberty coin. That's about $2,400 to replace nowadays. I know because I just replaced it. Ouch.

Mistake #1: Start buying coins without doing in-depth background research and making a realistic budget first.
Mistake #2: Being impatient and wanting to buy coins, even though they might look cleaned or are not up to my standards.

Not collecting pre 1932 Australian gold standard banknotes when I was able to do that, in the period of 1965 to 1975. I remember that it would be a 'no brainer' to collect them at the time, because I knew the potential was there.
That proved to be very true.

From 1975, I was paying off a mortgage.

If I had collected and kept them, they would be worth a motza now.
My problem? is that I an not an investor, but I AM a collector, so I would have kept them from then until now, with no intention of making a profit in the intervening period.

In 1992 I was in a coin shop when the owner opened a roll of Silver Eagles. Of the coins in the roll, eight had a large deep strike through in the same location on the obverse with a slight change in shape and size on each coin. They sent six to ANACS and put the other two away. When the coins came back from grading, I bought one certified and one raw example. I should have bought all eight of the coins just because they were so out of the ordinary. I've had some really nice offers on the pair, but I'm just not ready to part with them yet.

The coin that was slabbed started toning almost immediately and has developed more and more color over the years while the raw coin has remained almost white. I wonder if the other coins toned like mine, and I would love to know if the substance that caused the strike through also caused the coin to tone.

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