Buying Full Sets Of Coins

I used to see them for sale in coin magazines and wondered who would do that. Dansco/Harco/Whitman albums complete with Gem BU or Choice BU coins. I guess there are people who collect collections.

I've never done it, however, collections seem to be less expensive than the coins individually. if you are attempting to build say a buffalo set and dont want to spend years doing it, buy a partial set and then concentrate on the keys/semi-keys. for true collectors, its the hunt and its much more satisfying filling in each hole.

i think a lot of folks today call themselves collectors but in essence, they are accumulators. they rarely know anything about the series or history of the coin.

Pryer to the rise in silver prices (silver was @ +/- 20$/oz) I used to buy albums/folders (25 & 50¢) from mom and pop ebay sellers just for stacking silver. Checked for varieties/errors than stacked. Cent albums/folders were great for rpms and some upgrades.

That sounds like fun.

Not so much full series (Lincoln Cents, Jefferson nickels, Franklin Halfs, etc), but I have bought year sets of Quarters in Mint Cellos; examples Statehood, National Parks, American Women. I have an extensive collection of US Mint Sets, but don't want to break them up to fill my albums.
And I plan to do it further for the completion of MS condition coins for those series.

Lots of people will buy such sets, with the intent of breaking the sets up, perhaps pillaging the nicest coins out of them for their own sets, and then dumping the unwanted coins back on the market. For many coin dealers, I suspect this is their bread-and-butter source of income when PM values are down. But "set-pillaging" this way is actually a disincentive for collectors who want to assemble their own sets but don't like / aren't experienced at selling, as having to go tot he trouble of selling the unwanted/duplicate coins gives those unwanted coins a negative value.

Very few collectors, I suspect, are interested in buying completed sets with the intent of keeping those sets intact for themselves. Most of the "fun" in coin collecting is doing the set-assembly yourself, rather than paying someone else to do the assembling for you.

All of which means that a "complete set" is expected to fetch less on the open market than the sum total of all the coins if sold individually.

No

If I had the extra funds or if I thought I could get it by the spouse I might. Closest was just a series of coins, like the Innovation P&D set and the ATB Quarter S Mint coins, it was cheaper to buy them as a set versus individually.