Just To Many Directions

I came to the EXACT same conclusion about a month ago. I seperated my collection into two parts. 1 part to keep, 1 part to sell / trade.

I've had really good luck with trading / selling here on ccf. I've managed to trim off about half of the thing I set aside to get rid of.

I would ask you this question:

"If they don't mean that much to you, why are you buying a bigger safe to put them in?"

If the answer is, "because they're valuable", and that's the only answer, then can I suggest they're not really an important part of your collection. I would recommend turning their value into something equally valuable but more meaningful to you, like money, or bullion, or different coins that you actually are interested in.

If, however, your answer sounds more like, "They're my babies! I'd be heartbroken if anything happened to any of them", then I think you really aren't all that detached from them, after all.

Try this experiment. Choose a coin from your collection, at random. Now ask yourself: is there a specific reason for keeping that particular coin in your collection? For example, "It's the highest grade of that type/year/mintmark that I own", or, "My great aunt Matilda gave that coin to me when I was six", or, "It's part of this date set, or that type set, or my grading set", or whatever. If you have a good reason, excellent - it's part of the collection. If you don't have a good logical or sentimental reason why you need to keep that particular coin, if you can't even remember and/or have no record of when, where and how much you paid for the coin, or if you've never even opened the packaging it came in, then it's part of your hoard, not your collection. You won't miss it if you got rid of it.

Now repeat the experiment nine more times. What kind of percentage did you reach? Gotta keep 'em all? 90 percent? 50 percent? 10 percent? Couldn't even find one coin you really, absolutely needed to keep? The answer should give you a rough idea how much you can afford to downsize your collection by without causing too much emotional trauma.

For myself, I made the decision years ago: "No Duplicates". If I already had the country/date/mintmark/variety, then I didn't need another coin that was for all intents and purposes identical. For the duplicates I owned at the time, I put them side-by-side, picked the one I liked the best, and got rid of the rest. No regrets.

I deliberately expanded the scope of my collecting interests over 30 years ago, and that has not changed since. Every coin in my collection has it's part. Some of them would be worth thousands, and a signifanant number of them would be worth less than a dollar. All coins, ancient to modern, up to until about 1950, so long as it was actually used as a circulating coin.

Richard, one consideration for you might be that you are in a relatively unique position with your core collection. It's a small niche, lightly-specialized, and it is probably within your abilities to create something not seen before within that niche. You already have a big start on that achievement, and it would be a lasting service to numismatics in general should you be able to make it come to pass.

Few modern collectors share your "unhealthy obsession." Among them are folks like Jack Lee and the one called Tradedollarnut, and their achievements will survive them. I believe, within your niche, you have the ability to stand in that pantheon. It won't require the cubic money that the aforementioned pair threw at their specialties, but rather a level of knowledge and commitment you obviously share with them.

Go for it.

I know only some think as I do but to me coin collecting is supposed to be FUN. That is the way I look at it. FUN. I don't worry about quantity or costs. I never sell any coins and probably never will. I do give some away since to me that too is FUN.


Trivial since I've had coins locked away for well over 60 years now and there they will stay. They are mine and I like them all.

Next time I get back home the Garage sale will continue.

I seem to go though different phases in my collecting. Sometimes I'm in the buy anything mode. Then I focus on one thing for a while and then I'm back into the buy anything mode for a time. When I am buying "anything" though I just buy what interests me. When I look over my hodgepodge collection (or maybe hoard) I like all of what I see so I don't worry about it to much. How ever, I have made a point of putting new coins in their own 2x2's and labeling them with important information. Then they go in their folders or boxes. So that might help me feel like I have a collection that I have spent time with as opposed to a hoard.

My collection goes in many directions, but that helps keep my interest and enthusiasm. Anytime I start to get a little bored or burned out on one part, I can just concentrate on a different aspect for a while. Last month was upgrading my IHC's, this month my 3 from each country set, next month might be British 1900 to now, then either Canadian type set of Euro type set. Variety is the spice of coin collecting. Or I just have advanced ADOS (Attention Deficit Oh Shiny!)