I'm Interested In European Coins. I Have A Question.

So you're saying the coins I'm interested in aren't investment quality in any way? I still want to get some, but if I'm going to lose money on them I'll make sure not to dump too much money into them.

I have to say I'm a bit confused. Doubloons? Do you mean gold 8 Escudo coins?

Because they are hardly what I'd call 'European' in that although some were minted in Spain, most were 'New World' (Mexico, Peru and Portuguese colonies) issues.

Either way, usual advice applies. Buy the best you can afford, do your homework on which issues are scarcest and buy them because you enjoy them. If you are lucky, after 10 or so years, you might make a profit when you sell. Of course, that depends on the market for such coins. Which nobody can predict for certain I'm afraid.

As for appreciation, well most coins only 'hedge against inflation' The ones that make the biggest profits tend to be top quality rarities from well-provenanced known collections. Which of course, cost quite a bit to start with.

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Pirates are cool right now, but will they still be cool in 10 years time? That's the gamble on applying coins that have a large "fashion" component of their value.

The other angle of "risk" in buying expensive "pirate coins" is that you never know when some treasure-hunters might go and dig up a shipwreck and find thousands more of the things. "Pirate coins" are probably more vulnerable to such a sudden increase in supply than other modern coins are.

Also, a large component of their value is purely in the gold content. For example, the stereotypical "pirate coin", a Peruvian 8 escudo from the early 1700s, will set you back $4000, $1000 of which is just the bullion value of the gold. The price will therefore go up and down with the gold price as much as it will with the fad and fashion of the collector market.

As for obtaining "info on appreciation", the best I can suggest is buying a couple of old second-hand 1700s Krause catalogues; you should be able to buy old ones quite cheaply.

A final word of warning: "popular" coin series (such as "pirate coins") are more prone to having counterfeits and replicas made than ordinary coins. Buy from reputable sources; you don't want to find yourself paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy a board game piece or a Disneyland replica.

I'd say that Spanish and Spanish Colonial coins should maintain their value or increase in value over time. The Spanish market is one of the biggest in Europe - you just have to see all the dealers at the big Sunday coin market on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid to believe it, and one fairly small Spanish city I know has three LCS's! There was a definite spike in collecting just before and just after the Euro came in, but my observation from visiting the country and talking to dealers and fellow collectors is that the market is still pretty solid.

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