What Do You Consider A Large Collection

That's kind of situational; I'd think differently of someone who collected with bullion value as a consideration, of course, than I would an Early copper specialist.

Either way, someone who could boast of 500 "keeper" pieces in their collection, of any type, would impress me. It's a lot of effort however you get there.

I think it is very variable as others have suggested. I think it depends on what the collectors goals are.

It depends on the scarcity and value of the denomination/type they are collecting. I would say that if you decided on a type of coin that can be collected for an average of $50 a coin then 100 might be considered a decent collection. If the coins cost $5000 each and you have 10 I would say that was a bid collection. If they have little value above face then you might be looking at the thousands to have a big collection.

For me it seems to come back to a monetary value but I'm sure this is shallow. At the end of the day a collection can be small to one person who has no interest or knowledge of that coin type whilst it is huge to someone who does have the knowledge and can appreciate it.

I recall Sap said he had like 8,000 coins or so. I consider that a real big collection. Now I have 5,000 wheat cents in two big bags in the garage. I don't even count that as "5,000 coins" -- just two bags of (searched) wheat cents. My proper collection is around 950 coins at the moment, and I plan to level off at about 1,000. Quality over quantity from now on.

In this Hobby it comes down to Quality and not Quantity, after all it is The Hobby of Kings!

Glenn

As usual, depends. What if those 5,000 Pennies were all dated 09S, 10S, 11S, etc. And the Morgans were all just common, worn, dented, scratched coins. In that pile of
Cents were a roll of 1909S VDB's.
As to a large collection, that is entirely up to the individual. I don't think my collection is large, just big. And when I see some of the dealers at coin shows with several tables of coins, my collection sort of schrinks.
One dealer I know at coin shows was explaining to me that without virtually hundreds of thousands of coins in his inventory, he would feel like he needs more. Naturally he also has a coin store. He usually has 4 of more tables of coins at every show. Now that is large.
I have, for example, about 3,000+ Mercury dimes but I've met many collectors with triple that. In that mess is 12 completed Albums of them, yet is that large?
A large collection of anything is just a lot of stuff except to those doing the accumulations. If I were to add up all the coins in my collection, it would probably scare me into stopping collecting.
At one coin show everyone was talking about a sort of famous dealer there. He had several tables of Large Cents. Almost all in fantastically high grades. Not what most would say is a large or massive quantity but worth many millions anyway.
So what is large to some is average or even small to others.

That was a while ago. I'm afraid 'tis over 10,000 coins now.



I would interpret "large" simply as a quantity, not in terms of value or any other parameter. The adjective to use for a collection consisting of a small number of high-value coins is "valuable", not "large".

In my mind, for a true collector, the key thing with their collection is not really how "large", "valuable" or "complete" it is, but how much enjoyment they're getting out of it.

Some very good responses so far.

After reading over them a few times, maybe what I was really looking for would be

" what would make a collection impressive to other collectors"

I like Super Dave's idea of 500 keepers ..
of course a keeper would be different for everyone, but I think I know what he means ..



glenz1 and chasinva69 .. are saying about the say thing.

oih82w8 is also along the same line of thought .. set your collecting goal .. then keep working to make it better.

As glenzy1 stated, I base it on quality vs. quantity. I have a fairly sizeable collection but only a third of that, I would call quality.
I am constantly upgrading for much better, scarcer coins.