Anyone Building A Set Discouraged By Ebay

jack - I've bought completed sets - if the price was reasonable. That doesn't stop me from building sets on my own.

Not half! Closer to ALL the fun ! That's the only reason I would ever want a complete set of anything, if I was able to hunt for the coins at shows and online. Makes it more memorable and rewarding when you know how much effort you have put into completing a set. You appreciate more!

Building the set is ALL the fun, .

If you are putting together sets from rolls and circulation, you face the daunting Law of Diminishing Returns. To some that's not a detractor...the last few can be the most rewarding.

I put the whole ASE both proof and bullion sets together within a year. Almost all are graded, some of the proofs are not, I bought them 1 or 2 at a time til the whole series was done. Now I'm just doubling or tripling up on different ones. I'm only missing the 9W proof and the 08 w/ reverse of 07. I did just buy a complete Roosevelt circulated silver dime set (1946?-1964) 48 dimes with all mint marks, for about $15 over melt. I don't know why I did It, just an impulse buy that seemed like a good deal.

I currently buy Junk Silver bags, and build Mercury and Walking Liberty sets.

If the price is right, why not buy a set on ebay? Then you just remove the ones you don't want in there, and you have a partial set..there's your fun!

I have bought partially completed sets in some cases to jump start my collection. I think it is cheaper than buying individual coins sometimes.

For my 7070 Type Set, each coin was hand selected one by one as there are just so many differences between the coins and I really enjoyed researching and acquiring each coin. But for my Lincoln set and my Roosevelt set, I bought partial collections and filled in from there.

For the Lincoln collection, I had started it when I was a kid (1970's), going through loose change. I was missing all of the keys, most of the semi-keys and quite a few of the earlier D and S mint coins. So I bought a partially complete 1909-1940 set (missing 8 coins) for around $40, a complete 1941-1959 set for $5 (yes, $5) and put together a Memorial set from rolls. Now that I had critical mass, I began going through and upgrading the set to BU/uncirculated. At this point, I am BU back to 1928, many BU back to 1909 and am about 15-20 coins (all D and S mints) to go.

For the Roosevelt set, I got a good deal on a set for right around melt and filled in the remaining few missing coins by hand.

I think it would be very difficult to nearly impossible to build either the Lincoln set or the Roosevelt set from roll searching. Those coins just aren't out there - even in circulated condition. So buying a set to jump start can make sense.

I don't see myself buying a complete set and putting on a shelf however - where's the fun in that?

I can see the thrill in building sets one coin at a time, and I'm certainly doing many sets that way, including my type set and certain series. However, I've been known to buy sets from time to time. For example, to jump start my Lincoln collection I've probably purchased from ebay two complete sets of MS memorials, one set of 1935-1958 BU wheats, a 1935-present wheat+memorial BU set, and two partial sets of 1909-1933/34 circulated coins, and I'm looking to buy more when the opportunity arises. I also got a hold of numerous 68-present mint sets and extracted cents from them (other denomination coins went into other Dansco albums for such coins).

From these purchases, I've put together an "A" set, a "B" set and a "C" set. The "A" set includes the best example of each year/mintmark from everything I've bought, and the "B" set the second best, and so on. My goal is to complete the "A" having XF or better for 1909-32 and BU red for the rest, complete the "B" set by filling all holes (minus perhaps the keys) 1909-32 and BU for the rest, and the "C" set gets hand me downs as I upgrade the "A" set, with the upgraded "A" set coin going to "B", and the upgraded "B" coin, if present, going to "C."

Now, granted this is not necessarily searching and buying every coin individually, but for each slot, it is evaluating what I've purchased and trying to build the best "A" set I can, and I can say it's been enjoyable. In addition, all of this still left me quite short of my goal for having XF+ for all 1932 and earlier, and still left me without some BU red pieces in the 30's that were in the condition I liked, so I've made indiviudal purchases to upgrade as desired in the "A" set or fill in holes in the "B" set as needed.

Not sure what I'll do with the "B" sets and "C" sets. Maybe sell them. Maybe keep them in case a child or grandchild someday has an interest, in which case those will be starter sets for them. In any event, I've still found this approach rewarding and plenty time consuming, and on a per-coin basis, much cheaper than trying to purchase one by one as I've paid closer to wholesale than retail on the large precentage of the coins. I still troll ebay trying to find really good sets of Lincolns of all years, particularly early wheats, and will pull the trigger when the price is right.

-Brian