Rookie Mistakes Stories

Here's a mistake I still kick myself for.

I bought the 1995 Proof Gold Anniversary set that had the "free" 1995W Proof Silver Eagle for about $1000 in 1995. I unloaded the set within a couple of years prior to buying a home for a whopping $200 profit. Yeah, yeah, yeah....that equates to a $4000-$5000 lost opportunity had I just held onto it like I do just about everything else. Heck, I thought a 20% profit within a couple of years was "smart". DOH!

I bought 20 Regular 1999 proof sets from the Mint and 15 Silver proof sets I sold most for around the $100 mark in 2000. I was so excited I figured the 2000,s would do as well so I bought 100 Regular Proof sets and 50 Silver Proof sets Oh boy did I regret that purchase. I still have a few 2000 regular proof sets lying around in the hope the start going up in price.

I made a mistake as a young kid in the 1950's which could have had health consequences.

I had a tube full of mercury. I enjoyed pouring it over silver coins and steel pennies, when I wasn't pouring it from one of my hands to the other.

I have no idea what happened to the coins, and luckily I think I avoided health problems.

I don't think this counts, but when I was about 13 years old, I traded, to an older kid, about 25 Indian Head cents for some worthless stamps.

I took my substantial Lincoln Cent collection (no keys but probably some semi-keys) & spent it at face value for some things (whatever 13 year olds buy in 1964).

When I was about 15, I had about 15-20 Morgans & Peace dollars that I spent in a similar fashion.

Dave, Dave, Dave,

Been there done that, your a good guy Dave it happens to us all at one time or another some pay more some pay less. I did it three times there is one good thing though I just saved a bunch of money by changing to Deico.

Bruce.

Very early on in my collecting career I thought shiny was better than dull or dirty...so you can guess what I did! Next, and probably like many of us, I would "dig in" to the coins I kept(OUCH!)in old coffee cans and pull out a few hand fulls at random for some emergency purchase chasing the ice cream man down the street or something important like that. I also did not handle my coins with much care. Lastly, I would often cut individual coins out of the pliofilm packaging on mint sets to put "shiny" coins in my cardboard Whitman coin folders! Trust me, this in not a complete list!!!!Mike

When I first got into collecting, I too looked at the
PCGS "Coin Universe" Website. The prices are way inflated on here
and it has been a real nemisis when trying to buy collections
from inexperienced people who look up their coins "value" on the web because it usually pops up in a google seach along with the other nemisis, ebay.
Anyway, back to my original story. There was a guy on ebay named WRClark (who I am not saying by any means was dishonest, he was just selling his coins based on the CU website). He would advertise like this "$650 Slab Lot of Mostly Deep Frosted Proofs". His prices would start out around $100 and I thought, "WOW, I am going to built TONS of instant wealth by buying his coins". I emailed him on more than a few occasions and ended up buying $300-400 of these coins that are hyper-inflated by CU. They are modern proofs that for some reason are marked way up in value. When you go to sell them, you might be lucky to get 1/5th of that price. In any case, I don't knock this guy for selling them to me, but in some ways it is very mis-leading to someone who is new to Numismatics. He was making a buck off my
non-educated guessing. I should have asked myself right up front, "Why would a guy let $650 worth of coins go for 1/5th their value in the first place?".
In some ways, PCGS is also to blame. WHY DO THEY POST VALUES THAT ARE SO HYPER-INFLATED? I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND.

This is a question I have pondered for a long time. Is there a benefit to doing this? Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

This was an expensive lesson, but we all have done things like this at one point or another. In the end, it all comes down to one word.

GREED.

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WHY DO THEY POST VALUES THAT ARE SO HYPER-INFLATED? I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND

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PCGS does offer the PCGS Price Guide, a compiled price list of the average dealer asking prices for all significant, properly graded US rare coins

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Remember, PCGS is basically a "dealer's" TPG. Their listed prices are high for a number of reasons, all related to the interests of PCGS and their dealer-members. Also, the price guide is free. You get everything you pay for. The psychology of it is quite remarkable. If you use their price guide and find a dealer charging 10% less, boy then aren't you taking advantage of the dumb old dealer?