Collecting Vs. Investing And Paying A Premium

Totally agree with you Jon. "Investors" have wrecked the simple idea of collecting coins, by their insane obsession with value and future value. It may as well be a stock market these days. I'm happy to collect whatever I want for one reason only, and that's because I want it.

Agree on the pre 33 gold.

$5 gold liberty head piece is generally a nice pickup for just a little over melt. The $10 gold liberty head is darn near melt often. The LCS I go to generally has 5 - 10 pieces for me to pick from. Generally XF type shape. The upcharge to a nicer piece isn't even bad. I remember buying a $10 lib in high AU / low MS for $700 when an XF was $670. I think melt was around $660 at the time.

Do I feel bad about paying a premium for the sharp looking $10 liberty, no way. One of my favorite coins I own. I won't care if I ever sell the piece let alone recoup the $40 premium over melt, $30 premium over a lower grade coin.

I don't understand how anyone can buy the fractional gold eagles with their premiums vs the lower premium pre 1933 gold pieces though. Seems like a horrible investment for sure and I can't imagine they are more collectible than the old US gold coins. To each their own though.


As for the collecting vs investing aspect of it, I do like to make my purchases with an idea of the melt value markup and the GSR (gold to silver ratio).

Right now with the GSR over 70 I have been buying more silver coins than anything. Been picking through the foreign silver junk box and getting some nice pieces and nice variety for right around melt value. Gold seems fantastically cheap to me now though, silver is just cheaper.

If only I had more paper money to turn into coins. . . .

I agree with BCG. It's worth the extra $ to get a coin you won't regret buying because you were cheap. It's happened to me with US junk silver and I don't appreciate them as much as a silver Saudi or Egyptian coin in BU.

To the OP, custom knives and jewellery are one thing, but custom coins are harder to get into. For one, you have to be a relatively good artist to begin designing something appealing. You need to draw on past designs to know what works and what doesn't on a coin canvas. It's a lot of work, nevermind the startup money involved.

In sum, yes, it's worth paying more for something you'll continue to like for years to come. It all comes down to whether or not you'll still like it in a few years or if something else surpasses your expectations in the future. Like John the Baptist said he's only #2.

I am a collector I buy the best coin I can for each date and mint mark in an attemp to complete a series. I attempt to buy the best I can afford for a fair price(My budget is far too tight to overspend).

I do not buy coins for the purpose of reselling them and I do not plan to sell my coins. I still will pass on a coin if I think it is overpriced. For example I am looking for 1932-D Centin MS63 or better. Gary Lawrence recently had on MS63BN in a pcgs holder for just north of $70. I would not pay that for a coin that has been trending between $30 and $45 dollars for the last year or so. I would rather have the empty space in my Dansco.

Nothing.

Having said that, I have a limited budget. So it wouldn't make much sense to pay a lot for a coin if I could buy the same, or better, for less. If I did that too often I'd very soon have no reserves left for future purchases!

So I keep a very close eye on the prices paid for coins I collect. And will only pay a premium if I feel it's a.. well, premium coin!

Of course, such information can't be found in books. Even ebooks are outdated when released, print ones even more so. And even the best guide can't normally tell you whether a coin is a better than average example, as they only show what was available to the writers at the time.

You need to know your subject; what sort of coin you can see every day, which ones you might only see once a year. Or decade. And when that especially nice coin comes up .. well then, the book goes out the window!

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Any other opinions?

Here is an example. I just got this 1914 MS 63 a few weeks ago and I paid $4275. Grey sheet has it at $3700 and $3900. So I did over pay I suppose. But is hard to find these coins, although there are more on ebay and I like this one.

I've gotta go against the grain on this one. I'll start off by saying a few things. I've NEVER sold any coin I've purchased. I've OVERPAYED on plenty of coins that I've wanted without checking guides of any kind. I've been collecting for quite awhile & when I was in high school I couldn't whip out my smart phone to check values...because smart phones didn't exist. I've always considered "book" values to have the premium attached with that price. If you expect to get book value for a coin...it had better be a pristine example. Recently I purchased a PCGS MS-63 Morgan book value $60 from my LCS. I payed $46. When I submitted this coin in this season of "Guess the Price" no one guessed more than $45 until the price in the other direction was impractical.

Bottom line, if I'm paying anywhere near book... the coin must be top notch (or incredibly hard to find). Just my $0.02