Do You Sell The Stuff You're Less Interested?

I haven't ever gotten rid of a coin I owned that I didn't intent to flip when I bought it. Now I did fall in love with such a proof set but ended up selling it two months later when the puppy love faded and I saw I could get five silver halves for it haha.

Different people collect in different ways Scott. Me? I have a fixed budget.

Way back when my Dad died he left a whole bunch of coins. Now he wasn't a collector really, more an accumulator. Such as a briefcase fill of old 50 pence pieces (UK here). I kept some coins I liked and sold a few to buy ones that interested me.

Eventually I bought a couple of higher cost coins and Wifey found out. She asked how much I needed to buy a decent collection since it was my dad's money after all. I told her, I got half what I suggested and we invested the rest. A fair compromise.

Ever since I have bought coins with that seed money, plus cash family have been kind enough to give me for Christmas or my birthday.

Since no income goes on coins I have to sell 'lesser' coins to upgrade or fill gaps.

Mine will never be a big collection (I currently have 66 coins) but the quality is decent. Personally I've never seen the attraction of having piles of lesser coins, but that's me. One nice coin rather than a few OK ones is my aim. I don't know that I'm in Celticsoul's "small but superb" class, but that's the aim!

But everyone is different. That's the thing about collecting. Every now and then it's good to review what you have and how you feel about it. It's a hobby after all, so it should give you pleasure.

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In general, I will build a set to learn about the history and nuances of a particular type (Mercs, Franklins, WL's, etc.). After the set is complete, I tend to shop and sell it at one of the larger coin shows. That provides me the seed money to start my next quest. A few notable exceptions are my Morgan dollar year set, Morgan Carson City set, Indian and Lincoln Cent sets. They stay with me...

I traded a couple of duplicate Large Cents for a Morgan dollar once but have yet to sell anything.

My feelings exactly.
I have been on a silver buying spree since before the current low plateau, but have always focused on things that *appear* to have numismatic appeal beyond the fluctuating market for bullion.
As a result, I have accumulated a quantity of common duplicates, mostly higher grade Peace dollars and lots of non-USA small denomination silver, that will only be worthwhile selling when the bullion market improves.
There is only so much of this material that one person can 'rescue' from the furnaces before going broke trying.
The best options for collectible surplus in a low market seem to be either swapping, or ebay peddling. Unfortunately the latter takes too big a cut out of low profit margin items.
Also politics *does* unfortunately have a lot of influence on the value of loot. But it doesn't help the problem at hand to point fingers in one's favored direction, eh..

You guys may be waiting a long while before the price of silver goes up. In my opinion it's still too high at $16. It should realistically be trading at about 10 or 12 dollars if you take the average silver price over the last 25 years and adjust for inflation. Do I think we'll see $10 an ounce silver again? Maybe not.
Many people who've gotten into collecting in the last few years don't realize that the price of precious metals was outrageously high because of the bad economy of the last 8 years.

For me, my coin collection is like the Taklamakan Desert - when things go in there, they don't come out again. Once I decide that a coin is "part of my collection", the only reason I'll part with it is if I buy a better one to replace it with (and I almost never do that deliberately - most of my "replacements" have come about because of accidental duplication).

Yes, there are coins "in my collection" that I might consider "non-essential" or "less interesting". Some of them are even quite valuable. It doesn't matter; they are under the protection of "The Collection" and I can't bring myself to part with them.