Coin Investing Strategies

Tbone, you just changed my whole research habit. I had no idea PCGS went that in-depth with things. They have Heritage's entire archive going back to 1990. 2 Billion dollars in sales, over half of all PCGS has listed. I would guess they have all of everyone else's too.

That said, it's all numbers, no pics so you still have to schlep over to the actual auction to see the coin. But yeah, I bookmarked the living daylights out of that.

Thank you all for the great input. I love that PCGS feature thanks Tbone!

CLS12, I think they'd be legally bound to give a 1099 or something over a certain sales level, most certainly the known $10k transaction limit.

I bought a 1893S Morgan VF25 about 3 years ago for $4900. Thought if I held on to it for 20 or 30 years it should appreciate in value. So far that has not happened yet. If I tried to sell it today I would not get back what I paid. Same scenario with 1909SVDB penny.

Original poster mentioned he has time for investing strategies because he's 25. I am 26 and been collecting for eight years and have also dabbled with what might be the easy way to make money off of doing what I love. Long story short: Haven't really found any definitive answers that everyone here hasn't already brought up. Key dates and high grade rarities always seem to hold their value and appreciate, but I don't have the money to buy up multi-thousand dollar coins. Anything that you buy for less than hundreds of dollars really seems kind of like a gamble if their going to appreciate.

For example, I live in Maine and would love to get an America the Beautiful 5 oz bullion coin of Acadia National Park. I wish I had bought a dozen of them when they came out 3 years ago because now they sell for like $300 over spot. If I had gambled then then I could have made a killing now, but it would have been a gamble. Same thing with the 2001 Silver Buffalo Commemorative. Coin now retails for like $160 when the original price was $35. %450 percent return on your money in 14 years? Not a bad investment, but who could have predicted to buy those coins up 15 years ago?

And you also have plenty of examples of the inverse reaction happening like the 1950-D nickel. It was widely publicized that it was going to be a low mintage year so many people bought up high grades of these coins 60 years ago at huge premiums and never got their money back. So many high grade examples where saved and now its easy to find an MS example for under $20. I found a coin order form in an 1970 national geographic that listed a BU 1950-D for $14.50. That's like $80 today adjusting for inflation.

I would say right now the best investment you could do that kinda keeps you grounded in numismatics is bullion investing. Silver if cheap right now. Save up your money, buy the biggest quantities as you can for cash and make sure you get free shipping and the best price you can find. Silver will eventually go up again (probably when the next recession hits) and that will be the time to cash in and buy up cheap stocks and mutual funds.

Now I'll just wait for somebody to come up behind me and tell me how flawed my logic is.