My Latest Purchase

Hi folks- I'm more of a lurker and learner on this forum and been away all together with travel lately.

But I thought I'd share my latest score. My local coin shop has a bucket of world coins, $1 each, or 7 for $5. A couple of times a year I'll go in there and spend hours sorting through it in its entirety (20- 40 pounds!) and the owner will sell them for $.50 each. No bargain but I've hand selected ones I need so no real complaint.

Until the last time I went. I picked up 200 coins for $100, only to find out that 1/3 of them were ones I already had.

Yes, it is becoming too hard for me to know what I do and do not have (I collect one of any coin from any issuing governing body; e.g. Portuguese India and Euro count; I'm at about 2000 coins from 200 "countries"). It also occurred to me that I had paid $100 for about 2 lbs, which just sounded expensive.

So the following week I asked if he'd sell to me by the pound, and he offered me the whole lot for $5/pound. I took ~20 lbs for $100 (all I had). No worse than most ebay deals, no shipping charges, and, so far, a really great bunch of coins!

There is still a fair share of late 20th C. European and Mexico coins, but far more 19th C. coins that I would ever get from bulk buys on ebay (I've stopped bothering with them all together).

I'm still sorting through them- ~2100 coins, ~700 unique ones-- if I net 150 new coins out of that I'll be happy- ~$.67 each is pretty cheap when I have as many as I do.

I'll keep you posted!

Patrick