Hypothetical Investment Question!

I have to agree with this statement.

Well said gxseries. Well said indeed.




Those Amish are some real trend setters arn't they...

Very interesting.
Investing in classic coins or even bullion should be viewed as long term since you have to overcome the relatively high transaction cost. Your first 5% (bullion) and up to 15 % (rare key date coins)profits will go to commissions, fees, shipping/handling/insurance.
For pure investment purposes, you may be better off with a blue chip stock or index ETFs. If you want to bet against the economy, they have short and ultrashort ETFs that gain value as the market goes south. The transaction cost for those, including typical broker's fee is about 1%.
Just my opinion...

I agree with a lot of what is said above. Buy a single coin, choose it carefully and try to find it through a trustworthy source that is not an auction house because they will tack on a 12-20 percent buyer's fee. You have to recoup that buyer's fee before your investment can start to appreciate.

In the end, people that enjoy this field are collectors first, and persons looking for fast dollars here will probably not find them. Anyone that is in coins solely for investing will likely be disappointed in the end. On the other hand, my coins have held their value better than a lot of other investments in the past six months...

This thread is too long to read every post... So I might
sound like an idiot by page 3.

Investment types have come here before asking this question,
and it always seems end with the concensus that coins are
best left to collectors. There are money makers, but almost
every one of those is a 'hindsight' money maker. If the
winners could be picked out in advance, like a consistent
investment needs to be, then every coin collector would be
rich by default. Make sense? By the time something is found
to be a winner, it is like musical chairs... That coin is
going to make money for the person that happens to hold it
at that moment... Almost always by chance.

Example... How would you have known last spring to order
a gross of 2008 rev 07 ASEs? By the time they were known,
the news spread like wildfire and there was maybe week
long window for sharp folks to actively seek them. To
make things even harder... When a 'winner' pops up like
this, you rarely have the luxury of specifying that a
source like the mint send you the winner. You had only
a chance of getting a regular 08, or a 08/07 using
this example.

Just trying to invest in collectibles using mintage
or guessing alone, is far more 'miss' than hit, unless
you are planning for your great-grandkids to make the
profit. There are far better investments out there.
Leave the hobby to buying what you like and intend to
keep, win or lose. Bullion is totally different...
You can buy that on paper, and skip extra value
placed on coinage... But that's still not a winner IMO.

MtnCoinMan,
I gotcha...
When I first signed on this board, maybe a year ago,
there was a staff member of an investment guide sniffing
around the board asking questions like this. This
person also said something to the effect of 'real estate
is dead, show investors the way to coin profits'...

That is where I was coming from. You obviously get
enjoyment from the hobby. This person had designs on
putting money over my collecting interests and ruining
it for true numismatists.

No offense intended to you, as it appears you are into
the whole real estate thing... But my response was:
"Don't bring those speculators into my hobby so they
can ruin it for everyone like they did real estate!"
Something to that effect.

Please... Collect for fun, and the occasional "Wow!
that made me a few bux unexpectedly..."

Again, don't take me personally. I see your posts and
know you aren't here lurking for contrary reasons. I
also realize that my passion for certain subjects can
come off as rude, at best. I don't generally intend so.

Dave

MtnCoinMan,
It doesn't sound like you're one of the flippers here in CA. The local geniuses are now doing foreclosures.
People are still paying $750-1000/sqft in my burb...we'll see how that tracks to credit liquidity.

Thank you Iatman. Let me give a 30 second lesson in Real Estate Investing. Investment "gurus" like to use terms like "Capitalization Rate", "Gross Multiplier," RonI, RofI, etc... Let me break it down to a very simple calculation. If you can get 1% or more of the purchase price as monthly rent, 95% of the time, it is a good invesment. I say 95% of the time because sometimes you might have HOA, PT, repair costs, etc... that would require as much as a 1.5% of the purchase price for rent to make it work.

Here is an example. In 2007, my wife and I bought a house in Fort Worth, Texas for $103,000. We put 20% down. The rent was $1,050.00 a month (now $1,071.00 a month). Our monthly payment is $855.00 a month, which includes the PT and Ins. After Property Management costs, we get a check every month for $985.00. So we are making $130.00 a month on a $23,000 investment (Down Payment and closing costs). We are making 6.75% on our initial investment. When you calculate in the costs, ie. PM, depreciation, etc..., the money is essentially tax free. When we retire in about 20 years, the house will be free and clear and we will be making about $1,500 a month. Do this about 10 times, and retirement starts to look pretty good.

One of my cousin's, who is much older than me, started doing this as a teenager. Today, he makes $120,000 a month and lives next door to Celine Dion in Henderson, Nevada. He has a beach condo in Corona Del Mar, CA, and life is good.

It all starts our SMALL. My first house was a $30,000 house in San Bernardino, CA that I sold two years later for $50,000. I would be doing much better today except for one word we all know, all too well, DIVORCE.

So back to my original post. Let's say you had $5,000 and a FUN goal was to see how well you could do with it in coin investing, and you had to turn it all back in on 12/31/2009, what would you do? I am thinking a 2009 Gaudens Ultra High Relief, 3 ASE Proofs, 3 sets of the new Lincoln Proof cents, 3 10 ounce bars of silver and a few "key dates" of cents, buffs, mercs and quarter dollars. If they don't go up in value, I have some nice Christmas gifts for Christmas, 2009.