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As others have stated, what you do with your money is entirely up to you, and largely depends on your personal interests, taste, and goals for your collection. But there are some general rules to follow:
- If maintaining/increasing value of your collection is important to you, then it's probably best to focus most of that income into a single major high-grade purchase.
- If set completion is a key goal, then aim for set completion and/or upgrading. That could be just one or two coins, or a whole bunch in lower grade.
- If you have no specific goal or coins in mind, then just wander the floor, and see what grabs you.
Personally, I'm a world coin collector, and take that third option to heart. When I go to coin shows, I try to encourage the dealers who bring world coins, by buying at least one coin from every dealer that has world coins to sell. I also personally prefer buying a whole bunch of coins rather than pouring all that money into a single coin, because more coins give me more joy, so I can afford to spread the money around. I know this is not the best attitude, from a return-on-investment point of view, but I am not an investor and really don't care about what future value my collection might attain. Fun > Profits.
This was almost exactly how it worked for me back when I was still going to coin shows; expect I didn't encourage the world coin dealers, because a lot of them seemed to just sell euro coins and/or NCLT crowns, neither of which was something I was particularly interested in, at least at their usual prices. (I did occasionally get some crowns if they were cheap enough...)
Maybe if most dealers just had
US coinage and nothing else, then someone who also had (for example) some commemorative 2 euro coins at $4 each, or some silver ounce NCLT at $40 each, would have been worth encouraging. I don't know what US coin shows are like and maybe it really is like that.
Other than that, though, yeah, this sounds very much like my modus operandi, back in the day. I wander the floor and see what grabs me, I try to buy a whole bunch of coins (though I'm not against spending big on a single coin if it's really good and I don't feel like I'd get a chance like that again -
the Galba denarius being a relatively recent example), and for the most part I tend to focus on joy rather than hole-filling (though the hole-filling does matter somewhat too, for the type set attempts, and the 300 country quest back when that was still a thing).
In particular, I tend to take cheap low grades (but more!) rather than expensive high grades. This had sometimes bit me in the metaphorical ass (most notably with
the 1566 1/2 öre, but there were a few other horror stories of not getting the nice coin that would have been easily worth it) and would of course mean a horrible return if I ever end up trying to sell them...
All of the above, of course, relates to specifically my Russian experience. These days I'm not going to coin shows at all, partly on account of not knowing any remotely local ones, partly because I suspect that even if I found any I'd have trouble communicating because I suck at the local national language.
So, if I had $1250 to spend, most of it would probably be spent on plane tickets to (and from) somewhere that I know would actually have a coin show in a language I understand, because otherwise there'd a good chance that in a year or two I'd find myself in a situation where the money I would have left aside to maybe visit a coin show with (if I ever find one) would be better used to supplement the next month's rent payment - which would obviously break the entire challenge.
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Posted 07/16/2023 12:51 pm
