"In Way Over Your Head!"

When I first started collecting, I bought 500 "unsearched" Wheat cents from the T.V. Show "The Coin Vault." Price: $99.00 + shipping. Couple of weeks later, visited a coin shop for the first time ever. They had 1000 coin Wheat cent bags for sale. Price: $35.00. I'm sure they were searched too, but still. Learned a valuable lesson fast, hard and early. Painful then. Can only laugh now and shake my head.

Mine was the first Morgan dollar I ever purchased. It was a BU 1921. Labeled as "Rare Silver Dollar" I willing paid the $16 asking price thinking I had just hit the big time. I had also learned that there was such a thing called a Red Book. Bugged the wife until she decided to go with me on the 45 minute drive to the closest real town so I could get one. Opened up to find out that I had just paid $16 for a $10 coin. Man I was disappointed. Wish I had been really stupid and bought all 10 of them that the lady had.

sure my wife always keeps my wallet very light. Even my bank account might run to a minimum balance. But it is very tough for married men to support their coin collection. I wish to congratulate all those great heritage warriors who collect collect coins even after being underestimated by their wife.

warm wishes.

I meant to say nothing has dented my wallet more, but I think you all got it.

On the coin front, I did tell a friend I'd buy his raw, cleaned, VF details, 1856-S $3 gold whenever he wanted to sell. When he was ready, I was broke and had to scramble to sell some stuff to come up with the cash. Painful at the time, but I'm glad I have any undamaged (cleaning aside) $3 gold for $400.

Commems only go up when promoted, otherwise here's very little collector interest.

70s flashback: A friend of mine was a vest pocket dealer, hitting as many as fives shows on a weekend, buying and selling mainly with dealers.

He sold a wannabe investor $30k bid in commems for $21k, because he knew the market was headed south. Three months later, wannabe asked to sell them back, and was offered $12k. The bid had dropped to $20k.

"But what about my profit?" wannabe asked. (!)

Look, I sold to you at a 30% discount, and just offered you 40% back, and bid has dropped a third since you bought them. Who said you were going to make a profit?

I am actually in a position right now. I have a guy who actually introduced himself to my wife whiel she was at a coin auction (I was on a temporary duty with the Air Force). She had a list of the auction bill and my top dollar for each item (mainly mint and proof sets). The guy Asked her what she was doing bidding on coins and she exaplined the situation above. He then gave my wife his number and told her to have me call him. After I got back I gave the guy a ring and this was his story, "I'm 50 years old, My grandfather collected, My father was buying silver coins like a mad man when they stopped minting them, and I also collected jsut a little. My mother has been telling me to not end up like her husband (his father), dead with a bunch of coins. So I have a safety deposit box that will probably take a good part of 4 hours to go through."
I have not been able to get to where he is to look at it because he is in no rush to sell it and I don;t want to go up there and only have $6000 for a potnential $20k collection. I don;t want to buy a portion and have him get wide eyed and sell it elsewhere, but I also don;t want to put it off too long.