Thread: Question for those who have been collecting for decades now.

I'm sure those of you that have been doing this for a long time can all think of coins that you wish you had collected. Coins that were common then but at this point would be worth a lot of money.

I'm thinking of starting a cheap collection for my 2 and half year old daughter and am hoping a couple of you could pull out your experience coupled with your crystal ball and give me some advise.

What coins are there that I can get cheap or at face value that you would predict will be very rare and valuable by the time my little girl is an adult or even as far out as retirement age?

Ike's?
Wheat or copper pennies?

I look forward to hearing your predictions. I a newbie myself, starting a halve dollar book and roll searching for silver. Getting more and more engrossed in it all the time. My little one loves helping daddy "play with money." Who knows maybe she will stay interested as she grows.

Your guess is as good as anybody else's. Obviously none of us know, or we'd be rich. 'Course the reason we're not rich is because coins make lousy, worse than lousy, investments.

You wanna do your kid a favor ? Don't even try with coins. Buy her a piece of property, and give it to her when it's paid off

Keep collecting from circulation -- that way you have very little into the collection.

As G mentioned above, coins are (in almost all circumstances) a TERRIBLE investment.

If you feel compelled to collect coins, I would recommend something that gets much of its value from the intrinsic bullion value. That, or get comfortable with the idea of your investment losing some of its value over time.

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90% Silver coins, if you can get them near current spot price. If you tell the person what you are buying them for he may be more eager to cut you a break. Advantage with many silver coins even somewhat better dates is that you can often get them for no real premium. Many people started out in coin collecting with this type of coins. Good luck to you.

I agree with Doug. But that's now what you want to hear, of course.

I don't think any coin, inexpensive and widely available today, will become very valuable years from now. So that let's out most moderns. Key dates are usually good bets. But they are not cheap. And the most expensive ones have the best potential.
Lance.

I let my little ones pick 5 from the "5 for a dollar" bin each time we go. When I go without them, I pick some anyhow! It's fun to see old British pennies, etc. They have started grading and trading after only a few months. The older one wants to "be like Dad," so I let him pick up a 90% on a rare occasion. They enjoy the stores, and some of the store keepers enjoy them. To me, this is how to get them going, other than collecting for them on the side. In which case, I like to stick as close to spot with Walking Liberty halves, Winged Liberty dimes, and Morgan/Peace dollars.

My magic eightball said the above has already answered the question. At the same time I think something easy, simple and inexpensive might help keep her interested.

Originally Posted by GDJMSP

Your guess is as good as anybody else's. Obviously none of us know, or we'd be rich. 'Course the reason we're not rich is because coins make lousy, worse than lousy, investments.

You wanna do your kid a favor ? Don't even try with coins. Buy her a piece of property, and give it to her when it's paid off

I could not agree more.

Originally Posted by lkeigwin

I don't think any coin, inexpensive and widely available today, will become very valuable years from now. So that let's out most moderns.

But, if you could go back in time to say, 1895, all of those Barber coins were just considered modern to most folks then as well, as the modern coins we have now. It's just hard to predict for certain what is going to end up being valuable in the future. As time goes on, more coins get damaged, melted, lost, rubbed to the point they look like VG coins from the 1800 and early 1900's so the MS quality modern ones today end up being worth something, etc.

I just started the coin hobby but here are a few tips I can give. The most important thing is to teach them to collect for fun. Too many times have I heard a so called collector quit a hobby, because the things they bought was not worth what they had thought it would be.
Sometimes you get lucky with what you buy and the value goes up. Take that as a bonus to the hobby. A coin could be worth a thousand dollars but if they don't enjoy the hobby that coin is worthless in their eyes.

When I started collecting seriously as an adult back in the early 70s, as opposed to my boyhood collecting of pennies and nickels, commemorative gold coins were inexpensive. I wish today that I had bought them 40 odd years ago.

The only thing I could say is don't try to find circulated wheats or 1950's nickels to save for her. If holding for a long time, only put aside BU coins, maybe go through face value coins and pick out the highest quality BU coins to hold onto. These are about the only coins you can get for "free", (face value or almost no value), that really have much chance of being valuable in the future. Once a coin in circulated, its like the other 200,000,000 of them they made that year, and will always be common.

Now, if this will pay off versus land, stocks, or other investments I am not predicting, just saying how I would go about it today if I had that notion.

Chris

There are lots of opportunities today that didn't exist when I was a kid. While there are lots of US coins minted today and in the recent past that will do very well the big opportunities are in world coins minted sinmce WW II and this especially applies to base metal coins in nice choice uncirculated condition. Many of the ones you actually see are extremely common but there are numerous issues that are scarce or rare. A lot of these have already rocketed higher in price and as time goes by you'll see far more. Look to the countries that haven't been affected yet by increases but are likely to have growing economies in the coming years. Try finding something like a 1952 Libyan 2P in chU. This is one of the exceptions that should be a good bet even in AU.

Nobody mention getting BU rolls of new coins from the bank. Someone today needs to save the rolls of current coin so in 50 years there will be choice rolls around. How about one each to start off with. 2011 1C, 5C, 10C, 25C and the dollar coin, Just think today nobody want that dollar coin but in 50 years who knows, ahhh I guess nobody will still want it. I like the Idea of just have fun with it. Thats what keeps me going.
Bob