Our beloved coin collecting hobby is becoming discouraging

wow, I can say lots and lots of great advice there... but I'll add my 2 cents as my situation is very very similar to yours... I have collected for many years but only in the last few years have I really had a "budget" to buy coins on a regular basis. Mostly I avoid the whole "investment" BS.. I do this for MY enjoyment and don't give a rats patootie what my kids end up doing with it when i'm gone...

Yes I tend to buy better coins now even 1-2 of those 4 digit price tag coins.
Mostly though I stick to coins in the 100 and under range... that means some beautiful MS70s and very high grade coins and for the bigger price tag coins lower grades or ... Oh no... "Details" coins...


Yes I want those big 2-4k dble eagles but a few of those worth more then my entire collection (small gold included lol) and I wouldn't feel safe keeping them in the house, so why bother, That's how I see it

even keeping to this budget, yes my collect does have considerable value now, but as i tell my woman it is NOT an investment it is a hobby, now go play with "your" pretty shiny things I have a dog, a safe, several large guns, good insurance (coin rider) and the house is unoccupied less then 10hrs a month (sometimes for several months never empty... we homebodies and unless she has a Dr's appt she seldom leaves the yard... oh and she's a better shot them i am with a handgun lol)

all in all, keeping most of my purchases in that price range means even if I do get stuck with a "fake" 100 bucks ain't gonna kill me... and if it is one of those "big" price tag coins stick with sellers i trust to know better them me . I buy what I like now and if my kids turn a profit in years to come.. good for them, I got my moneys worth out of em while i was still alive and kicking

 

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Jaelus, posted: "There are no shortcuts in this hobby. The most important skill is developing your eye to be able to spot inauthentic and problem coins. Once you can do this, your gut will immediately tell you a coin is no good, even before you can really examine it and articulate why that is.

Excellent Post. I widh you would have stopped here.

To that end, don't start by collecting [buying ?] slabbed coins.** Thinking that you know the grade and authenticity because you're buying slabbed coins is a crutch that robs you of being able to authenticate and grade for yourself. Once you don't care whether the coin is slabbed or not when you are buying, then you are ready to buy slabbed coins. Not before.

** IMO, this is the worst piece of advice [buying raw coins in the begining rather than slabs ?] a highly accomplished numismatist could possibly give to a beginning collector.

 

Why is it the worst advice? Just stating your opinion without substantiating it does no one any good.

 

The concerns expressed in the OP about counterfeits are real. Counterfeits are now appearing more often than any time I can remember during my 63 years as a collector. Still, the incidences of them appearing in certification holders supplied by the major grading services are very unusual. @Jack D. Young is doing a great service to the hobby by pointing them out, but they are not as common as you might be led to believe.

I hope that more of you will stick with the hobby and help it grow. If you attend the major shows there are more young faces there than you might have been led to believe.

We are in much better shape than the political items collectors’ hobby, which does seem to growing to extreme maturity. I attended a political buttons show over the weekend, and attendees were mostly into their retirement age. I think there are more young coin collectors on line than you might realize.

 

Well one should never enter the water until one knows how to swim! Same here you would jump in a lake if you couldn't swim....the same applies here its simple....knowledge is power....the power to make it across the lake...or know when a coin isn't correct.

Learning to swim is learned event same here ....you take the knowledge that you have learned and put it to use.
That way you dont sink...you paddle though and the same here.
Us old dogs are very lucky...we lived a time that will never be revisited. We learned what we could, passing on sometimes long boring stories...
However one must find a place in life or this hobby where one enjoys to their confort zone.
Some its the safety of buying slabs....yet learn there isnt a sure thing ...and can be taken by a well made counterfeit products.
Again the key is knowledge, and drinking in as much as one can handel.
As its a resource that will never leave you.no matter what number your age is.

 

Here is an example where the smallest amount rudimentary knowledge would lead you to avoid an obvious fake. This is a counterfeit 1916 half dollar in fake holder that is marked with the ridiculous grade of "MS-63."



I down loaded this from the PCGS site. Unfortunately the reverse is in that "WEB" format which I can't process on my computer.

If you can grade at all, you would not that this thing is not even close to MS-63 sharpness.

 

This is PART of what I was saying earlier but in this case, just looking up a number on the slab will tell us whether this is even a legitimate PCGS graded coin.


LATE EDIT: After several attempts, I did get a cert page for a 1916 WLH in MS63 with no image. https://www.pcgs.com/cert/34260431

 

see i a simple collector who has a very in your face rule if it gets my notice it's bought, no matter graded or ungraded

i'm not after status or anything like that have no use for such things, i collect what gets my notice and yeah my collection is a wide range of coins and banknotes but to me that makes it interesting

 

I am just trying to say, it would be nice with all the fakes out there that are certified, it would be great if one could look up the coin on the grading company site and visually compare the coin to a suspect offering on the secondary market.

ArizonaRareCoins on another forum pointed this out and deserves credit so I mention for pictures used here.

A 1902 S $20 Gold Coin
Fake coin in a fake PCGS holder on left and the genuine in a genuine holder on right.

BUT I am having trouble with the PCGS lookup finding the coin picture with Cert number 9042.62/82231429 ??? It would be great if ALL certified coins had an image on the cert page anyway. This one did not have a picture paid for by the submitter.
https://www.pcgs.com/cert/82231429

I guess a solution to the issue at hand would be to only buy coins that are certified, have an image on the grading company website that matches the offering and be safe.

 

For a long time I would try the CT "guess the grade" threads.
Most of the time I wouldn't post and I would be way off anyways.
Grading coins is harder than one thinks if they don't have the consistent time to dedicate to learning how to grade.

of course the half dollar MS63 I would totally avoid. But when you get to closer grades that could be I'm sure I could be fooled.

If I waited until I learned how to grade, I guess I wouldn't own any coins and relie upon "pocket change" to make me rich.

 

I heard that. I am decent at grades for most series. I can even take a decent swipe at the incuse Indians.... But I wouldn't dare try to grade a buffalo nickel or a Franklin half. I seem to have a mental block with those.

 

I want to say something about boats, life jackets, and the risk of fake life jackets, but I can't seem to put it all together.

 

If you are not going to learn how to grade coins, you are never going to "get rich from hobby." Even if you do learn how to grade, "getting rich" from coins is very hard, and you almost always have to have a long holding time.

I've been at this for many years, and have a lot of nice coins. In the end, I will probably do no better than break even. That's especially true because of the way the tax laws work. If you make money on coin, you owe tax. If you loose money you can't even offset that against your gains. The means the government also wins.

If you are not going to learn how to grade coins, then you need to deal with reputable dealers. That means you can't run around buying from "Joe Schome" on eBay, looking for cheap prices. Reputable dealers are often offer coins on eBay, but it will almost never be an instant bargain. What looks to be instant bargain often is not, unless it's a rare variety of a coin or a token or medal that everyone else missed.

If you want to learn how to grade coins, buy the grading books, look at the coins in your collection, and then look at a lot more coins. That's how I did it. I got stated in high school in the 1960s, and I'm still learning.

 

GTG threads are nice and do help in learning to grade. The problem is it’s very difficult to grade from a photo.

 

Last I heard TPGs give a net grade and leave it at that. If they still do it that way how do we know our grading is in sync with theirs? What if, for example, we give too much weight to a coin's surface and not enough to strike and TPGs are doing the same in reverse and we get the same net grade. How do we even know it's happening?

 

As I understand it, you can use hobby losses to offset hobby gains; you just can't use them to offset general income. I could be wrong, but I studied pretty carefully to make sure I was getting that right.

They really get us by refusing to adjust for inflation. If I bought a coin for $100 in 1994 and sold it for $200 today, they'd count that as a $100 capital gain, even though the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped by half.

 

Which is precisely why I will die leaving my hoard of coins to my wife to stress over.

 

Not a bad strategy, but I'm not sure whether the cost basis resets when your wife "inherits". I know it does when children inherit, but I'm not sure how that works for spouses.

 

That is a bonafied S.E.P...... (somebody else's problem)