Liquidating my collection

I've got more 'junk' than you can shake a stick at...........I'll leave it up to heirs to decide what to do with it, but for now? I love it........it's my extravagance, and not thoroughly thought out, but ain't that what collecting is? Spur of the moment stuff? I've thought about downsizing and specializing, but it ain't in me yet........

 

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Well said @green18! I can’t figure out what I like either, so I like it ALL.

 

Oh, maybe I am partial to Peace Dollars and Quarter Eagles.

 

I’m considering the Box of 20 method to buy some nice coins that fit this pattern: I really love that coin but I’m not going to buy it because I don’t collect that series.

 

Enjoy the hunt.

 

If you want to focus, just buy one coin.

 

I like the idea of the "Box of 20" strategy, but I find it very limiting. If you practice it in a strict sense, such as @lordmarcovan , you will sell a coin when you replace it with a nicer one. Thus, your collection will always be 20 coins. These coins will have meaning, and will tend to be extremely attractive and increasingly impressive as you build the set.... but.....

How about you buy coins with the idea that it would be impossible to choose just 20 to show off?

I have friends come over and ask to see my collection, and it is actually agonizing to choose which ones to show them because they are all impressive. I narrow it down to "the most impressive few", but every time its a different few.

 

You are back!

 

Once I filled up my box of 20 I kept going ... now I have multiple boxes of 20 (or more).

 

I started coin roll hunting looking for errors, but it quickly turned into building various coin sets to give as gifts to my grand children. It seems, that not unlike myself you have collected a wonderful collection of many different coins aalong the way. Recently I sorted, and set up a table to see what all I have, and it's truly quite an amazing variety of incredible coins. I truly have some of everything. This wide variety coin collecting is awesome.

 

1st I wanna say I'm a real novice at becoming a numismatist"and anything else but here it goes
My wife and I are having our breakfast, I read the text that Coinblazer posted about his coin collection and it made us laugh because I could see myself and my wife in the same position, but is still was a lot of fun and it's interesting to do this for a legacy for our children which one day we may consider selling, but we would rather split up our collections with our children and grandchildren and make everybody happy .

 

I am new to this forum and, though I started collecting casually as a child—am now at 76 only relatively new at serious collecting. So maybe my opinion is worth little. But I collect undet several DIFFERENT sets of values. I buy some unusual new issues (like the so-far unique US reverse silver proof set) and relatively higher end Morgans, where increased value is a goal. But I am also setting up sets for my grandchildren to teach them history of varying types—hence, an example of as many coins as financially reasonable of British rulers, starting with the British Celtic tribes, the appropriate Roman rulers (esp those like Septimus Severus who were actually in country), Anglo-Saxon and Danish, then Norman to the end. I do not mind the thought of not having EVERY ruler—the cost of a Maude is likely never to be within my range, so I reduce my chances of going bonkers or broke looking for White Whales. I also am trying to illustrate 20th century Europe, including the occupation substitue coinages of the Nazis. The MAIN goal here is not so much to get them into coins per se, but to intrigue them about the history that lies behind them Finally, I have a couple of quirky topics—owls (a focus of my beloved grandfather’s collection of stuff, now spread into the following generations) and my own Mythical Beasties like dragons, basilsks, centaurs,and the like. There again I try to keep a perspective—buying every single example of every Chinese zodiac dragon would give me a big bunch of cheesy coins, along with some real aesthetic beauties. So, my advice, for what it’s worth, is to keep your perspective, as others have counselled, and don’t get pathologically obsessive about anything. There are many different reasons to buy any particular coin—I have pulled the now-obvious counterfeits out as examples of man’s veniologies and my ignorance so even my mistakes can be worth something, just as when I was lecturing about Navajo jewelry, I also displayed a few examples of “cooked” turquoise. Everyone here will, and has, tell you that only the kucky and highly disciplined few will ever make much profit so what is left is that which gives you value—in my case my grandchildren’s historical education and my personal fascination with what made earlier human beings make “real” certain counterfactual ideas like fly

 

ing horses.

 

Welcome back!

 

I like the box of 20 idea as well. Heck, I've got 10 of those with Morgan Dollars.

 

How many are ancients...

 

Most of my collection is random, impulsive buys, although I usually manage to avoid the overpriced part. I found that it makes an interesting and diverse collection that people enjoy looking at. To each their own, however.

Are you sure that you want to liquidate what you have? Is it necessary to sell them off to finance the start of the new collection? I have a personal regret that I sold off my early collection many years ago.

The closest thing, when I started back collecting again, to a "set" was trying to get one coin from each decade that a particular coin type was made. So I would have an 1859, 1863, 1879, 1884, 1895, and 1905 Indian Head cents. At that point, that "set" was complete and would move on to something else. I know that I can go back to it later on if I want to fill in the gaps.

 

I didnt read the whole thread, but i think what you describe is something alot of collectors have done over the years. Its called- cleaning up your collection. You may not wish to look at some of the cleaned silver, pitted nickel, corroded copper, and environmental damaged coins that you purchased when you first started collecting. None of us started off as experts, weve all made purchases that werent very wise. If anything, you can use this as a learning tool, sell some stuff and make some extra cash to fund a few sound purchases in the future. Its called cleaning up your collection and there is nothing wrong with doing this.
Sidenote- did i just coin a new, numismatic term? I wanna give myself a big round of applause. Add this to the numis-dictionary !!

 

...So I checked and it looks like I now have 3,268 coins here, slightly more than 38..