By this I mean a coin that you got ripped of on by your own mistake. For me I got so hyped at owning this coin I decided to buy it by barely looking at it. I ended up paying 150$ for a viciously cleaned coin, that did have 150$ details but will never ever be worth that much. However I still love the coin.
When I was a beginner at collecting coins, I bought an Indian Head cent (1891) for $25 because it was "a hundred years old!!". Found out later it was barely worth a dollar.
Lol i also used to think older = more valuable, but recently i bought a 1600 year-old Roman coin for $20. My worst mistake was buying a heavily cleaned large cent for about $50 when i first started collecting because it was "over 150 year old and still really really shiney!"
When I was 14 I paid $50 for a 1723 Wood's Hibernia Halfpenny, which all these years later is worth... Approx $40.
A 1884 Eagle , that looked great , but turned out to be fake , I remember my mother telling me the color didn't look right , being young , 18 , and stupid ,almost 40 years ago , I told her it was a good coin ,she was right . rzage
Actually, I got a few. One I've told about here, and the others, haven't. Not too much money lost, but pretty ignorant on my part. First one was I bought a PR-69 CAM 1961 Washington Quarter for $20. Yep, I bought the slab, not the coin. Wasn't anywhere near cameo, lol, and was a PR67, maybe a PR68, not too sure. But I resold it for $15, so not too bad. The others were a few BU silver quarters that I bought, that actually were BU, and nice. I liked them so much, I took them out of the 2x2's, and carried them around with me in my pocket. Needless to say, they weren't close to even UNC after a few days of that. Phoenix
Got to a 350+ lot auction late.....Only had time to study a few items thoroughly. During the auction, a string of Large Cents was going for $10-$15 each. I briefly remembered they were in better shape, ran up to look at them and saw the obverses were VG-F. Bought the next two for $12 each....about to bid on a third when I turned them over and saw someone's initials DEEPLY engraved on the reverse. Two pictures popped into my head from 25 years prior....first day of 7th grade B'ball, coach says "Never let your man go baseline" and my uncle telling me "There's two sides to every coin" Still have them, and chuckle to this day.....
Don't know (can't remember) if this is my worst, but recently there was a coin that "got in my eye." HAD to have it. Cost me $400. Then went over to MFD table and he had two, both the same grade as I has just bought. He had one mark PQ, and the other was regular. The regular one was priced at $250. The PQ one was was priced at $300. Those two and the one I bought were all slabbed by PCGS MS-66. Oops! LESSON LEARNED: Shop around first. I ate the loss.
1976d quarter MS70 "evenTly" (yes, evenTly) toned slab. from SGS :rolling: came with hairs even only paid 2 bucks though. in a sedona coin shop i got a 1953 2$ bill for 10 or 20 , and at a local coin shop i got a better one as cash back along with a few silver certs.
There was the 1860 three cent piece that I bought a few weeks ago and posted on here. I'm not kicking my self so bad now, but I was then. I didn't take the time to look at it carefully and bought it for way too much $$$. Learned a big lesson there. Then there were the 8-10 early commems that I bought a few years ago. I bought them off of ebay and didn't know any better. They were all cleaned. I learned a big lesson there as well. Those were my biggest mistakes.
1853 silver 3 cent NNC AU-58 from ebay for $90. Cleaned and possibly bent and most likely net grades VF-XF. Only ngc and pcgs from now on with slabs and in the process of learning how to grade.
i have 2 variable experiences which date back to 1982 0r 83....... the first was buyingnand actual anacs certified coin..my very first cert pyrchase...before slabs. i pd 160 for an 1876 xf trade dollare.....i canme to realize later that a rim ding is damage. i was new to coins, but still ,loved it anyway. once again, more money than knowledge involved. i think i wound up selling it when i was in between jobs and needed cash...think i got $80 for it tops. the second was a lesson in strike which was actuually profitable....i purchased a 1941-s walking liberty half in what i thought was close to ms 65 (actually graded gem bu) i purchased it at the indiana state show (82 or 83) at one table becuase the strike was so nice. i went to another table and sold it for $350!!!!! i was only 23 at the time and thought i made a fortune. enough that i still remember the purchase. it was an aberration but i learned how valuable the strike and appearance can be.....thanks all for sharing your stories.....steve
Dazzeled by its initial beauty I paid £18 (then around $30, $36 today) for a hologramed silver eagle. I soon just hated it and gave it to my younger brother for nothing. Now he nor I actually have any idea where it is. Also desperate to own a Standing Liberty quarter before I left the USA I paid $118 for this...which may have been a little too much.
Here is a coin that has brought me string interest about overstrikes: 1759 2kopeks over 1755 MMD 1 kopek over 1727 5 kopeks What it did is to make me focus on understanding where the underlying image is supposed to be at as well as identifying some of the scarce overstruck coins that people never bothered to notice such as this: 1757 1 kopek overstruck on Swedish 1 ore (yes you read it right, Swedish ore)
I think I'm to cheap to have been taken in on a coin sale. As long as I can remember, I just have been to cautious. Even as a kid I was to cheap to not really look into anything for sale. I used to use the Red Book as a guide way back when it was a decent method to judge a price. This was in the 40's and 50's though. Now I just really look into any coin prior to purchasing.
About ten years ago when I first started on ebay I bought a roll of "average circulated" Barber and Standing Liberty quarters. Didn't realize "average circulated" meant they should have initials carved into them. I eventually sold them on ebay for what they were. Crappy Quarters.
Some of my best learning coins were IHC. I have several that I can use for comparisons. Live and learn.
My best learning experience was looking for a "knowledgable hands-on opinion" after being told this coin was questionable, troublesome, counterfeit, and fake, LOL... A short while ago (month or so) we had a gold dealer/collector (in town for the BH Coin Show) attend out Black Hills Coin Club meeting and after he examined the coin being offered $2,300 for it... Maybe I should have sold it then, Hmmm, :rolleyes
