Impulse buying of problems is what keeps most collectors too poor to go to an ANA Convention or a regional or state show and buy real items with real value. A coin with extremely fine details net graded to very fine because of problems is not an extremely fine coin. It may not even be very fine. It is a problem coin, no matter what the price. Some collectors expect a kind of transcendental gestalt -- the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- to give superior value to an inferior inventory. A thousand problems do not make an admirable collection. If they make you happy, that is fine. Satisfying yourself is the core of collecting. However, do not imagine that you or your heirs will sell these later for a great profit, unless, of course, you find someone else with your desire for other people's problems. I keep a special savings account for conventions. It starts with an empty quart jar in my closet into which I toss my cents at the end of the day. I have another container just for dimes. (Nickels are special and are set aside for a different purpose entirely. Quarters I spend for parking meters, buses and gum.) When the containers are full, they go into the savings account. It is a barebones pass book with no ATM card. When we lived in Albuquerque, I planned to go to the ANA in Phoenix, but we moved to Traverse City, so I looked forward to Milwaukee... and that did not happen either. We thought we were moving to Portland, but we did not. And I will not be in Los Angeles. Life goes on. I do not have to buy something to be happy and there is nothing so unique or rare that it will not be at market later. Meanwhile, I have a passbook earning pitiful interest but still not being spent, either. When I do make a show, I will have the freeedom to pick and choose according to my tastes -- and the discipline not to buy at all. I highly recommend Benjamin Franklin's "The Way to Wealth." Our publicly-financed schools face serious competition only from another group of altruists. Max Weber quoted long passages from Franklin in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism. The capitalist ethic of Adam Smith and Benjamin Frankin has been lost. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie would not recognize the products of our MBA programs: looting the company and taking a golden parachute is the communist idea of capitalism. That translates to our hobby when those of us who buy and sell money for fun fall into anti-capitalist thinking because we have huge blind spots in our knowledge base. We don't know any better because we spent our childhoods in schools where we sat down, shut up and did as we were told. Ideally, we would have been standing behind a counter waiting on customers. Or working in a factory cleaning tools. eBay is problematic at best. I understand that truly reputable dealers actually have sales presence there. However, from the fact that naming hides rather than identifies, to the many ways to tilt and skew feedback ratings, and considering all the problems in between, eBay is a barrier, not a venue. An auction is many buyers competing for an item. Conversely on the bourse floor, you have many dealers competing for your money. A coin show is a better bourse. Numismatic conventions do indeed have auctions. At these events, you will find many dealers, few collectors. It is very controlled by its nature. I have seen dealers apparently with motivated customers behind them try to run each other to the wall with bidding going far beyond expectations, but such exceptions are the stuff we talk about years later. Finally, the hobby is about the stuff, the coins, the banknotes, and all that. Mostly, I write. As you can tell, I am not much of a collector. However, in order to write, I do need to see and touch the material, to come to know it first hand. I will have an article in The Celator about the fairs of medieval Champagne. For that, I bought the deniers of the time and place. But from my point of view, that is tangential. And I started the project about 18 months before I wrote the article, buying not just the coins, but the books and articles that give them true, historical value.
Mike - Let us not forget that problem coins abound at coins shows and conventions as well. But I do understand your sentiment and wholeheartedly agree with it :thumb:
Impulse buying doesn't keep me away from the coin shows, it the 4 hour drive there and 4 hour drive back. It would cost me over $100 just to drive to the nearest coin show. Plus I would have wasted over 8 hours of my day just to go look. I have never been to a coin show and I don't plan of going anytime soon unless I am already in the area. I have another accound just for my coin fund and I never spend or even look at coins unless I have the money in there to back up my purchase. I disagree!! I have bought all of my coins from eBay, Teletrade or Heritage and I have never had any problems. As long as you are an educated buyer you wont have a problem. I also don't care if I can sell my coins for a profit later as I collect what I like and that is all that matters!!
I agree! The way I look at it is I can spend $50 for a decent night out or I can spend $50 on a decent coin and stay in. I have fun either way but all I have to show for a night of fun, is memories but if I stay in, I have a coin to show for it. :thumb: And providing the coin is authentic and I didn't way over pay for it, I end up a winner. However, there are a few things that no amount of money can make up for, like the experience of collecting, increasing my knowledge base, and meeting some wonderful peeps! hya: I plan on going to a private numismatic party in September and that weekend will cost me close to a grand but it will be a grand well spent, because of the peeps I will finally get to meet. :bow: Ribbit Ps: I will be taking my camera to the party and will post a thread when I get back and include pics. :secret: Hopefully the peeps at the party will be bringing a lot of coins with them and the pics will be of coins, more so than pics of the actual party. But don't be surprised if you see a pic of the toad passed out with his head in a trash can full of reprocessed vodka. :goofer:
That makes sense because if a person has some information about the item they are bidding on, then that person can make a wise decision if that auction is legit and for what price to bid on it if it is legit. I like coin shows and I go to the coin shows that are close to where I live. When I go to a coin show, I have a very good idea on what I will buy when I get there.
The only part I would take issue with is the part about education. I've worked on factory floors and waited on customers. But it was education that taught me how to think and is directly responsible for the life I've been able to have. It made me the person I am today, and I am forever grateful for the opportunities.
It is hard to say everything at once and perhaps I should not have glossed over a complicated subject. I just finished a four-year degree. I am 60. This is my eighth college in 40 years. I transferred in over 150 credits. Education is for life and I have pursued it many ways over the years, both formally and informally. My point was only that there are many delivery mechanisms and that by "protecting" children from commerce and industry, we deny ourselves the opportunity to gain perspectives. As for shopping online or via mail order, those are both valuable adjuncts to the conventions as are coin stores. Your ANA member dealer coin store represents the root and rock of our hobby. The medieval deniers that I mentioned all came from VCoins dealers, though I did shop for them locally and in person first, asked around at stores and so on. Best wishes.
I have to disagree from my perspective. "Impulse buying" does not equate to "problems" - all the times. Plus some of us would have to travel far and take vacation to attend some of these shows. I noticed in you last post you mentioned online dealers so I will let the "buy real items with real value" slide. While the local shows have a few good coins and are fun - they just do not attrack any major dealers. Even my local dealer only attends or sets up a table once in a while.
One of our more famous members has a qoute that fits perfectly " There is no price to cheap for a problem coin "......Rick Snow Great write up Mike.
So you say no price to cheap for a problem coin - does that apply to this porous coin also -http://www.cointalk.com/forum/t61658/? :mouth:
What I've found out over many, many years of going to coin shows of all types in all areas is, the larger the show, the higher the prices of the coins. As a general rule I've found the average small coin show is where you really get some great coin bargains. The large coin shows are rather on the expensive side for many reasons. Mostly the larger dealerships send people there and have to account for logging, food, salaries, transportation and this all comes out of the prices of coins. Then too there is the expense for the customer to travel to those larger shows and many have entrance fees, parking fees, expensive beverages. Those too should be added to the expense of the coins a person purchases. It is really difficult to assertain the cost or value of a person's time but due to health and age I always consider my time of a value and that too should be added to the cost of coin purchases. Dealers at most large shows don't know you, may never see you again so why would they give you any break in a coins purchase price? Those smaller, closer and more repeditive coin shows usually have repeditive dealers that get to know you and will give you a not only decent break in prices but can help you find coins you may be looking for. As they get to know you, you may also get some items free that they just want to get rid of. Some get to know you enough that you could just pull up a chair and shoot the breeze for a while and not get those buy something and get out of my face attitudes. Items not wanted can be easily returned at the next show with little to know problems at all. I always find it a shame that there aren't more local coin shows around everyone so they could see the difference.
I must disagree with 'Staying Poor with Impulse Buying' , mainly because it is impulse buying that has educated me and gotten me into coin collecting once again. As far as the education portion goes, when I was a lad, I was collecting lincoln cents and my Dad passed over to me a few nicer coins, like some morgan dollars. When I had lost/been ripped off for $15, back then, it was of course a fortune to a small guy like me. Lesson learned. Forward 20 years, or so... Now anything over $100 is cause for alarm. You just work too hard to get burned for $100, yet an impulse buy here, without investigation into history and comparisons and BAM you get burned for a fake coin. Now you just paid $100 + $15 in your coin life lessons, and you are ready for the big purchase or 'next-step', a AU example of a $20 Gold Note or a Double Eagle Certified coin. You do not and WILL NOT get burned for $1,000, so you do the homework, compare the coin, learn the history and are a much more educated buyer. As far as the impulse buying goes, I agree it's not wise to make impulse buying your manner of operation, but using impulse buying on rare occasions is not the end of the world and can be a great experience. I was not really a collector of US Paper Notes, however did have the mandatory Silver Certificate. After viewing some older paper on the Heritage Auction sites, I made a impulse buy. I do not regret it in any way and this has fueled me to also get the matches in denomination for that series or close to it. When I look at these bills, I am reminded of the history behind the US and the beauty of the older larger bills compared with today's notes. I would not have started collecting paper, were it not for my 'impulse buy' and likely not collected Koroit and Yowah Opals either. Can anyone say these examples were a mistake? Probably not, because why? Because everyone's collection is in "their" eye "their" treasure. And also, not everyone can own a Adams-Carter 1804 Silver Dollar Class III !! Just my .02 cents, RAD
