What was your stupidest coin purchase?

I was rearranging my collection and saw this West Point quarter (War in the Pacific) after years! I bought this from ebay back in 2019 when these coins first came out, and with shipping and taxes I paid more than $50 for it, and it's not even unc (probably a coin roll find), my reasoning were the low mintage and I was also putting together an American type set.



Do I regret buying this coin, no! but I do feel silly now looking at the prices and makes me not to buy coins in a haste.

So what's your stupid/silly purchases? not just American coinage, but also ancient and any other modern ones.

 

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Have you ever bought a coin you thought you needed, but come to find out you already have that coin. I did that once and learned to be careful. Luckily it was not an expensive coin.

 

Oh so many 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, & 2000's US Proof sets directly from the US Mint.

Took a very long time for me to wise up.

 

This one comes to mind. It was really pretty but it turned in the holder.

 

I have never purchased a coin! So far! Lol! Easy to “want to” looking at all of the members coins. I say nothing is really stupid or silly if you enjoyed buying it.

 

I may of done worse, but my current regret is paying way too much for an 1877 Proof 20 cent piece. These pieces have really dropped in price after a very successful marketing promotion.



I over paid for this 1855-D gold dollar also, but it has a better future in my opinion.

 

I bought all 50 of these clad state sets for about 200.00 years ago.i recently tried to sell them at a lcs and he offered me 25.00 which is the face value for them,I'm going to try to sell them on ebay instead and hopefully recoup something back.

 

The first coin I ever bought...I've been broke ever since!





It was also the greatest purchase I ever made. Every cent I've spent has been returned countless times through the friends I've made and the sheer enjoyment I've reaped from the hobby.

 

I actually don't recall of any,love them all!!but this is probably the ugliest,for $27 I didn't mind for the curiosity.

 

I have several, but probably the one I came most to resent purchasing was one I just sold. I bought it about a dozen years ago, and it was either my first ebay slabbed coin purchase or nearly so. It was a 1982 No P Roosevelt dime, and it was also a NGC slabbed one and I paid almost 300.00 for it.

I did not know at the time much about them (my error, of course) and I thought they were all the same, so I had not done any real research into the coin, but it turns out there were ones that were strong and ones that were weak. Now this graded coin did not even say which one it was, but it was the weak strike, and of course, value can be based on a lot of things, and the weak vs strong strike actually matters as far as holding or resale value on these. So I initially paid a lot more than it should have been valued at and it also meant that I came to know that the value of the coin, even slabbed without mentioning whether it was a weak or strong strike, would to most dealers be obvious if they wanted to buy one and unless I kept it a long time and the type increased in value, I would not get anything near my monetary input into it.

Over the years, I did enjoy having one, and it was a good lesson because it taught me right away that 1) even if I don't buy the book before the coin (literally) that in essence, that only means to get knowledge before you put out your money on a coin, and 2) evaluate ahead of time how you might feel if you don't get your money out of it or enjoy it as much as you first anticipated.

I did enjoy it for a few years, even realizing that I lacked the knowledge at first when I bought it, but it also never really did fit in what I ended up liking to collect anyways. Yes, I do like one-offs, and I still have some graded ones, like the 1995 DDO cent, but those types are not the focus of what I want to collect, and the value may or may not hold on some of these.

Anyways, I held on to it with some hopium that perhaps in 5-10 years, it might be closer in value to what I paid on it, and I was in no hurry to sell it (I felt I would have more despair then over it). It never was. But recently, after doing a huge reset on my collection of some coins, I decided to bite the bullet and just sell it. So it went with me to a LCS and I did. Honestly, I got not quite half of what I paid for it, and that's ok. I think the LCS was honest in that they might sell it at some point and do well for themselves. There was no expectation that they would offer me more than half of my cost anyhow. I salvaged what little bad feelings I still had about my purchase of it way back when, and I did it at a time that I also had a few coins to sell that I could get what I put into them back out or make a little profit so overall, with the coins I sold, I came out ok.

Long story short, I got my (non-refunded extra money, not recouped with the sale of the coin) cost of experience in not only this particular one, but in other associated ways, and it was a good education:

1) Know what you are buying, if you can. Know the value of what it is, and make a decision as to how you might feel if you couldn't get the value out of it.
2) Don't go buy something on basically a whim or if you do, have no expectation of pricing on it in the future.
3) Jumping head first into something may just be non-profitable in the end.
4) Take an accounting of the grade of the coin (many times) as to whether it might hold up on it's pricing (salability) further down the road... For example, many of my MS 64 and 65 Frankies are very nice and I love them, but for the price I paid, they might not get me back what I put into them. Those purchases are much better though than my No P dime was because I put more thought into them and the condition I wanted them in and none of them were really spur of the moment ones. I had to look at a number of coin shows to find dealers that were carrying the ones I wanted still. Many times I went home empty handed because they were not available. I did not just go and get on a site and find one to purchase, I waited for them to come to me.
5) many more lessons and certainly worth it, but for the coin itself, I found it lacking in enjoyment in the long run and that is sad. I much prefer to have coins that I like at the start and continue liking.....

 

My most stupid coin purchases (yes, plural) are buying the same coin more than once because I didn't keep my inventory up to date.

 

My biggest mistake is the coin I didn't buy. Many years ago I was offered an 1870-cc Seated Dollar in f-12 for $400.00.
I turned him down because I thought I could find a decent VF-20 or better. Huge mistake.

 

I sold one of those W quarters at the local Coin club meeting.
The wife got one in charge ( really clean example) I just wanted to see if someone else would want it before I put it away or it went in the coin jar.
It brought almost $20.
I didn't get the proceeds from the sale.

I'm sure I have a few stupid buys, nothing too expensive and absorbed into the rest of the collection.
Nothing I can remember that really was an AH moment though.

 

20 years ago I purchased roughly $2K in modern U.S. silver commemoratives!
Ended up selling all for just slightly above melt! ($900)
J.T.

 

Most of the worst purchases I made were when I was trying to complete date sets and just wanted to fill the hole and didn't pay enough attention to condition. Mostly it was low value stuff but now I look at the collections and feel like I can't show them off until I upgrade.

 

It will probably happen this week on Internet auction.

 

This coin, I waited a year and a half to get it graded and found out it was fake!

 

Ouch!!that stings!!it's a pretty good counterfeit and a lesson with a nice example for the future.

 

My free membership to CoinTalk?

 

That would be the one I did not learn anything from. I am still not sure which one it is at present. I do have several suspects.