Collecting coins vs. Hoarding

You know, I'm pretty much the same way. At first I wanted to be a type collector, but than I've found I liked having various mint marks in my collection. So I adjusted to include them as another variety. But than I found myself pulling coins out of circulation that I liked because they were old, looked new, had a toning I liked or because they sported a mint mark that I don't normally see (just found a 1970 s mint nickel). Also, I always have a hard time letting go an obsolete coin design.

I'm guessing I'm turning out to be more of a hoarder than a collector.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I started off very focused on one set and worked diligently to finish that set. When it got to the point that I was no longer progressing on that set as fast as I wanted to, I moved onto another. That pattern repeated ad nauseum. Then I discovered errors and cherry-picking. That led to hoarding a lot of theoretically valuable coins. Note the theoretically. I was accumulating a lot of stuff because I could never get the supposed value from the coins I was finding. I finally realized that as long as I had the coin, it was worthless. The only way to realize value is the sell the coin. So I began to sell off some of the excess. It was liberating. I found that, even if I was not getting the FULL value, I was often getting 10, 20 or even 500 times the price that I originally paid for the coin. For example, I sold a F-VF 1944 D/S cent for 22 dollars that I got for 4 cents. That's $21.96 that I could spend on another coin. In other words, I could afford to even over-pay a bit on something I really wanted since I was using someone else's money.

Bottom line is , you can't have the coin AND the value of the coin at the same time. Once you accept that, getting rid of the excess is easy and can be a lot of fun.

 

Without hoarders we wouldn't have many 1800's Mint State coins.............

 

I used to be into "set finishing," and while I still do that to some degree, now I just pick up whatever sparks my interest at any given time. There's not much rhyme or reason to it other than what happens to catch my eye.

My latest purchases included: a 1995 Special Olympics dollar, an MPC, a 192A $2 bill, notes from Korea and Great Britain, fantasy notes with dinosaurs on them, a 1976 gold sovereign... (I'm not sure if the HOF coins count if they haven't shown up yet lol...) I'm a coin collector, technically, but what I collect is "whatever I find interesting when I have enough disposable income to buy something." Can't really narrow it down further than that lol...

Would like to finish my Dansco 7070 some day, but every time I get enough to fill the last holes (Seated Liberty dollars are last ones I need, not counting gold) I end up spending money on something else. Some day maybe...

 

I've definitely gone the other way - more quality and less quantity. I've recently started breaking down proof and uncirculated mint sets to upgrade my modern collections culled from circulation. SHINY!