Everyone has a story about the biggest bargain they managed to acquire through a shrewd trade or dumb luck. But are you brave enough to share your biggest blunder? In honor of Thanksgiving, I invite you to tell the tale of a turkey you sheepishly added to your collection. My turkey is a 5 mark Allied Military Currency note that I picked up for $12. Having learned only recently that AMC replacement serial numbers begin with a dash, I thought that was a great price and was proud of myself for being smarter than the dealer, who obviously didn't know what he was selling. Sure it had a small tear at the bottom, but it's a *Replacement Note*, right? Wrong. What I learned later is that the Russians printed truckloads of these notes with dashes and that only those showing secret marks by the U.S. printer (Forbes) AND dashes were legitimate replacements. Total value ... maybe 50 cents. Admittedly not a very big turkey, but one that will remain in my collection as a reminder that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I just bought a 66 ford fairlane 2d convert....Wife not happy to say the least...She could post a few pages of 'turkeys'here...At least she lets me hoard Cent boxes I have stockpiled $2200 I need to go thru over winter. Its a "sure win" and she knows it. I always get my $ back on the duds.....and any1 of them could be worth a few bucks. The coppers are stacking up too!
Hmm... I've never really made a huge mistake (And hope I won't, except for the 3 10 oz silver bars I still have and bought near spot for over $300 each) but probably it would be when I was new to collecting an someone was selling a nickel with no obverse for $5 and I thought I just bought a super rare coin worth a lot more. Turned out it was just grounded off still see people making the same mistake i made every now and then here on the forum
A friend who has a shop had some of those Zimbabwe inflation notes, I thought they looked cool and asked what he wanted for them, so I paid 20 dollars, only to find those same notes elsewhere in another stores dollar bin.
Gosh I think mine might just be on the coin side - I was dabbling in getting some silver coinage and did not realize that only the S mint Ike's were 40% silver - so I ended up paying $80 for 50 regular Ikes in an auction. Not too bad, I likely could have still flipped them plus I did get one or two nice examples to keep, a bicenntenial and regular (regular reverses on the Ike are epic). Deposited the rest. Was going to give them out at Halloween this year but then I was like "screw that, that's $50 I could spend on currency!!"
My biggest "turkey"== 'Turkey' is actually from Turkey... The 500,000 Lirasi 7th Issue with Attaturk looking right at me! I don't know if he wants to be 'friends' or if he's trying to hypnotize me... ...thus enthralled, I have scored many more limp used varieties... Oh, joy!