Numismatic mistakes you made when starting out (funny or serious)

Well today is talk like a pirate day

 

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thought is was geeting a good deal when I bought 11 wheat penny's for 4 dollars

 

thought is was getting a good deal when I bought 11 wheat penny's for 4 dollars

 

Hiccup......

 

My first purchase was a very shiny Peace Dollar from a kind old dealer at a show.
Poor old goat didn't know the quality he was letting out the door for only $30.00.

I thought: "How can you not make money at this hobby when senile dealers let MS65 Peace Dollars go for $30.00?"

It was so highly polished my wife uses it as a pocket mirror.
I wouldn't pay $15.00 for the same coin today.

 

Oh, and for the rest of the story: I paid to get the coin slabbed.

 

So, YOU are the one!

 

When I was seven I got the J.C. Penny "Let's collect coins " starter set for Christmas. It came with 20 mint state Lincoln cents. I shudder when I think of how I destroyed those coins.

 

In college, I bought a Chain cent. It proved to be an electro.

 

I bought the 2005 mint set on ebay for 99-cents! Not kidding. Then, of course, I had to get the 2004. That one cost me $6.24. I like 'em. I think as long as your collection makes you happy, you're already a winner.

 

It is sad just to think how many silver filled coins slipped through our tiny, little,
young hands back then...mostly for important purchases like gum and candy.

 

To be honest, I think you spent the money wisely.

 

I was at a coin show, my first one. Wanted some coins but had no idea of value, so I saw a guy selling a coin book with prices. I looked in his book what the coin is worth and bought based on whatever the book said. I made several trips to this guy to check the book. Of course I had no idea of grading so I ended up with some crappy coins I overpaid for.

 

Hoping to avoid cleaned coins as a new collector (a 90 day wonder), I bought a few graded slabs only from Ebay sellers. Probably paid too much in doing so. I still have problems with this in raw coins.

 

I poured lots of money down the drain buying “unsearched rolls” off of eBay.

I also bought lots of problem coins because I love type coins.

 

My first mistake was probably getting back into coin collecting.

 

Luckily I never had enough money to make any really expensive mistakes when I was just getting started.
Some things I wouldn’t do now that I did back then we’re buying 1000 “unsearched” wheats from one of those tv shows, buying a “MS66” morgan off eBay in a basement slab, buying a few “unsearched” rolls of wheats off eBay and beginning to buy silver just after it started to come down from the record highs back in 2009ish. I can say that I’ve never bought a fake, as far as I know.
I have had some nice scores over the years to make up for my earlier mistakes.
Purchased a 1963 Franklin in a pcgs rattler graded 64. Sent it to ngc and got 64FBL.
Bought a raw 55 Bugs Bunny which got 66FBL from ngc and bought a 1950 in ngc 66 which I sent in for regrade and came back 66FBL.

 

I did buy a counterfeit 42-over-1 Mercury dime years ago from a prominent advertiser in Coin World. This was before the internet existed. A few years later, ANACS was authenticating coins at a local show and they determined it was fake. Coin World contacted the seller on my behalf and they made it good under their "forever genuine" guarantee. So all's well that ends well. Except I still don't have a 42-over-1 in my Mercury collection.

 

Do you still own that coin? At the very least you could use it as an educational piece!

 

When I was young, my father would help me with my collection from time to time. Part of that collection were regular circulation coins and circulating commems - and at some age I figured that I could take the coins out, spend them on important things and replace them later. Back then I did not understand that he or my mother had in quite a few cases paid more than face for them ... and when I wanted to replace them later, I had to pay more than face too. Duh.

Christian