Describe the most foolish thing you ever done as a newbie collector!!!

:hail:I know there got to be some crazy stories out there. Im all ears...LoL.Dont be scare to post your story..

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The most foolish things that I did as a newbie collector all involved impulse buys. I am much more focused and patient now and also do a lot of research before buying anything. TC

 

Putting my silver dimes in a pinball machine.
not buying key dates when they were affordable.
I started in the 60s.

 

as a newbie collector of about 10 years of age they indroduced this arcade game called donkey kong and I was addicted bad, they put one in just a block from my house, when the machine had all my quarters I resorted to a quarter collection given me by the old guy across the street whom I mowed grass for,all silver and I still kick myself over it, thankfully I still have all the 2 dollar silver certificates and old 2 dollar bills he would pay me with. He was in his 80's with no living relatives and was a great guy and coin collector, wish he wouldn't of passed so soon as I could have learned alot from him about coins. he gave my friend who helped scoop snow off his driveway in winter a fully complete wheat cent book that he had put together one cent at a time as they came out. He left all the rest to charity's in his will, but handed out loads of great coins to local kids like me who were too dumb at that age to appeciate them. I remember one year he rode in the town parade with the vfw and threw handfulls of silver dollars into the crowd for the kids instead of candy like everyone else.

Once I got older and really got into coin collecting I bought way to many low grade coins instead of waiting for a good one to come along, impatient to fill albums with no thought to quality, now if a coin doesn't measure up to the grade I am looking for I move on without a backward glance.

 

The other posts remind me of when I was a teenager and too young to have a job. I always saved the unusual coins like the bicentennial quarters and the $2 bills. Well, a house down the street was having a garage sale and they had baseball cards, which I also collected. I quickly ran out of money, but I still wanted some of the cards so I started spending my saved quarters and $2 bills. It's really not a loss value-wise, but I still wish I'd saved them, especially the $2 bills, which I never see anymore.

 

Not really done as a newbie thing, but I can tell you right now that red wine and BU copper cents do not/should not mix. Especially when 18 of them are 1955-S RPM001 all MS64s and 65s!

 

I bought multiple pieces of raw gold on eBay.

It turned out all right.

One slabbed 63, another 65, and one that I paid melt for was returned as cleaned (I'll wager it will slab the next time).

I think I've been pretty lucky, numismatically.

 

You can find bicentennial quarters and $2 bills by the bucket loads at banks.

I bought an AU common date, Morgan, dipped to death for $25. I haven't completed a full year of collecting yet, so I hope this forum helps me from making stupid decisions!

 

Idiot that I am, around 1968-69, my coin interest shifted to baseball cards, then attention went to Comic Books. By 1968, it was getting tougher and tougher to find silver coinage in circulation, I bet a few of you folks are seeing where this is going, comic books, DC and Marvel were going for 12-15 cents.... yep there went my least favorite series, the Kennedy halves, since they had the most buying power, 3 comics for one measley, unfortunately also silver, half dollar... Idiot!
Steve
P.S. No, I do not know where the heck my Comics are.. dammit.

 

Well still being a newbie(collecting about 3 months) i would say, rushing with my lincoln wheat cent set in good to fine. Didnt do enough reading so i havent bought the "big 2" yet.

 

Only started collecting about 4-5 years ago.

Was given a sovereign in my youth, I was 8 or 9. About the time I turned 40 and was getting into collecting, I sold it to a dealer. (Mistake number 1?) Turned out the sovereign was a forgery, or so the dealer said! (Mistake number 2?) Dealer said it was probably 9ct gold or something and said he'd give me $30 (the sterling equivalent at the time) for it, which I took! (Mistake no.3?) Ooops!

And things have pretty much gone downhill from there! (Save for the occasional Gem turning up!) Coin collecting? You must be off your rocker!

Anyway if it was easy, it wouldn't be interesting and I'd have to play golf instead, sometimes. Which I do, actually, and that drives me nuts as well, come to think of it. (Got a wife and kids too, by the way.) But luckily I've got a really hard wall - that I can bang my head against. So that's nice - I think.

Still make mistakes though, some are probably really dumb. I think I may use brackets too often? (But stopped making other mistakes.)

 

Bought a 64D kennedy because I couldn't find the mintmark! (Go read, not just have Red Book!). The Joke is the price I paid is now below melt.

Could have tossed back a 1950D nickel for the same reason, if not for me saving all pre 1960 nickels (documented in the rollsearchers thread).

Bought a common date morgan for 20$ (back when silver was at 12.5), and sold junk 40% at 1.5 to pay for it.

But at least I had the awareness that the 1889CC Morgan being offered to me (at a pawn shop:devil didn't "feel right" (too light as compared to my other Morgans), so I turned it down.

 

The dumbest thing I've done, and still do, is not keeping my records up to date. Thus, I keep buying duplicates of coins I already have. Not a problem really, but more work for me to unload the duplicates.

 

I had just started bidding on coins on E-bay and I was building my run of proof sets, I bid on and won a 2001 proof set for $7.05 & $2.00 shipping, only to realize when it came that it was BOX & COA only!!!!!! No coins!!!!!!

 

During the winter months when the temperature got down to near zero, we had to stay inside for recess. There I sat with my Standard No. 2 pencil, putting the eraser to teens & twenties Lincoln cents in order to make them nice and shiny for my 1909-1935 tri-fold Whitman Album.

I still blame Jack Frost for allowing me to conserve those coins.

 

Dipped my Indian cents to a shiny red. Didn't think anything was wrong with that since the local coin dealer sold the dip. Still got em, 50 years later. Interesting how they retoned after being in brown paper 2x2 envelopes all those years - sorta light fuzzy brown color floating on surface.
I also did the pencil eraser thing like BR.

 

Thanks for reminding me, biggiej! I too had an incident of "Mistaken Identity" on eBay. I was bidding and won a very good price on a State First Day cover,.... Stamp, not the coin.
Steve

 

Describe the most foolish thing you ever done as a newbie collector!!!

As a newbie in about 1968, I bought a bottle of TarnX and dipped my 1942 to present Lincoln Cents. The next day I returned the TarnX for a refund. I told them I didn't like the way it cleaned my coins.

I still have that Whiman Lincoln cent book. I'll look for it tonight or Monday & maybe take a picture.

 

ditto!

 

The Little Mistakes are Most Embarrassing

My primary interest was first in ancients. I bought a large bronze of Ptolemy and returned it because of a "defect" in the reverse: a small hole in the center.
They all have them! Apparently, part of the milling process to produce the planchets, we are not certain. But they all have them. See here:
http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sg/sg7785.html