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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jasper Burns, post: 3013924, member: 88325&quot;]I&#039;ve never had much of a coin budget, but in recent years I&#039;ve realized how this has affected my collecting habits in a positive way.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I was a kid, I collected US coins by date.&nbsp; If I&#039;d been rich, I would have had the butler take me to Midas Coins so I could buy all sorts of high grade rarities.&nbsp; Instead, I spent countless hours going through coin rolls, where I had a ton of fun and found mint varieties (e. g. RPMs and Doubled Dies) that weren&#039;t even known to the experts.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I got interested in Medieval British coins, I couldn&#039;t afford flashy groats and Anglo-Saxon pennies, so I scoured ebay for bargains. The result was that I discovered more than 20 misidentified coins of Henry IV and Richard III, which I purchased for a tiny fraction of their retail value. I also discovered so many unpublished 15th century Irish types that I was able to write a book with twice the number of varieties than were listed in the Spink guide. That book is now the standard guide for collectors and I sold my collection for more than ten times its original cost.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ancient Greek and Roman coins overwhelmed me back in the early 1990s and at first I pretended I could afford to buy decent quality specimens. My credit card debt soared, and my collection seemed to mock me whenever I looked at it because I knew I would have to pay the piper eventually. And sure enough, it was finally swept away by financial realities.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, I recently started collecting ancients again, but this time I stayed with coins that I could afford - mostly archaic fractions.&nbsp; One of these is an Athenian &quot;Seltman Group&quot; obol. I discovered that the coin had been offered by two different dealers - who had assigned it to two different Seltman Groups. My effort to find out which one was right led me to a complete re-evaluation of the early Athenian coinages, which I am now sharing in the form of a book.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Neither the Athenian book nor the Irish guide would have been written if I had been able to afford high grade, easily attributable coins. My discoveries were the direct result of the necessity to scrounge and look at specimens that better-heeled collectors might not even consider owning.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anybody else have thoughts about how their coin budget has led them into interesting places?&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Best,</p><p><br /></p><p>Jasper Burns[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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