Collecting advice needed...

Look, I am just repeating what I heard and learned many times over.

Matter of fact, I attended one of the seminars at last year's FUN show and they brought this up again. All things being equal (which is hard to do in this hobby), buy quality over quantity. Commons will always be common...nice looking, high grade, rare coins have a finite population serving an increasing population base.

Now...unless the government has a hoard of coins to release like in did in the early 60's with Morgans found in the vault (like the 1903-O Morgan), the rule applies and yes, you will have an exception here and there.

But, I never bought a KEY date date coin that has ever gone down in value and its prices have kept pace and exceeded inflation.

 

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Location of where you live actually could make a difference in how much you spend for anything including coins. If you live in an area where there are a lot of coin shows, coin dealers, hobby shops that carry coins, etc. you'll find the competion may make coin prices go down regardless of the grey sheet prices. Also an important thing to collecting is what can you afford and just how interested in coins you really are at present. Similar to anything if you buy a coin for a lot of money and loose interest in the hobby you'll always feel that it is something you should have investigated more. As a general rule you won't be able to sell a coin for a profit or even get your money back for a period of time. If your coin collecting for an investment you may find a normal savings account is more profitable. Example is many years ago a friend started collecting the Bicentenial coins and ended up with thousands of them. He ended up taking them to a bank, depositing them for face value after over 20 years. Bad investment. Myself I use the Red Book as a guide when going to coin shows. We have about one each weekend around here. I make a copy of the pages I am interested in and take it with me to a coin show or dealer. Any dealer that is way above the Red Book price I just walk away. If close I try to get the price to about that level and occationally even less. If your just starting out you may want to check out flea markets, garage and yard sales for coins also. We have one flea market where there are at times 6 coin dealers and their prices are mostly below Red Book except for one dealer. If you find dealers at flea markets try to get to know them and you many be surprized at what they can come up with.

 

Coin collecting is like buying a car, sweater, box of candy, flashlight, shoes, etc. Buy what you like and pay only what you want to pay. That way you only have yourself to blame when or if anything is wrong. If everything is great with a coin acquisition, you can say I did it myself. Make a copy of the Red Book page with the coins your interested in and go to coin dealers and coin shows and use it for a guide. If the prices are way above those prices, then it's just your choise whether you want the coin that bad or not.