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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 1433800, member: 68&quot;]I&#039;ve collected most US old coins over the years.&nbsp; These include lg cents, FE, indian, and wheaties, silver and cu/ ni 3c pieces, shield, liberty, buffalo, and Jefferson nickels, Barber, Merc, and Roosie dimes, Barber, SL and Washington quarters, WL and Franklin halfs, and Morgan and peace dollars.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been very very proud of some of these collections though none had a lot of value.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve also collected numerous old world coins over the years and still collect British copper back into the 1700&#039;s.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>But with every single one of these collections I&#039;ve had to compete with other collectors both economically and physically.&nbsp; They could get to the coins first and had deeper pockets.&nbsp; This left me holding the bag rather than the coins I loved as often as not.&nbsp; I made an important discovery back in 1976.&nbsp; I was learning how to differentiate world silver from base metal coins and noticed that many base metal coins were very beutiful and very rare and nobody cared.&nbsp; I collected the New Zealand 1S which is a very fine looking coin and had to get to the coin first with a lot of money to buy it but the far scarcer cu/ ni version of the same coin could languish in dealer stock for years at a far lower price.&nbsp; So why should I compete with everyone else for silver when the cu/ ni was overlooked? </p><p><br /></p><p>I began studying the moderns and learning which were the wheat and which were the chaffe.&nbsp; Where everyone else just dismissed thm all as common junk because Yugoslavian 1953 50p coins were everywhere.&nbsp; It didn&#039;t seem to occur to people that the millions of this little aluminum coin might have nothing to do with another little aluminum coin from E Germ (10p) minted the same year.&nbsp; Today the Yugoslavian coin is still distressingly common but the German coin that listed for even less now sells for $1300.&nbsp;&nbsp; I was competing with no one at all for the German coin.&nbsp; If there was one anywhere I could pick it up for a dime.&nbsp; The trouble was in &quot;collecting&quot; it.&nbsp; It was work to track these down because they were rare and I knew they were rare because there were none.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I didn&#039;t get into moderns so much because they are rare or because they are beautiful or underappreciated.&nbsp; To a small extent I got into moderns because I wanted to preserve our modern heritage for future generations.&nbsp; To a small extent I hope to show these were basically good times by preserving the best of what we have and avoiding the worst.&nbsp; Peoples&#039; beliefs are formed by what they see and the coins I saved for them are among the finest of this age. But the main reason I got into moderns is that there was almost no competition at all...</p><p><br /></p><p>...And there still isn&#039;t.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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