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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 682384, member: 57463"]Value? To whom?  For what? I nominated this post.  Thanks, BNB.  Nicely said. That said, allow me to add that first of all, if your goal is to make money buying and selling numismatic collectibles to other people that is fine and worthy, but it is not the hobby of collecting.  The collector wants to own what other people have passed over.  "One man's trash is another man's treasure."  That is the motivation for successful cherrypicking. Another motive is historicity. When I collected coins, I pursued ancient Greek silvers worth about a day's wages from the towns and times of famous philosophers.  I can hold an obol in my hand and wonder if Democritus held it in his.  I don't care what it is worth to someone else, to me, at the price I paid, it was a bargain many times over. I just read a book on Conders, Good Money by George Selgin, and I am reviewing another new one Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson.  They have added value to me to my Newton tokens.  BNB's advice is given often -- perhaps not often enough -- and it came to me first from ancients dealer and author David Vagi, who said that if you want to see a profit in your ancients, buy high grade Roman Imperial denarii that other people want.  True enough... but that's not why I collect...[/QUOTE]