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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sholom, post: 558952, member: 17753&quot;]As others have noted -- you have two quite distinct reasons for collecting.&nbsp; Your strategy, imho, is completely different if you are: (a) collecting as a hobby and want to leave some heirlooms to the next generation; and (b) collecting as an investment.</p><p><br /></p><p>A few random snippets of my own experience:</p><p><br /></p><p>a) I got started collecting as a kid, 42 years ago, when my dad and my mom both gave me their lincoln penny collections -- they had collected circulated lincolns by pocket change and keep them in whitman folders.&nbsp; They never visited a coin shop in their lives and never purchased a coin.&nbsp; It was a decidely part time kid-hobby to them.</p><p><br /></p><p>b) I currently collect: indian head cents, lincolns, jeff nickels, merc and roose dimes, wash quarters, and jfk halves -- but of all my coins, I feel most attached to those humble lincoln cents, that I still have, that my parents gave me.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>c) as far as investment goes -- if I had sold my cents 42 years ago, put the money in the bank to collect interest, it&#039;d probably be worth more than those cents are now.&nbsp; Get my drift?&nbsp; I love them the most, but it&#039;s not worth a whole lot as an investment.&nbsp; That 1910 cent, next to impossible to find in change today, is still only worth less than 0.50 in the condition I have it in</p><p><br /></p><p>d) there is no substitute for good solid knowlege of the subject.&nbsp; Just go to eBay, where you can find really ignorant buyers buying things way too expensively . . . and where you can also find some relative steals: where the seller (and other bidders) don&#039;t realize the value of a coin.&nbsp; My point is not to endorse eBay, but to point out that if you don&#039;t know the subject well, you&#039;re going to make some mistakes.&nbsp; And if you purchase anything expensive, there will be some expensive mistakes.</p><p><br /></p><p>e) I&#039;ve been told that &quot;coins-as-an-investment&quot; makes sense if you purchase coins in high grade condition.&nbsp; Obviously, you have to know even more than I described in (d) -- beacuse not only to you have to know all about the coin, but you have to know the market and trends, too.&nbsp; For this reason, I consider coins-as-an-investment to be above my pay grade (and too expensive for me anyway).</p><p><br /></p><p>f) one exception to (e) might be cheap silver coins -- <b>*if*</b> you think the price of silver is going to rise.&nbsp; Right now, the melt value of a silver (90%) dime/quarter/half is about 9.3 times face value.&nbsp; You can probably pick up coins in lots on eBay, from time to time, at 10 times face value (I saw a lot of 330 mercuries go for $321 the other night).&nbsp; Clearly, if you think silver is going up, this might be a good investment.&nbsp; But who knows?&nbsp; Two days ago melt value was 9.6 times face value.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>More historically speaking: from 2000 to the end of 2005, silver was less than $10/oz, sometimes under $5/oz.&nbsp; By Feb 2007 is was over $20/oz.&nbsp; In Nov 08 is was back under $10/oz.&nbsp; Today (at 10:30 am ET) it&#039;s just under $13/oz.&nbsp; Will it go down to the level it was for most of this decade (under $10?)&nbsp; Or will it go back up to the level of a few years ago? Or was the last couple of years just an aberration? Heck if I know!!&nbsp; (Price information on melt values at <a href="http://www.coinflation.com/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinflation.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.coinflation.com/</a>, on historical silver values at <a href="http://www.kitcosilver.com/charts.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.kitcosilver.com/charts.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kitcosilver.com/charts.html</a>)</p><p><br /></p><p>Welcome . . . and good luck[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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