I use to buy anything that remotely resembled a "deal", regardless of what it was, before coming here. I decided to take a month off of buying coins, ok...I broke down once and bought a few coins from AJ that I "needed", and reassess what I was doing. Today was a month and I immediately found myself on Heritage, I was hungry to buy some coins and find some "deals". After adding about 50 or so coins to my tracking list I found myself widdeling them down much faster than usual. Even with hours to go I was down to two coins; and even tho, the one coin was cheap and way better than what I currently have, I really thought I could do better even if I paid more, I deleted it from my list and bought one coin. One of my decisions was to put together a Lincoln Dansco with woodies and toned coins, I liked this one for my 24S.
xtrmbrdr- That must mean: "extreme snowboarder" right? Anyway, I have been there done that. Had a long list at Heritage or eBay and wittled it down to a few, on many occassions. I have a Lincoln Dansco album and I love it. I have been working on my albums and I enjoy them as much or more than graded coins. Here's a few "imperfect" coins from my album:
Very nice man! That's a very weak date, hard to find with any detail in his hair. How does that one look? I can't see through the wood grain. Are those your photos?
Your are correct, prior to having my now 16 month son, I did quite a bit of climbing and back country snowboarding. Now I spend most of my time trying to keep him from climbing up the curtains and cleaning up spilled milk from the carpet and furniture. Since I see you have an 09S VDB, did you have a plan for the key dates, 09S VDB/14D/22 to fill the album? Did you buy them raw or slabbed? Snaz: Those are Heritage pics, and this was actually my first purchase from them. I'm not sure how fast they ship, I usually get my Teletrade lots in 4-5 days. As soon as it arrives I'll get my own pics up along with the coins I got from AJ before I plop them in the Dansco.
I was the same way for several years. Then one day someone's post on over at the PCGS forums clicked with me and I have been 95% focused ever since. It's much easier to pass on something when you can say to yourself you don't collect those. Of course I had to sell everything that was not in my focus to be able to say that to myself.
I used to be like that too, and since I have started to focus on more specific coins I'm much happier with what I have and the ones I do purchase are in much better condition than what I used to buy. All in all I'm much happier with what I have now than what I had when I would just randomly buy things.
I'm coming around to that train of thought... but not quite yet. I also really love the idea of an album of just a certain type of coin, like the wood grain. It's a pretty cool coin too.
IF you go to a lot of coin shows your ideas change usually. With so much to choose from you can buy what ever you can afford since they are usually there. Of course this depends on the size of the coin show. One I go to every Month usually has about 80 to 100 dealers. One usually has 3 tables of coins. With so many coins of all denominations, grades, prices, it's just a matter of how much you can afford.
