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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 842516, member: 112&quot;]I&#039;ve said all of this more times than I can count, but here goes. As a general rule, coins make a lousy investment. There are several reasons for that.</p><p><br /></p><p>The knowledge requirement - most people just don&#039;t have it. But to a degree that requirement can be lessened by buying only coins certified by NGC or PCGS. But then you have to know if the coin is graded correctly. That can now be lessened to a degree by buying only CAC stickered coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>So you say, OK, I&#039;ll do that, what&#039;s the problem then ? </p><p><br /></p><p>First of all, there is the buy/sell spread. That spread alone can be as high as 40%. That means you have to have an increase of 40% just to break even. </p><p><br /></p><p>And that is assuming that you bought right. You make your money when you buy coins, not when you sell them. So again knowledge enters the picture. Only this time it&#039;s knowledge of the value of coins - knowing the market. For coins are priced all over the map, for the same coin. Buy wrong (pay too much) and that 40% spread can increase to 60% or more. That&#039;s a pretty big nut to crack just to break even.</p><p><br /></p><p>And, as indicated by the OP&#039;s question, there&#039;s a lot of coins out there. And they don&#039;t all just increase in value all the time. The coin market as a whole is very cyclical. It moves up and it moves down as well. And these cycles can last 10 years or more. So timing is extremely important. Buy at the wrong time and you will be sitting on that investment for a long time just waiting to break even. Same goes for selling, you have to sell at just the right time too. Or again you will lose.</p><p><br /></p><p>But life tends to throw monkey wrenches into the works. As they say, stuff happens. And when stuff happens you usually need the money and have to sell your collection. But if the time isn&#039;t just right - you lose again.</p><p><br /></p><p>And not only is the market as a whole cyclical, there are also cycles within the market, meaning that at certain times this coin is a good buy or that coin is a good buy. Conversely others are not a good buy. So you have to know that as well. And those cycles are largely based on a whim. They can be driven by a whim, a fad, whatever happens to be popular at the time. And there is no telling how long that popularity will last. It might be a year, it might be 5 or 10. So there&#039;s that timing issue again for both buying and selling.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then there&#039;s outside influences, like the TPGs changing their policies. You have no control over that, and those policies can greatly affect the market, sometimes for the worse. Or the numismatic press can get involved, and that too can affect the market. </p><p><br /></p><p>Then there is the greed/ego factor. Collectors tend to become overconfident, think they know more than they really do. So they begin to look at raw coins all the while assuring themselves that they are going to make a killing by cherrypicking a certain coin. But they often end up buying a fake, an altered coin, a problem coin, or they just misidentify the coin. Or they simply misgrade the coin. And again they lose.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then there is the storage issue. One mistake can wipe out parts of or an entire collection.</p><p><br /></p><p>And there is more, a lot more. If it were as easy as most seem to think it is, we&#039;d all be rich. But we aren&#039;t. And we aren&#039;t because it isn&#039;t easy. It is extremely difficult, probably more difficult than any other investing medium you can think of.</p><p><br /></p><p>So collect coins because you like them, not because you think you are going to make a profit. Because odds are, you won&#039;t.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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