Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;stevereecy, post: 842537, member: 19884&quot;]OK, I&#039;ll be devil&#039;s advocate for a moment.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>As far as the knowledge base is concerned...you&#039;re right...you need the knowledge. But knowledge can be obtained. To a certain extent, whatever you invest in...coins, real estate, stocks....you should have some knowledge about what you are doing. And yes, slabbed coins are a heck of an aid, as is the star designation. Not sure what &quot;CAC&quot; means, but I think you&#039;re referring to the star?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Nextly, the buy/ask spread. There is a way around that. First of all, I&#039;m assuming that a buyer is educated enough to do a little research. Say they were going to buy something on e-bay...hopefully they would check past auctions. There are also techniques for buying on-line that can garner you a profit. (As an aside, I was thinking of holding a contest here where you try to turn $50 into $100 using only e-bay and accounting for fees postage and everything...if you&#039;re interested let me know).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Anyway, one way to thin the buy ask spread is to buy at auction and only buy hotly contested items. For example, suppose you try to win an auction for an MS66 Morgan Dollar in the $400 range. One way to do this is to buy in a competitive auction. Suppose the auction has over 25 bids before it closes, and you win the coin for $365. In theory, there was someone there willing to pay $364 for the same coin. Heck, on a different day, you might be able to sell it back for just as much as you bought it for (less fees). Better pictures, a well selected ending time, etc., could get you over this hump.&nbsp; ***IF you think about it...this is exactly what the big players do...folks buying the King of Siam set or the 1913 Liberty Nickel are buying in a hotly contested auction, with a ready buyer willing to pay perhaps 99% of what they pay.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Yes, there are cycles. You can overcome the cycle issue with a reasonable amount of study, and a long-term outlook. I&#039;m not talking about flipping here, but if you have a 20 year time horizon and you buy something that ordinarily is popular but is now out of favor, you&#039;ll probably do all right.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>TPG policy changes. I agree, this is tough, but the winning formula that has always worked was to buy the best coins for the stated grade. Back when coins were either MS70, MS65, or MS60, if you were carefully selecting the &quot;MS70&quot; coins, you were probably actually buying what we consider to be MS67 coins today, but despite the change in standards, you still kicked some butt historically when looking at price returns.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Storage: Yep, no doubt. One problem, and it can wipe out your collection. So ideally, your investments need to be stored somewhere where they are insured. Or you have to buy insurance and it better be a small fraction of the cost of the coins. But then again, actually having physical possession of your investment is more comforting, though more expensive, then having something like owning gold in an exchange traded fund, because if you have to flee or something, you really can take it with you.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Overconfidence: Yep...there I agree. Investing takes a certain degree of detachment. That&#039;s always been true. When you invest in real estate, don&#039;t fall in love with the property. When you buy a stock, you have to be ready to cut your losses instead of getting attached to it and just hoping it will bounce back. With coins, you have to exercise the same level of detachment. You probably have to buy slabbed coins too. Now...all that being said, just call me Icarus...I am guilty of buying some raw coins here and there, but in fairness, I do have the level of education and the books I need to help me spot the fakes.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Steve[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in