Lord Marcovan's "Eclectic Box of 20" Collection

Why, thankee, sir. I live for compliments like that.

 

My crystal ball is a bit cloudy on that. Dunno.

I suppose it is remotely conceivable that one day I might reach a point where every single coin in this Box of 20 is so dear to me that it would sting too much to sell one off and make a new addition.

If and when I get there, I might do something like fork it off into two boxes of twenty; one for PCGS and one for NGC. Then they could be registered as "custom sets" on the PCGS and NGC Registries. I would likely have the NGC box be the "ADAM" (Ancient, Dark Ages, and Medieval) coins while the rest would be PCGS.

I do have an aluminum 25-slot box, mostly just so I can have space during transitions when I've occasionally got as many as 22 or 23 pieces on hand. I keep a magnifier and a few raw coins in the extra space, too.

 

I had to develop it, believe me. There have been many periods of economic instability and downright poverty in my life (not homelessness or anything, but close enough- but for the grace of God and family).

Because of this, I've been forced to sell my collection a couple of times in my life. Add to that several voluntary purges, and I'm left with only two coins from my original childhood collection.

All of this experience has taught me a little bit of material detachment. I love my coins and do get attached to them (some more than others), but in the end, they still come and go. I enjoy 'em for a while and then sell or swap 'em on to the next owner. This enables me to pursue fresh material a lot more often than I would otherwise, on my small budget.

The "one in, one out" rule may be difficult when it means parting with a coin, but it also means that when you sell it, you've got a head start on purchasing its replacement. If it were not for this, I'd be collecting $10-50 pieces and there would be no $500-1,500 pieces in this box like there are (not to mention one $2,500 piece).

It took me decades of gradual selling and swapping and the selloff of several entire collections to accomplish this one box. And not a lot of coin money comes out of my modest paycheck. Most of my coin-buying funds come from coin selling. (This helps keep me in ladymarcovan's good graces.)

So parting with the old stuff has been worthwhile, and educational. And keeping the collection small means higher quality coins.

I'm essentially a "vestpocket dealer" who uses my own collection as inventory. But even if my hold time is shorter than that of a lot of collectors, I don't enjoy the coins any less. Still love 'em.

 

I should add that if were "collecting within my means", I'd still be sticking circulated Lincoln cents or G-VG Indian Heads in a folder, or plucking Statehood quarters from circulation.

People of my economic means really don't have any business collecting $500+ coins, unless they develop some patience and smart strategies.

This is one reason I'm a World coin collector (aside from the fact that World coins go farther back in time and are inherently more interesting and often more beautiful than US coins). There is a lot more "bang for the buck" on the "Darkside"! And "bang for the buck" is one plank in my platform.

Another way you can collect big(-ger) ticket coins if you're a peasant like me is to build up a collection of more modestly priced stuff (like, for instance, the VG Barber half set I worked on for a while, or the VG-F Walkers, the predecimal Irish set, etc). Then, when you've got your "subcollection" complete or nearly so, you sell it and build up enough to buy one bigger coin for your "primary" set. For example, the $2,500-ish Dahlonega quarter-eagle in my set is something I could've never bought under almost any circumstances, but I sold off a nearly complete type set of 1901 British Empire Victoria coins (forty-plus pieces, many quite nice), and funneled the proceeds from that into a single coin (the 1842-D half eagle).

That's how it's done. A little bit at a time, very gradually.

And I think the "buy the best you can afford" motto is sound advice.

 

I found the 1936 Merc dime shown below in my grandmother's sideboard while getting the silverware out to set the table for Thanksgiving dinner on November 25, 1976.

I was excited by the find, because earlier that very day I had found a coin book on one of the shelves in Grandmomma's big old house (one of the cousins had collected coins), and I had looked at pictures of all the old coin types. Until then, I had been unaware of obsolete coin types and for all I knew, Lincoln had been on the pennies forever, and Roosevelt on the dimes. So when I found this old dime with a Winged Liberty on it, it was wonderfully exotic looking to me. Aged not quite eleven at the time, I thought a 40-year-old coin was positively ancient.

Now, next month will be my 40th anniversary as a numismatist, and so I will have owned this coin for forty years. There is a nice symmetry to that.

This one is El Numero Uno. The coin which started my numismatic adventure.

And yes, I still have it.



(It was basically white when I found it in 1976. I probably cleaned it at least once in my young novice collector days. The toning which has resulted since is kind of interesting.)


The only other to remain from my childhood is this 1827 Bust half. I received it for my 11th birthday on December 28, 1976.



(The current plan on this one is to hold on to it until about January, 2027, if I'm still breathing. By then it will be 200 years old and I will have held it for fifty years. I will then pass it on to a deserving grandchild, or, if there is nobody in the family who'd appreciate it enough, I will pick a young collector who I think is likely to want to hold onto it for another fifty years himself or herself.)

I held onto a third piece from my childhood until 1999. It was a prooflike AU58-ish 1878-S Morgan dollar which my (other) grandmother had given me, saying it had come out of my paternal great-grandmother's desk. When my first nephew was born in 1999, I gave it to my sister to hold for him.

 

@Eaglefawn, yours is exactly the kind of detailed compliment I like to receive. It made my week. Thank you.

Limiting one's self always takes discipline, doesn't it? And yes, it gets more difficult to part with coins as the quality or history of them gets all the better or more fascinating. But there are billions of other coins out there to be appreciated, so if I enjoy one a while, then pass it on, it helps me step a little closer towards purchasing the next one. This also helps prevent irreparable damage to my modest paycheck, which doesn't have a whole lot of extra money for "luxuries". (In short, it keeps me out of ladymarcovan's doghouse, if you know what I mean!)

As I may have mentioned (I'm bad about repeating myself and never remember which forum I said something on), I have been forced by economic circumstances to sell off my entire collection two or three times (first in my 1994 near-bankruptcy and divorce, and again when I got laid off in the 2008 recession), so there have been big purges in the past. But I rise again like a phoenix from the ashes, and each time I rebuild, it's a little better than before, since I still retain the lessons learned from the times before.

This has taught me a little bit of material detachment. Which is a valuable life lesson. It's all just stuff, after all, and we don't take it with us to Valhalla or Heaven or whatever's next. The things we learn and the human relationships we make along the journey are what are truly valuable.

Now, all that being said, I can potentially imagine a day when this collection "matures". (Perhaps when every coin in it is worth $500+? $1K+? - who knows), or everything has such a sentimental value that I can't bring myself to sell it.

If or when that day ever arrives, I'll slide the box back into the safe deposit drawer and pick up something else. Maybe spread out again into a wider collection, like the (raw) Roman Imperial emperor set I had to break up in the 2008 purge.

And sometimes, like a boomerang or a homing pigeon, a coin I've sold comes back to me. Occasionally by pure serendipity. I had a case of that this month. You will see that coin when I post the next (grossly overdue) update here. It is an off-center error on an 1820s British shilling. I sold that coin in the 1994 purge and it went out into the wild, then I stumbled across it again online this summer. It is now mine again, 22 years later! (And for 450% what I sold it for in '94... tempus fugit!)

Thank you all for the commentary and attention.

 

Today I have moved my ancient coin subthreads over here to CoinTalk. So that's about 6 down and 14 to go, I guess. Eventually my Collectors Universe-to-CoinTalk transition will be complete. In the meantime, there is much housekeeping and tweaking to be done, and things might be a little wonky.

When I'm done, all of the hyperlinks in the main collection "index" posts will go to subthreads here, rather than CU. This forum can handle all the coding. On CU that was turning into a nightmare.

See y'all at the next update. It will be a good one. I have already posted some sneak peeks of the new coins, without the writeups just yet.

 

PS- @Eaglefawn again, but to everyone else as well: who says I'm not a family member of yours? Are we not all one big numismatic family? Shoot me a PM conversation and let me know what you like. I will try to remember, and keep an eye out. Hey, you never know.

And everyone should be aware that as coins come into this box, others must go out, so every once in a while, one or two or three will "fall out of the bottom" of this box and be available for sale or trade. If there is something in my set you really like, I am never insulted by tactful inquiries about a coin's availability. I'm usually pretty open about sharing my costs, too, so you can make an offer on something at any time. This does not mean I will say yes, of course, but again... you never know. (I just gave away the Pilgrim half above to an old friend who had been generous and helpful to me in the past but has fallen on hard times as a collector.)

 

I have now transitioned all the old stuff over here now, so they all have subthreads here I can link to in the next update, so the links in the index postings will no longer lead to Collectors Universe.

I still have to do the writeups on the latest "newps" (new purchases), however.