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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DavidinCA, post: 1325429, member: 34905&quot;]Hi, name is David and I&#039;m in Southern CA.&nbsp; Just wanted to ask a few questions after doing some reading and websearching.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The first question I have is about grade of coin.&nbsp; I&#039;ve read on more than one website that the best grade to collect is MS65.&nbsp; My personal dilemma is that I actually find many XF45s to be more pleasing to my eye (in pictures) in terms of character....been around the block so to speak, rather than a MS65 that&#039;s been entombed from its original discovery.&nbsp; I also have found a few AU55s on EBay that certainly I&#039;d like to have because of the same eye pleasing quality to me.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, the question to the board is:&nbsp; Is it true that most collectors believe that anything lower than an AU rating is nothing but scrap?</p><p><br /></p><p>Would I be wasting my money invesing in a series of XF45s?&nbsp; On the other hand, if MS65s are so expensive in certain years, is there really a market to sell them if times get tough (I mean to sell and not loose money in what you paid for them)?&nbsp; I see plenty of high end MS65s on EBay that appear to be within the suggested price range of lets say Numismaster&#039;s price guide . . . but no offers.&nbsp; Most offers on Ebay appear to be for those coins that have low start bid price.&nbsp; Does this mean that the &#039;average&#039; person would rather buy the low or mid grade coins because buying MS60s is just too expensive and might appear too risky because of price?</p><p><br /></p><p>The other thing I&#039;ve noticed while surfing the web is that there are some folks that believe certain coins should be collected over others.&nbsp; For instance, a few sites recommend choosing from the Top 5 Benefit Factor rated coins.&nbsp; One site defined these coins as 1895, 1892CC, 1894, 1878CC 1883CC as the best coins that have the chance for price appreciation in the future.&nbsp; Without knowing how old the site was, I then shifted my attention to another site that had the top 5 coins as 1889CC, 1892CC, 1893, 1893S, and 1895O.&nbsp; &nbsp; It seems that benefit factor values change so that the top 5 choices change every so often.&nbsp; The only thing that remained consistant was that the CC marked coins had more potential increase in value as they supposedly appeared more often in the top20.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, I could just focus on a certain grade (MS65 or XF45 or AU55, etc) and limit attention to just coins that are considered more desireable in terms of possible appreciation.&nbsp; But is this just silly?</p><p><br /></p><p>One website suggested that there&#039;s value in coins that haven&#039;t seen appreciation or given much attention.&nbsp; The list given were the following coins:&nbsp; 1879S R78, 1892, 1897S, 1899S and 1902S in MS63-MS65.&nbsp; This means to me that there could be another matrix to use to determine whether one coin could have more potential than just using Benefit Factor.</p><p><br /></p><p>So this leads me to wonder whether collecting a series of coins in one grade is good approach considering one really doesn&#039;t know which coins will appreciate at what rate, except by using past information.&nbsp; The Grade at which one selects could be crucial.&nbsp;&nbsp; Like I pointed out, the MS65 might actually be the best to collect but in terms of selling, maybe there&#039;s only a handful of folks out there that really willing and able to purchase when one needs to sell.&nbsp; On the other hand, lower graded coins do appreciate....but do AU or XF coins appreciate at the same rate as MS65?&nbsp; Certainly, lower graded coins are more affordable and therefore more easily sold I would assume.&nbsp; But are they a good &#039;investment&#039;?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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