Hi All, I have been thinking about starting a Morgan collection for a few years now. I never started because I never had a good trustworthy source. I recently joined a coin club in my area. There I met a gentlemen who sells them at a very reasonable price from what I have learned. Unfourtunately, the club only meets once a month. Id really like to pick up a couple Morgans from him at the next meeting. I've been reading everything I can on the subject and still not sure where to begin. I want to be able to go to the meeting in 3 weeks and say this is what I want. Short of buying CCs where would be a good place to start on a limited budget? I'm very sorry if this has been asked before, thanks in advance for ANY advice!
I started collecting Morgans about 18 months ago, and did not start the way many people recommend. The typical advice is to buy the key dates first. Well, that is not in this guy's budget. My approach was to buy an uncirculated Morgan every time I go to either a coin shop or show. This may take a lot of years, but it's in my budget. So, basically I'm sticking to the nicest common dates I can afford at first. Hope this gives you a little direction.
Merlin, There is no one way that is best unless you have deep pockets. Make up your own set of rules. If you want to strive for uncirculated Morgans, you will find that the keys and semikeys will be awfully expensive. If you want to try to collect all, then you will probably have to concentrate on much lower grades. The difficulty is that you need to decide if you want to try to make it a matched set (grade-wise) or have coins from Good to MS in your collection. Some people like to collect CC's. Others like to collect DMPL's or toners. Some prefer certified coins while others would rather have them raw. The important thing is to have fun and make it something that will give you a degree of challenge and enjoyment. Chris
Exactly what I am doing. Get a coin album (Intercept or Dansco) and just start filling in the common holes. I always pick up a couple common Morgans I don't have in XF/AU condition when I hit my coin shop. There are a bunch that are pretty easy to get. Won't be long and I will hit the more key/semi key wall. I have found some guys on this forum for my Jeffs and Lincolns, but no one for the Morgans, yet. I am sure some people can send you a PM about guys on here who are trustworthy. I love my Morgans. Unfortunately the price of silver has bumped the price up some.
The good news is that you can do it any way you want, after all it's your collection. In my mind, Morgan dollars are truly one of the great series to collect as far as US coins go. You're in for a lot of fun no matter how you do it. I can give you some insight into my experience in collecting Morgans. I started out looking to fill holes in a Dansco album. Most of the coins I bought initially were in EF and were the more common dates. At the time, I was paying less than $20 for most of these coins. As the album started to fill up, I noticed that many of the key dates were out of my budget even in EF. So I filled some of those holes with VF coins over the years. Then, as some coins are more readily available in uncirculated grades, more and more of the Morgans in my album became B/U. The next step in the process was to upgrade those VF-EF coins to uncirculated examples. I'm still in the process of doing that. Right now most of my collection is AU-MS63. But many of the key dates are still in VF. I've been building the collection for over 5 years now, and it never gets boring. It's a really great series; who doesn't like the look and feel of a big chunk of silver, minted over 100 years ago, with a really neat design and some great history behind it? I'd also recommend "A Complete History and Price Guide to Morgan Silver Dollars" by Q David Bowers. This book will give you direction and some good ideas for assembling a collection.
IMO start by sitting down with a reasonable price list such as Numismedia (it's online; use Google to find it). Look it over and decide what grades you can afford for each date. There will probably be coins that you feel you'll never be able to afford. But who knows. I managed to get an 1893-S in G-6. Think about fewer coins in better grades (instead of four $25 coins, lean toward two $50 coins). I believe in buying the best coin you can afford. And try to buy coins that you feel you won't have to upgrade for a long time. The key to the whole thing is planning ahead.
Books! That is where to start any collection. Seriously, you want to get into a series, so you will be looking at a lot of coins, and evidently you enjoy the coins. Why not get books so that: 1. You will read more about the history of the coins 2. You will learn the relative rarity of each date/mintmark 3. You will be able to cherrypick rare varieties I collect ancients now, but when I collected US coins I always bought the best book on a series before I put any serious money into them. Overton for bust halves, WB for seated halves, etc etc. This is the best, cheapest investment you can make for a morgan dollar collection. I cannot overestimate this. Chris
Awesome!, Thanks for all the replies and some great advice. I now have something to chew on for a while. You guys are the best! I'll keep you posted on my direction and (hopefully) some pics in the next few weeks. Along with that I'm sure more rookie questions. Thanks Again Everybody!!!!
I agree with racebannon "its your collection" depends on how you want to start, I mean IMO I think mostly everyone who collects coins have at least one morgan if not more...me personally...I like it...I have about 15 slabbed and 11 raw also depending on how you want to start...a set registry or album style.... do you want to have circulated examples or do you want uncirculated examples??? the possibilities are endless....but that's the joy of collecting... for me looking at my coins in my airtites and wondering how they led to me is always something I have in mind....=) good luck and happy hunting... -acsf89
