Here's the state of my current collection. Six 1 oz bullion coins, a 1915 Cuba Ten Pesos, and a St. Gauden. Got a long way to go to go towards building a collection, but hey, it's a start. Future goals are a $20 Gold Liberty, a $10 gold Indian, a 100 Francs gold coin, and some Australian and South African bullion.
That might only be 8 coins, but that is a significant chunk of change! I personally like the pre-1933 gold better than the modern stuff, but that is only my opinion.
Great collection even the Cuban gold coin is super scarce and wanted by many! I'd like to own one myself but I'll have to wait as currently, I'm right under the poverty line!
Start slow. I began with ungraded common silver and bronze American coins as a kid, which then got traded and exchanged for more common graded US silver coins (Morgans, trade, etc). Eventually it got rolled over and traded for ancient coins...and did that for 5 years (mostly Roman and Greek silver). During the pandemic when money was slow, I sold part of the ancient collection to feed the family and get us through, but what was left over was rolled into the beginnings of a fractional European gold collection. I built that up, eventually recovering and exceeding the value of what was sold off. Then when I had enough of that, I exchanged them for what you see today. I hope to keep building on top of that. Hopefully with more diligent collecting, in 10 or 15 years I can roll some of this into rarer numismatic gold. For me it's a hobby that started from humble beginnings and over the years through exchanges, trade, and some extra funds has grown into bigger and better coins. I now have growing retirement investments and emergency fund, so no more selling anything off (at least that's the plan). I still got another 27-28 or so years of working life left, and I plan on keeping this train going for the duration of that time. Hopefully God willing in 25 years this will have morphed into some rare early American and European gold and silver that I can cherish in old age and pass on when it's my time to go. Keep going, from humble beginnings and enough time, and rolling your older collection into newer and more choice collections, eventually in a decade or two you could have a very nice collection. You just got to be willing to pivot when you decide it's time for a change, and use your old stuff to barter/exchange into a newer more premium collection and build on top of that slowly until it's time to do it all over again.
For South Africa, I would highly recommend the pre-1960 gold pound and half pound pieces. They're not terribly pricey, but the mintages are very low and you get similar obverse designs to the pre-1933 sovereigns.
Your collection is worth more than what I've got in mine. All the coins I've got, I either found or got in my daily change.
Added an 83 Krugerrand. Was a little grimmy with fingerprints and all, but cleaned up nice in acetone. I'll have to take a good photo of it later with both obverse and reverse, but here is the reverse before the acetone soak. I put it in my new coin pinger and the sound of the coin after pinging was so beautiful. Could still hear it ringing 30+ seconds later. The sound was just as pleasant as the pinging sound from an American Gold Eagle.
