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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 1149832, member: 66&quot;]How should you collect?&nbsp; You need to decide what you like, what collection or series really interests you and concentrate on it.&nbsp; Read all you can on that series.&nbsp; Study the grading guides (ANA Official Grading guide, Photograde,&nbsp; PCGS Grading guide, and PCGS Photograde) so you know how to grade that coin.&nbsp; f you can attend some coin shows so you can see a wide range of coins, meet some other collectors, maybe get a chance to see both original and cleaned coins so you can start learning to recognize the difference.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once you have done all that, will that keep you from making bad buys?&nbsp; No. (This is the voice of experience speaking)&nbsp; But it will mean you will make fewer of them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Further advice, don&#039;t collect with the idea of future investment.&nbsp; Most people that try to buy for investment don&#039;t do very well and often lose money.&nbsp; Those who collect for enjoyment and do so with a discerning eye tend to do much better.&nbsp; They may not make a lot but they tend to at least pretty much hold their own.&nbsp; Not to mention that a collection that gives you personal enjoyment returns dividends that a collection you don&#039;t enjoy and which you are constantly worried about the value of never will.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unsearched lots.&nbsp; These are best avoided.&nbsp; You make the comment&nbsp; &quot;500 unsearched wheat pennys and not a single key date?&quot;&nbsp; Consider this, they made something like 150 billion wheat cents.&nbsp; Suppose you took the entire coinage, including ALL of the key date pieces and packaged them up at random into 500 coin lots.&nbsp; then you selected one of those lots at random.&nbsp; What is the chance that that bag would have even a fairly common semi key like a 12-S in it?&nbsp; 1 in 68.&nbsp; In other word you would have to go through 68 of those 500 coin lots to be fairly sure of finding a 12-S.&nbsp; For a 14-D you would have to go through 241 lots.&nbsp; An SVDB 620 lots.&nbsp; And even these figures are wild overestimates because we made the assumption that all of the key date coins struck would be available when we made up the lots.&nbsp; Instead we know that most of the keys have already been pulled out before the 500 coin lots were made up.&nbsp; So lets be generous and say that you would have to buy ten times as many lots to be sure of getting those keys, and lets say you are only paying the going rate of three cents per coin that common wheats bring.&nbsp; You will spend $93,000 to get that low grade SVDB.&nbsp; $36,000 for the 14-D.&nbsp; Even if all the keys were still in the original mix that 14-D out of 241 lots would still cost $3,600.</p><p><br /></p><p>Buying new coins from the mint (Mint sets, Proof sets, Commemoratives)&nbsp; Buy them if you like them I guess, but be aware that MOST items the Mint sells eventually drop in the aftermarket.&nbsp; Some time dropping significantly and usually below issue price.&nbsp; Usually you can come out ahead if you can wait a few years (Sometimes ten years or more) and buy them on the aftermarket.&nbsp; On the other hand sometimes you can make good money if you buy from the mint and then immediately turn around and resell the coins on ebay.&nbsp; A word or warning though, this usually only works if you are luck enough to get an early delivery of a popular item.&nbsp; Buy an unpopular item or get delivery after the peak frenzy and you may be left stuck holding a money loser.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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