I collected so many coins - but it appears I collected a ton of junk. I want to follow up on an original thought I had. A high quality Type set. Where should I start? Are their honest guys around I can give a budget and rely on honesty to give me the best I can get for that money? I would trade in my "not so great" pieces" Now that I have been looking through my coins and reading alot on this forum - I remeber what brought me into the collecting as a kid. So does any one have an "attack" list? An honest seller and an honest buyer? (Walking on water not required, preferred....LOL) Thanks!!!! Lew
There are a lot of good dealers around in my opinion, but I would not limit myself to one dealer. I have only worked with a couple of dealers for specific coins - local mostly. I would also include heritage, teletrade and some other auction houses into the list. What you can to for the type set is target a coin type - for example nickels, concentrate, look at a lot, pick the best you can afford. Depending on the grades and your skill set - I would stick with NGC and PCGS, but the best you can afford. Study the cost at various grades - some coins will jump a few bucks between grades and others 100's of dollars. So attack them by type in, as Paul says, short runs. Try to build each type as a matching set. Enough mini-runs like that and you endup with a complete type set. Plus you can leave out some of the earlier flowing hair coins. Just my humble opinion.
It sounds like you already have a good number of coins. Organize what you have and see how far along you are already in a type set in a quality that is acceptable to you. This may also help you figure out what type set you want to do and also what you want to sell/trade as well. Good luck. TC
I think the main point here is to get quality coins that you really would enjoy owning and of course, have fun doing it. Bruce
When you get into type sets, you will end up buying some fairly expensive coins. I would buy from a local dealer, where you can examine the coins in hand before purchasing them. There are some decent mail order companies, but I would not drop a lot of money on a coin before seeing it.
Start by defining your type set. Sit down with your Red Book and a reasonable price guide, and map out what you want your type set to be. - What issues - What grades - What varieties Stuff like that. The easiest (and least expensive) start is a 20th (and 21st?) century type set. That's a good way to get your feet wet and gain experience before you start into the more expensive 19th century coins. Answer questions such as: - What is the most I'll pay for any one coin? - Do you want the more expensive coins slabbed? - Do you want one state quarter to represent ALL state quarters or do you want one of each? Lots of other decisions to be made. Keep a list of questions that you have to answer for yourself.
This is the approach I did last year when I blew the dust of my collection from childhood. I had lots and lots of raw circ. coins from my early collecting. The first thing I did was buy a coin inventory software program so I could organize all my stuff, which was fun its self. This way it's easy to see where your holes are and the program also tells you what you need to buy and what the list price values are. I have bought coins from some of the people on this forum, which has always been pleasant and then I have a local coin dealer I go to. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to organize what you have. That helps you to get what you need. I also have been puting all my keepers in coin albums to help preserve them and to also enhance my plesasure by having the ability to look at my varaious sets.
WELCOME TO THE FORUM. My suggestion is to try Google for coin shows in your area. You really can't beat a coin show for education, money savings on coins, coin collecting merchandise, etc. Regardless of what you decide to collect, a coin show is the greatest place to shop. As to your coins being JUNK. You really shouldn't say that. You enjoyed collecting coins and that is what is important, not thier value. Dealers and investors spend a lot of time worrying about values of coins but if your just a collector, then your JUNK is something important.
