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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3112500, member: 112&quot;]Your question was answered for the most part in the other thread Tim, before the thread went sideways and was locked. But I&#039;ll answer it again, in a slightly different way.</p><p><br /></p><p>To start, you should explain to your son that one should not try to collect coins with profit being the motive for doing so. One should collect coins because they like them, and like collecting them. In other words do it for the pleasure, the joy of doing so. The reason you don&#039;t do it for profit is because 95% of collectors lose money on their collections if and when they sell them. And there really is no way to protect your investment.</p><p><br /></p><p>You can however protect the coins. You do that with proper storage methods. First, you place each coin in a hard plastic coin holder. Air-Tite brand coin holders are the least expensive and they will protect the coins every bit as well as any other coin holder, including the slabs used the TPGs. Second, the coins, in their holders, need to be stored in a sealed container, like a Tupperware container as an example. And inside the container you need to place a rechargeable silica-gel pack to help control and minimize humidity. And the container needs to be stored in a cool, dark, place where the temperature remains fairly constant. That&#039;s how you protect the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for how you tell if a coin should be graded or not, it requires a good deal of experience before one is capable of doing that. You have to be able to grade the coin, correctly and accurately. And you need to be able to that because you must first know the grade before you can determine the value of the coin. Typically, learning how to grade coins takes years, often many years. And a lot of reading, study, and practice. And then you have to know how to look up the value of the coin. You need to know the value because most coins, a great many of them anyway, are not worth grading. Getting a coin graded can cost $30-$40, per coin. That is a considerable expense. So if the coin is not worth several times that much, say at least $100-$150, then as general rule it&#039;s not worth spending the money to have it graded. Now that is the answer to your question. </p><p><br /></p><p>Simply put, those just starting out in the hobby cannot tell if a coin should be graded or not because they lack the skills and experience necessary to do so. There are collectors, a great many collectors even, who have been collecting coins for 30-40 years - and they still cannot grade coins correctly and accurately. So keep that in mind before you start even considering sending coins in to be graded.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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