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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ycon, post: 3326071, member: 91771&quot;]<b><b>- What metrics do you choose to add coins ?</b></b></p><p><br /></p><p>At the moment I have four active collecting themes. My primary focus is on coins with dies engraved by Renaissance artists-- Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Francia, Leone Leoni etc. These coins are all rare and expensive. Since my budget is quite limited, acquiring these is based on availability and price. Condition has to remain a secondary concern, although I don&#039;t want anything worse than about VF. </p><p><br /></p><p>My other collecting areas are coins of powerful women and openly of gay rulers or with gay themes and small greek silver. For these, price is also a major factor because I want to dedicate as much of my budget as I can to the much pricier Renaissance issues. I have focused more on acquiring the rarer ones when they become available than finding the right examples of the common ones. For more common coins or coins that I am interested in buying eventually I keep extensive watchlists on numisbids, sixbid, and biddr. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><b>- Do you have a rough size of a collection in mind (10, 100, 5000, 1000, 50,000 coins?)</b></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I have an small abafil case with 20 spots in it for my main collection of Renaissance coins. Due to the rarity and expense of the coins that seems like a good target number for me. I currently have 9 coins in there. There are 5 more on my wantlist that are current targets, a dozen or so more that I would love to have but don&#039;t know if there will ever be examples that I can afford, and maybe another 5 or so more common coins that I may choose to add if the price/example is right. My other collections all seem to also have goals (at the moment) of about twenty coins. I don&#039;t have an upper limit set, but I don&#039;t anticipate having more than 150-200. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><b>- Do you work off of a &quot;wantlist&quot;? How has your wantlist changed over time? How rigid are you with following your wantlist and plans?</b></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I have a wantlist for each of my subcollections. If I find a new coin that fits the collection I&#039;ll add it to the wantlist (sometimes even after having purchased it-- just for the satisfaction of crossing it off). I also have general wantlists for potential future subcollections (islamic coins, baroque papal coins, signed greek coins, coins of Hadrian relating to Egypt). I try to be rigid about adhering to it because otherwise I don&#039;t have the funds for the Renaissance issues when they become available. </p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>- What&#039;s the longest you&#039;ve waited to find a coin you&#039;ve wanted? How long have you been waiting for your current target?</b></p><p><br /></p><p>This is a tricky question to answer. I waited about 6 years before buying my first Cellini coin, but that was based on money more than availability. My current target I&#039;ve been waiting for for just about a year. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>- What portion of purchases do you make privately vs from auctions?</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I tallied up my purchases from the last year: 25% ebay, 37.5% auctions, 37.5% vcoins/ma/other dealers </p><p><br /></p><p><b>- How often do you handle your coins or look at your pictures?</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I handle my coins a couple times a week and look at pictures daily. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>- How much time do you spend searching for lost pedigrees?</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Very little. I&#039;d like to get a hold of some old italian catalogues to look for my main pieces in. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>- How many books/catalogs do you own or have easy access to?</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I do most of my research online using lots of public domain and database sources. I have only three honest-to-god coin books.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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