post your best coin

Nice coin.

Define "best", though.

If you mean "most valuable", this is mine.

United States: gold 5-dollar half-eagle, Liberty Head type, 1842-D (small date)

 

If, on the other hand, you mean favorite coin, well, that's a bit trickier.

My favorites in my "Box of 20" vary at any given time, but these are arguably my "top three".

They're also among my more valuable coins, but sentimental value and dollar value can be two very different things with me. I have metal detector finds that aren't worth very much money, but are sentimentally priceless to me. This is one of those.

But here are my three favorites that I bought.

Ancient Greece (Kingdom of Macedon), silver "Mercenaries" drachm of King Perseus, ca. 175-170 BC






England (Anglo-Saxon): silver penny of Aethelred II, struck ca. 997-1003 AD






Great Britain: gilt copper proof halfpenny of George III, Soho Mint, 1806






By coincidence or not, that pretty much covers all my coins with four-figure pricetags. Actually the three I just posted here all cost me less than $1K, (each in the $700-750 range, as it happens, but all three are arguably worth more than $1K apiece).

The Dahlonega half-eagle I posted above cost me $2,300, so it is far and away my most monetarily valuable coin, but technically I am more the custodian than the owner of it. I bought it for my daughter, and am just keeping it with my own collection until she wants to sell it for college textbooks or to help pay for her eventual wedding or whatever. She's only 15 now so she won't be getting a car for another year or two, but told me she'd rather I keep the coin for now until college or marriage rolls around later.

 

Here are two other sentimental favorites (the first only worth a couple of bucks).

In forty years, many coins have come and gone with me, but I have managed to keep these two since childhood.

I found the 1936 Mercury dime shown below in my grandmother's sideboard while getting the silverware out to set the table for Thanksgiving dinner on November 25, 1976.

I was excited by the find, because earlier that very day I had found a coin book on one of the shelves in Grandmomma's big old house (one of the cousins had collected coins), and I had looked at pictures of all the old coin types. Until then, I had been unaware of obsolete coin types and for all I knew, Lincoln had been on the pennies forever, and Roosevelt on the dimes. So when I found this old dime with a Winged Liberty on it, it was wonderfully exotic looking to me. Aged not quite eleven at the time, I thought a 40-year-old coin was positively ancient.

Now, next month will be my 40th anniversary as a numismatist, and so I will have owned this coin for forty years. There is a nice symmetry to that.

This is the coin which started my numismatic adventure.

And yes, I still have it.



(It was basically white when I found it in 1976. I probably cleaned it at least once in my young novice collector days. The toning which has resulted since is kind of interesting.)


The only other to remain from my childhood is this 1827 Bust half. I received it for my 11th birthday on December 28, 1976.



(The current plan on this one is to hold on to it until about January, 2027, if I'm still breathing. By then it will be 200 years old and I will have held it for fifty years. I will then pass it on to a deserving grandchild, or, if there is nobody in the family who'd appreciate it enough, I will pick a young collector who I think is likely to want to hold onto it for another fifty years himself or herself.)
I held onto a third piece from my childhood until 1999. It was a prooflike AU58-ish 1878-S Morgan dollar which my (other) grandmother had given me, saying it had come out of my paternal great-grandmother's desk. When my first nephew was born in 1999, I gave it to my sister to hold for him.

 

That's a sweet Morgan you posted. I've had a few in my type set days, but never collected them by date. Since I'm not up to speed with the relative rarity of Morgan dollar dates (though I know about the 1893-S and proof-only 1895-P, of course), I actually looked yours up on the PCGS price guide to see what it was worth. I was surprised. That looks like a lot of coin for the money. The goldish toning is nice.

 

Very nice coin for 54 bucks! I saw PCGS priceguide lists it for $75. You did well!

You will find, as this thread goes on, that being a young collector, you might see some stuff that is far more valuable than your coin there. Do not let that depress you. Every collector has a different budget, and we all have to collect within our means.

I have found that the old "buy the best you can afford" rule stands pretty true.

But one nice thing about this hobby is that anyone can enjoy it, in any budget range. Just remember, when you're looking at other people's "best" (or most valuable) coins, don't feel like your coin(s) are "second best" to anyone else's, just because theirs happen to be worth more money. Your best is what counts. And "most valuable", as previously mentioned, does not automatically mean "best". More undefinable things like eye appeal and history and sentimental value count, too.