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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;jmferris, post: 2412454, member: 78421&quot;]Interesting topic.&nbsp; Personally, I have to agree with Conder101, in that a good financial advisor is key.&nbsp; There is nothing wrong with coins as an investment, but like any long-term investment plan, diversity in your holdings/portfolio is critical.&nbsp; There are more deterministic factors in getting a return from coins than there are in more traditional holdings, such as mutual funds or managed investment plans.&nbsp; I spent years working for a combination of stockbrokers and hedge funds, writing software to manage the various aspects of their businesses.&nbsp; There is so much minutia that goes into their decision-making, and expressing that in code was always a challenge.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personally, I find the &quot;value&quot; of coins to be best used for insurance valuations for a replacement value.&nbsp; Regardless of value, there has to be a market for them when the time comes to sell them.&nbsp; That market is going to be driven both by the economy and the state of the hobby, itself.&nbsp; Ultimately, you will be selling to collectors, dealers, or others who are investing.&nbsp; But sometimes, markets change or the bottom falls out completely.&nbsp; Look at the sports card market, especially baseball cards.&nbsp; Back into the late 80s, it was not uncommon to see dealers selling for full value, and easily getting it.&nbsp; Today, well, not so much.&nbsp; For multiple reasons, that same market just still is not there.&nbsp; What is there now, can be had at a sizable &quot;discount&quot; from book value.</p><p><br /></p><p>I do not have nearly the collection that a lot of people on here have, but it is growing.&nbsp; While I do have a targeted area that I am collecting, I consider myself a &quot;bargain hunter&quot;, where I constantly try to get the best deal that I can, even if that means passing up a good deal while I wait for a better one.&nbsp; The market really dictates that I can do this today, as it is not uncommon for me to pick things up for between 15% to 30% of value.&nbsp; Even then, I see the same exact coin, with the same exact grade, that a dealer has for 60% of value and it will not move for months and months.&nbsp; That is going to be another consideration.&nbsp; Regardless of what the actual value is, and even if you can get a decent enough margin to make it worth it, you have to consider whether you are going to be looking to unload them rapidly, or if you will have the time (and resources) to wait for the right buyers to come along.</p><p><br /></p><p>In all truthfulness, I do look at trends of the coins that I am purchasing quite often, but that is more out of curiosity than for investment potential.&nbsp; More often than not, I find that I kick myself for taking the hiatus from the hobby that I did, because I could have picked a lot of this stuff up at a fraction of the cost that I am today.&nbsp; At the same time, I am still seeing things that have been flat so long that inflation has made them a wash, at best.</p><p><br /></p><p>tl;dr;&nbsp; Diversify, diversify, seek the sound advice of a financial planner, and then diversify some more.&nbsp; That way, if any one of your investment strategies falls flat, you can absorb the hit in the other portions of your portfolio.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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