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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 3024876, member: 74282&quot;]If you&#039;re not comfortable with the fact that you might lose money on your coins then collecting ancients may not be the hobby for you, unfortunately. Collectors&#039; interests change, hoard finds make rare types become less rare, laws change, new research casts doubt on old attributions(i.e. a coin previously thought to be Cleopatra VII might not be), all sorts of things lead coins to change in price. Sometimes coins become more valuable, other times they become less valuable. Then when you actually buy and sell coins the auction houses take fees out of both ends of the transaction, so as a buyer you pay a 10%-25% buyers fee on the hammer price and generally as a seller you will get charged a similar fee from the hammer price unless your collection is of sufficient average value and whatnot that an auction house is willing to lessen or perhaps drop the seller fees for you entirely. This isn&#039;t to say that necessarily all the money you spend on coins is flushed down the toilet but at the same time, if you buy a coin for $500 and seeing a similar one sell five years later for $400 will give you anxiety, perhaps consider another hobby or consider changing your spending habits so that if you lose money on a coin it&#039;s not going to bother you as much.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personally, my coin collection is simply a line item in my budget and I treat it the same as I might treat a nice dinner at a good restaurant. Price is important as it informs what I can purchase and what I cannot and because I have to look at the opportunity cost when buying but I don&#039;t really worry too much about resale value and I&#039;d probably have skipped many of my favorite coins if I did. And if, whenever my collection goes across the auction block I or my descendants lose money on them, oh well, I enjoyed the coins for the time I owned them and even if I never see a dollar of return from my collection it was worth it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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