The difficulties of coin collecting on a budget

Managing expectations is important in this hobby. Realize you may never own the finest Lincoln cent or get that token from Panama that someone swiped from you at the last minute with a hydrogen bomb to your atom bomb bid...

Also, if you want a seller to work with you you're going to have to establish a relationship. On eBay this can be hard but not impossible. There was one seller who always dumped a bunch of rare Air Force trade tokens at once and I could never compete on multiple high bids. One day I messaged him and just asked how he was doing this. Well we started talking and I found out he was a retiring Air Force trade token collector and he was trying to sell off his collection. He offered it to me, to buy at me leisure because he would rather sell to a dedicated collector than dealers. It worked out well for me, I'm sorry I didn't ask sooner because I missed out on a lot of very rare tokens. Who knows when they'll come to market! So, if there's a shop in your area, or coin shows, or someone on the forum who deals - start talking and doing business with them and get a relationship going where you both trust another.

 

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US are the most popular in the world measured by the number of collectors, but only because the US probably has more collectors than the rest of the world combined collecting above nominal prices. Due to the price level, I'd say very few collect US coins elsewhere above nominal prices, outside of American expatriates.

Measured by geographical distribution, I'd say British is probably first with ancient Greek and Roman as a probable distant second.

 

Agree.

I was aware of this when I resumed collecting in 1998. I first looked in the Red Book to get an idea of the estimated cost for different series and type coins I wanted in different grades. My financial capacity was more limited at the time, but I quickly realized I would never be able to complete anything from US coinage I considered meaningful.

So I looked in the 19th and 20th century Krause manuals to find what I both liked and appeared to be affordable. (Krause prices are a mostly wrong of course, but I didn't know it at the time.) Today, I almost exclusively buy pillar minors from all mints because I have other financial priorities and the coins cost a lot more than they did.

 

I gave up on COMPLETING a set when I got into Early Large Cents by variety. It's never been done since even Dan Holmes couldn't pry the Unique 1793 NC-5 from the permanent collection of the ANS and it was donated prior to discoveries of new varieties. I just plod along attributing the unattributed and misattributed, taking pleasure with each new find.

 

Have fun at whatever you decide to do, no matter what your budget allows you to do.

 

Numismatics is much more rewarding for those who believe that goals don't have to be attainable to be worthy. The only difference between a goal and a dream is whether or not you choose to seek it.

 

Great advice.