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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;IdesOfMarch01, post: 2340536, member: 39084&quot;]While I&#039;m not sure that I understand the OP&#039;s intended question/topic for this thread, I have a number of personal and general insights and comments that may be relevant.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, my personal reasons for collecting ancient coins rather than modern coins (which I collected in grade school and junior high school) are primarily for the history and beauty/artistry of the coins.&nbsp; The former criteria can be fulfilled reasonably with many ancient coins in fine+ condition.&nbsp; The latter criteria, however, is fulfilled better with coins that are in VF+ through FDC condition, for reasons so obvious they don&#039;t need further explanation.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m fortunate in having the financial wherewithal to acquire mostly EF coins, but I would still collect ancient coins for their history even if I couldn&#039;t afford EF coins.&nbsp; Even so, most collectors will prefer to acquire a coin in the best condition they can afford, <b>all other things being equal</b>.&nbsp; This makes sense -- why would you choose the lower quality of two coins that were approximately the same price within your budget?</p><p><br /></p><p>There is also a &quot;numismatic&quot; reason I collect ancient coins -- namely the idea of coins themselves, their denominations, how they were used in ancient, everyday commerce/living, how they were minted, how they fluctuated in size, weight, and metal fineness during the era of the issuing authorities, etc.&nbsp; While this is a secondary reason for me, for many collectors on this site it may be the primary reason that they collect.&nbsp; For these collectors, condition may be less of a criteria for their purchase of certain coins, and they may prefer to allocate their coin budget to purchasing multiple lower-priced coins rather than just a few higher-priced coins.&nbsp; This is also perfectly sensible.</p><p><br /></p><p>If I collected mostly for numismatic reasons, I would pay little or no attention to the increase or decrease in value of my collection.&nbsp; I would, however, pay attention to the effect of inflation, and the number of collectors, on the prices and availability of the coins that I wanted to acquire.&nbsp; Any collector would prefer to acquire his/her desired coins at the best price possible, even if you don&#039;t care about the eventual value of your collection.</p><p><br /></p><p>My particular view about inflation and the number of collectors is a bit different from some of the other posts in this thread.&nbsp; I see no possibility that the value of ancient coins, even those in F condition, will ever substantially decline if inflation continues -- at least over a medium/long period of time (i.e., a decade or so).&nbsp; This is because I see little or no possibility that the number of collectors of ancients will decline over the same period of time.&nbsp; While it may seem that there are fewer collectors now than 10 or 20 years ago, I doubt this is the case.&nbsp; The rising population of the world as a whole, the increasing financial well-being of the developed countries, and the Internet as a medium for sharing collections and interests, all combine to make collecting more widely shared and serves to draw in new collectors.&nbsp; I don&#039;t have any statistics to validate these assertions, so I&#039;d be interested if anyone else can cite reliable data that studies the number of collectors and the trend during the last few decades.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition, the highest quality ancient coins of their type will always increase in price, except in the rare circumstances of either a hoard find that floods the market with similar coins, or if the coin was the object of a bidding war that escalated its price far beyond its current value.&nbsp; Similarly, second-tier coins will also rise in proportion to their value relative to top-tier coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>I would think that F to F+ coins would, over the long term, mostly keep up with inflation, but again I cannot validate this assertion with any hard statistics.</p><p><br /></p><p>Let&#039;s acknowledge it -- most of us on this site would prefer that our collections at least keep up with inflation (minus the premium we may have paid to the dealer from whom the coin was purchased) even if we never envision selling any coins, but for all of us that&#039;s not the reason we&#039;re ancient coin collectors.&nbsp; Always buy and collect coins you like, and in the best condition that your budget allows.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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