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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 1636202, member: 4626&quot;]Ah, but you put &quot;eventually&quot; in parentheses when that&#039;s actually the most important part of the sentence.&nbsp; Eventually doesn&#039;t do you much good if that&#039;s past your lifetime.&nbsp; Unless you hope it&#039;s going to spike due to a fad or optimistic speculation, in which case cash in quick before people quit caring.&nbsp; A coin is only worth what you can find a buyer to pay.&nbsp; Once there&#039;s fewer buyers than coins, the coin won&#039;t be valuable no matter how rare it is.&nbsp; For fun I look through 50 year old redbooks to see what some valuable rarities were worth then.&nbsp; It&#039;s amazing that, even adjusting for inflation, most of them were easily affordable.&nbsp; Hey great, if you hold on to it for 50 years you really got something.&nbsp; But then I&#039;ll be 86 if I&#039;m even still alive.&nbsp; What good does that do me?&nbsp; And what if 50 years from now people decide they still don&#039;t want an Alice Paul coin or an S-minted quarter?&nbsp; What if collector interest actually goes down?&nbsp; (Hey how are those bicentennial quarters doing now?)</p><p><br /></p><p>OK, it&#039;s 1997.&nbsp; The mint puts out a $5 gold uncirculated Jackie Robinson commemorative.&nbsp; Not many people are buying them, maybe people don&#039;t like the design, think it&#039;s too expensive, the collector interest just isn&#039;t there.&nbsp; So the Mint only sells about 5000 of them and melt down the rest they minted.&nbsp; 16 years later the price goes way up, because now it&#039;s rare.&nbsp; Great, you can sell the ones you bought for a lot of money!&nbsp; Well except you didn&#039;t buy them, because 16 years ago you didn&#039;t care either.</p><p><br /></p><p>See where the problem lies?&nbsp; If people think it&#039;s going to be a good investment, people buy a lot of them, the Mint mints a lot of them, and then they don&#039;t go up much in value in the long run because they&#039;re too common.&nbsp; If nobody&#039;s buying them, the Mint doesn&#039;t sell many, they go up in value, but you don&#039;t have one.</p><p><br /></p><p>Or here&#039;s another analogy: Someone prints up a guide book for Disneyland that says Great Thunder Mountain Railroad has the shortest lines at 10 am so that&#039;s the perfect time to go.&nbsp; The book sells millions of copies.&nbsp; You go to that ride at 10am and there&#039;s a line all the way back to the parking lot.&nbsp; What happened?&nbsp; Everyone followed the same advice... which invalidated the advice.&nbsp; Moral of the story:&nbsp; if everyone&#039;s saying a given coin is a good investment, that&#039;s how you know it&#039;s not.&nbsp; Because if everyone&#039;s buying them it means everyone who wants them has them.&nbsp; Why is that 1997 Robinson unc. worth so much?&nbsp; Because 16 years ago nobody was saying to buy it.&nbsp; So think about that when everyone&#039;s saying, hey let&#039;s buy that Alice Paul coin, it will be valuable.&nbsp; Even if that ends up being true you won&#039;t be able to cash in on that sooner than about a generation.&nbsp; Great investment strategy in the LONG run (well unless everyone&#039;s doing it of course).&nbsp; But in the meantime you&#039;re spending your disposable income on coins nobody wants and have no money left for the coins you do want.&nbsp; You&#039;re not collecting in coins; you&#039;re speculating in them.&nbsp; Where&#039;s the fun in that?</p><p><br /></p><p>Am I just off base here?&nbsp; I just can&#039;t see the point in diverting disposable income to buy up coins nobody wants (and thus you probably don&#039;t either) just to get a bunch of money later when you&#039;re too old to enjoy it.&nbsp; Am I just that cynical?&nbsp; Maybe.&nbsp; 20 years from now you&#039;ll be richer than me but I&#039;ll enjoy my collection more.&nbsp; I can live with that.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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