your opinion about a variety, grade, or value, you must be honest in your response (if you choose to answer) but you can’t call yourself a pro or expert. With numismatic expertise, a pro is expected to charge a a fee or work out a fair deal to handle the sale of the coin. In any case,always tell the truth. You’ll develop a wonderful reputation as an honest numismatist, and you’ll be able to sleep soundly at night.
Mix and mingle
The best thing you can do as a beginning collector is hook up with someone who is already involved in numismatics as a dealer or collector. A good adviser can demonstrate to you the fine points of coin collecting and show you coins that you might not otherwise see. Many old-time collectors have plenty of great stories about the coins they’ve owned, the coins they regret not buying, the wonderful people they’ve met along the way, and their experiences at coin shows and in coin shops. What most old-time collectors don’t have is someone who’s willing to sit down and listen to them, so your desire to find out more may be rewarded by some eager mentoring.
Facebook groups: There are too many to count, so start here.
Coin clubs: Attend local coin club meetings to get together with other collectors in your area.
Coin shops: Visit all the coin dealers in your area at least once to see how they deal with you on a personal level. Stick with the ones you like.
Coin shows: Take a day off to go to local coin shows. Meet new collectors and dealers from outside your area, and choose among lots of interesting coins. Don’t forget to bring your kids.
Educational seminars: Most major coin shows host educational seminars, presented by expert numismatists, on a wide range of subjects. You can find out about pioneer gold, U.S. fiscal paper, Civil War tokens, the history of the U.S. Mint, and much more. Use the question-and-answer period to get to know the experts and to pick their brains.
The American Numismatic Association’s Summer Seminar: Attend the American Numismatic Association (ANA)’s Summer Seminar at its headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Each year, ANA offers weeklong courses on a variety of useful subjects; past courses have included “Grading U.S. Coins,” “Coin Photography,” “Detection of Counterfeit and Altered U.S. Coins,” and “Rarities from Shipwrecks.” Class sizes are limited, and attendees have full access to the instructors. You can’t get any closer to the experts than this!
Specialty clubs: Join a specialty club. Meet collectors who share your interests by joining specialty clubs such as the Bust Half Nut Club (https://www.busthalfprices.com/bhnc.php), Early American Coppers (http://eacs.org), and the Colonial Coin Collectors Club (https://colonialcoins.org). Also, be sure to attend their annual meetings, usually held in conjunction with the ANA’s annual convention.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Many coin dealers and most collectors are extremely helpful people who are willing to answer your questions. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as a stupid question in numismatics; we were all beginners at one time. That said, don’t expect to walk up to a coin dealer at a busy show and strike up a conversation, either: A busy dealer can’t drop everything they’re doing at a coin show to answer an intricate question. Be considerate of the dealer’s time.
Affecting a Coin’s Value
One of the greatest misconceptions about coins concerns their value. Given a choice, many noncollectors will pick a 2,000-year-old Roman denarius over a U.S. $20 gold piece any day, even though the denarius is worth $50 compared with $2,000 for the $20 gold piece (see Figure 3-1). Age seems to be an important factor to noncollectors; in their minds, the older a coin is, the more valuable it must be. Therefore, a 2,000-year-old coin must be worth a million bucks! Nothing could be further from the truth.
FIGURE 3-1: Roman denarius (left) or $20 gold piece (right): Which do you prefer?
Age: Good for wine, good for coins?
Age has little or no effect on the value of a coin. Many coins from the past 20 years are much more valuable than coins from 2,000 years ago. Certainly, time allows coins to become better dispersed throughout the collecting community and the world, making them a little more difficult to find. But just because a coin is old doesn’t mean that it’s rare or valuable.
Condition: Pumping them up
The condition of a coin is a hugely important factor in determining its price. The difference in a single point on the grading scale can equate to a difference of thousands of dollars in value. Because of the intense competition to own the finest known example of a given date, a large premium can be attached to the very best coins.
Take the 1953-S Franklin half dollar as an example. This coin is very common in low grades, worth perhaps only the value of the silver it contains. Even in Uncirculated condition, you can buy a nice-looking example for around $100. But well-struck, high-grade examples are extremely rare and more valuable. How valuable? In January 2001, the finest certified 1953-S Franklin half dollar came on the market and sold at auction for a whopping $69,000! If you think that price is crazy, you may very well be right, but remember that at least one underbidder wanted the coin almost as badly as the winner did.
When Dr. William Sheldon devised his 70-point pricing scale with numismatist Walter Breen in the 1940s, he noticed that price and condition followed each other rather closely (at least, in the large cents he collected and studied). Sheldon saw that collectors considered the finest example of any date to be worth 70 times the value of the worst example. A Very Fine example may be worth 20 to 30 times the value of the worst example, and an About Uncirculated coin may be worth 50 to 55 times as much. Using this information, Sheldon and Breen created a scale to show the relationship between the grades and prices of large cents. Later, the coin market morphed this pricing scale into a grading system that was applied to other series of U.S. coins, even though inflation had already destroyed the relationship between price and condition. Today, the Sheldon-Breen grading scale is the bedrock of U.S. numismatics, and the number 70 is universally recognized as the pinnacle of quality.
THE HOARD FACTOR
A hoard is a large group of coins, usually discovered many years after they were made, coming onto the market at the same time.
In the 1960s, the 1903-O silver dollar (struck at the New Orleans mint) was considered to be one of the great rarities of the Morgan dollar series despite a mintage of 4,450,000 pieces. For some reason, there simply weren’t enough coins to supply collector demand. Then, one day, the U.S. Treasury Department discovered a hoard of 1903-O silver dollars while cleaning out its vaults. Overnight, the price of a 1903-O silver dollar plunged as the supply