Christmas advice.

[Guest Coin Queen]

My dad has started collecting coins (which i find very intriguing - not sure how he got into it) - where's good for a novice buyer to purchase something for him for Christmas?

What should I be looking out for?

Cheers.

[Chris Perkins]

Buy an album, some envelopes, coin trays, a book etc etc from the accessory section on http://www.predecimal.com

Lots of people buy Christmas pressies from me.

[kuhli]

If he is fairly new to collecting, I would recommend buying him a book or 2. Education is the key to happy collecting. Too many un-informed novices end up making poor decisions and often lose faith in the hobby.

Unless you know what the focus of his collection is, you would do better buying him supplies (trays, albums, etc).

[krasnaya_vityaz]

Whatever you do, avoid buying coins. The advice you received above is the best around, buy books, supplies etc and let the collector decide what coins they want to buy.

All of us collectors have gotten coin gifts at one time or another, and they often were purchased for too much money, or were of little interests to our collecting tastes.

[mint_mark]

All good advice, especially about not actually buying coins for a collector.

However, people often give me coins that they have saved through the year... new coins from their change or left over currency from a holiday and I always appreciate this.... you never know what you might find! It only really works for "generalist" collectors though.