A question for you advanced types

[declanwmagee]

I'm constantly falling into the trap of assuming everyone collects with exactly the same methodology as me, so I wonder if you advanced types could clarify how you do it..

I see all these lovely coins being discussed here - and that 1909 dot penny is a good example, and I wonder, have you completely finished with lesser coins, have you tucked away a full set of Elizabeth II in BU, and that's that dealt with. Have you got rid of them? Did you ever inhabit that area or did you go straight into the serious stuff?

If you saw a BU 1954 florin, for instance, would you still take a look, or are you past all that now?

Just thinking aloud really...

[Colin G.]

If you saw a BU 1954 florin, for instance, would you still take a look, or are you past all that now?

I would never have stopped at it anyway, never got the cupronickel/silver bug Oh apart from the hammered farthings

But in response to the principle of the question.....if for example I had an amount to spend on coins, I would always look for a single coin to fit in my collection for that price rather than a handful of more modern ones, my reasoning has always been that I can always fill the later gaps in at a later date, because they are plentiful, but finding the right looking earlier farthing is not so easy.

I have recently obtained a small farthing collection and compare the later BU dates with my own to see of they are that bit better/stronger strike, because each collection obtained tends to have the later dates in better grades, it always seemed mad to me to actively purchase a 1956 farthing, when I know I will come across many over time, and will just keep replacing them with the best one I come across......does that make sense?

[1949threepence]

With the exception of my brass threepence collection, I've got nothing beyond 1936. Although I do plan on getting all the pennies up to 1951, simply to get the 1950 & 51 examples.

But no, a 1954 florin would not do it for me, even if BU.

[Rob]

If I see a coin that has a feature I wish to see represented in the collection then I will get it irrespective of whether it is ancient, modern, cheap or expensive as long as it is affordable. As a result, I have a 2008 penny representing copper plated steel sitting quite happily between a bi-metallic Moore model halfpenny and a Victorian pattern decimal 1/2d as my cupro-nickel example. In the case of the first item the value of the coin ticket is considerably in excess of the value of the coin. Nothing is too mundane to consider.

[£400 for a Penny ?]

I'm constantly falling into the trap of assuming everyone collects with exactly the same methodology as me, so I wonder if you advanced types could clarify how you do it..

I see all these lovely coins being discussed here - and that 1909 dot penny is a good example, and I wonder, have you completely finished with lesser coins, have you tucked away a full set of Elizabeth II in BU, and that's that dealt with. Have you got rid of them? Did you ever inhabit that area or did you go straight into the serious stuff?

If you saw a BU 1954 florin, for instance, would you still take a look, or are you past all that now?

Just thinking aloud really...

The only area I'm advanced in is the size of my stomach, but I only collect about uncircultated pennies with as much lustre as possible, and I mean as much as possible and if it's not quite there, then I don't buy it. I am very comfortable with holes in my collection, they don't stress me.

Hasn't always been this way, I came into the hobby via a Piedfort silver proof £1 over ten years ago, collected them for a year or so, then saw them for what they were, collected sovereigns as I gradually became more confident spending larger sums of money, then I flirted with hammered gold before realising that I could never afford that and finally settled on bronze pennies because they have everything;

1. They are the coin of the people and have much history.

2. In full lustre they match gold for appearance.

3. They are an interesting series with great, large portraiture.

4. A normal person can afford them, mostly.

5. They are plentiful(ish)

To be honest, I've never been interested whether the tip of the trident points to a tooth or a gap, I'm not really a numismatist, more of a fine art collector but in coins.

I've got an (A) collection and a B collection, but the B collection isn't very big - a dozen pennies or so, where I either made a mistake or was inpatient. I do exactly what you did on that big table, the difference is, I can do it on my desk. Only my 1915 isn't uncirculated with MOY lustre and I haven't bought a coin so far this year.

I have a fund, a penny fund and I wait. I need 6 pennies in tip top to sign off 1900-1936 by year and not type (type is optional I'm the sole judge of whether I should or should not have a KN or H or ME for instance) I can ignore type if I want to, but not an example of date. These are my rules.

I have 3 pre 1900's and part of me dreads finishing the post 1900 series, even a complete date run in UNC with lustre might not be achievable now.

So I wait, Declan, I wait. I bid £25 for that lovely 1910 (which I didn't need and didn't win, but look at it) so £25 goes into the fund and I wait.

I've got nothing but admiration for what the likes of you and Scott do, you're much more useful to the hobby than me, but we each must be to our own.

I'm currently practising breathing through my ears - aids waiting evidently, haven't quite mastered it yet.

Rgds,

[declanwmagee]

...if for example I had an amount to spend on coins, I would always look for a single coin to fit in my collection for that price rather than a handful of more modern ones, my reasoning has always been that I can always fill the later gaps in at a later date, because they are plentiful, but finding the right looking earlier farthing is not so easy.

....does that make sense?

Colin, I think you may have shone a bit of a torch on where I'm struggling! I can't seem to get past the level I'm at now, and it's not for lack of spending any money...I spend tons of the stuff on coins, but only money that is earned from coins (PayPal, to be precise - I could never really justify spending sweat-earned cash on them). Conseqently, it's dead easy to identify "an amount to spend on coins" as you put it, I'd just look at my PayPal balance. The bit you've clarified for me is quality rather than quantity. If I've got say, £30 to spend, normally I'd try and fill as many "shop-gaps" as I could with that - the logic being that if a punter is looking for a specific coin, that's what he'll search for, and his search results will bring up a list of examples from different sellers. If I'm not in that list, there's no chance he'll pick me. So I've been going for breadth rather than depth.

I think, in future, if I've got £30 to spend, I ought to go and find a coin that I need for as close to £30 as I can get. I can spend the change getting commoner shop-gaps filled. Means I have to shake off the bargain hunter mentality though.

You know how you sometimes miss something fundamental when you've been doing it the same way for so long...

[1949threepence]

I'm constantly falling into the trap of assuming everyone collects with exactly the same methodology as me, so I wonder if you advanced types could clarify how you do it..

I see all these lovely coins being discussed here - and that 1909 dot penny is a good example, and I wonder, have you completely finished with lesser coins, have you tucked away a full set of Elizabeth II in BU, and that's that dealt with. Have you got rid of them? Did you ever inhabit that area or did you go straight into the serious stuff?

If you saw a BU 1954 florin, for instance, would you still take a look, or are you past all that now?

Just thinking aloud really...

The only area I'm advanced in is the size of my stomach, but I only collect about uncircultated pennies with as much lustre as possible, and I mean as much as possible and if it's not quite there, then I don't buy it. I am very comfortable with holes in my collection, they don't stress me.

Hasn't always been this way, I came into the hobby via a Piedfort silver proof £1 over ten years ago, collected them for a year or so, then saw them for what they were, collected sovereigns as I gradually became more confident spending larger sums of money, then I flirted with hammered gold before realising that I could never afford that and finally settled on bronze pennies because they have everything;

1. They are the coin of the people and have much history.

2. In full lustre they match gold for appearance.

3. They are an interesting series with great, large portraiture.

4. A normal person can afford them, mostly.

5. They are plentiful(ish)

To be honest, I've never been interested whether the tip of the trident points to a tooth or a gap, I'm not really a numismatist, more of a fine art collector but in coins.

I've got an (A) collection and a B collection, but the B collection isn't very big - a dozen pennies or so, where I either made a mistake or was inpatient. I do exactly what you did on that big table, the difference is, I can do it on my desk. Only my 1915 isn't uncirculated with MOY lustre and I haven't bought a coin so far this year.

I have a fund, a penny fund and I wait. I need 6 pennies in tip top to sign off 1900-1936 by year and not type (type is optional I'm the sole judge of whether I should or should not have a KN or H or ME for instance) I can ignore type if I want to, but not an example of date. These are my rules.

I have 3 pre 1900's and part of me dreads finishing the post 1900 series, even a complete date run in UNC with lustre might not be achievable now.

So I wait, Declan, I wait. I bid £25 for that lovely 1910 (which I didn't need and didn't win, but look at it) so £25 goes into the fund and I wait.

I've got nothing but admiration for what the likes of you and Scott do, you're much more useful to the hobby than me, but we each must be to our own.

I'm currently practising breathing through my ears - aids waiting evidently, haven't quite mastered it yet.

Rgds,

Fantastic post. I take my proverbial hat off to you, 400.

I echo so much of what you say, especially the bit about waiting. Because that's the great thing about our hobby. You might complete half of a date run, wait 50 years, and then complete the other half, with absolutely no change to the original half collected. To me, that is the enduring beauty of our hobby.

Respect & kudos to you for being your own man, and relentlessly pursuing the hobby as you personally envision it, and not through the lens of what "types" are currently fashionable.

[Peckris]

Phew! Quite a question.

The answer is that my collecting has evolved over the years : not so much on an even curve but in fits and starts, ...

1. A schoolboy in the late 60s, I collected from change, plus the occasional purchase where pocket money would allow.

2. A lump sum inheritance in the mid-70s allowed me to 'drop back in' and I bought quite a few things I could only have dreamed of as a schoolboy, such as some Geo V in Unc, a few Ed VII bronzes also Unc, and the odd earlier coin

3. Later, an annual Xmas trip into the city saw me stock up on a few coins from a dealer

However, the big step was when I dabbled in dealing (small time) : then I could go to auctions and buy lots for selling on, plunder them for my own collection, and go after some lots purely for 'me'. That's where the best 80% of my collection came from. Since I retired from that, I've dipped into eBay a few times, but nothing serious or big time.

The biggest collecting change for me, was turning away from date collecting towards type collecting, which was a radical change.

I suppose I haven't stopped, and I do have an album of what I'd call 'trivia' - coins I collected in an earlier period, or just plain 'not up to going in a cabinet' coins from lots, which maybe attracted me without being in any way significant. And that's the clue? It's what attracts me that counts. I'd spend more time sighing over a GEF 1933 sixpence with attractive toning, than I would over a BU 1816 shilling with nothing particular to mark it out from the herd.

As for that 1954 florin ... they ARE rare and if I found one at the right price I'd be tempted. But there is no way I would pay book price as I consider them unattractive at that price. In general, there would have to be something rather special about Elizabeth II or George VI to attract me nowadays, now that my type collection of those reigns in BU is complete. So yes - filed away, 'done that', rarely brought out these days.

[Leviathan]

My collecting has always been coincidental... Only now, after 20 odd years, have I even thought of of looking beyond Belfast, and thinking about going for specific coins.

To me it has, and is, all about having that wee bit of history in my hand, and talking to me younger (and older) friends and family about the times and people of the coins life. Little works of art.

As long as I can keep that balance, even though actively 'looking' now, I will be a happy AmNum for the rest of my days.

[declanwmagee]

My collecting has always been coincidental... Only now, after 20 odd years, have I even thought of of looking beyond Belfast, and thinking about going for specific coins.

To me it has, and is, all about having that wee bit of history in my hand, and talking to me younger (and older) friends and family about the times and people of the coins life. Little works of art.

As long as I can keep that balance, even though actively 'looking' now, I will be a happy AmNum for the rest of my days.

I'm such an obsessive neurotic I hve to have a system for everything, and coin collecting lends itself beautifully to that. I even have a system for digging the allotment. Then you can constantly review the results and adjust the system, see if that works. I'd feel helpless doing it by instinct!

[Sylvester]

I'm constantly falling into the trap of assuming everyone collects with exactly the same methodology as me, so I wonder if you advanced types could clarify how you do it..

I see all these lovely coins being discussed here - and that 1909 dot penny is a good example, and I wonder, have you completely finished with lesser coins, have you tucked away a full set of Elizabeth II in BU, and that's that dealt with. Have you got rid of them? Did you ever inhabit that area or did you go straight into the serious stuff?

If you saw a BU 1954 florin, for instance, would you still take a look, or are you past all that now?

Just thinking aloud really...

Hmm a difficult one, it depends what you mean as lesser coins? If you meant modern ,then I'm afraid I view most things since 1816 as modern but that's only because I spent a good time with earlier material, which have a different feel, they don't feel modern. If you stack a pile of shillings dating from 1816-1966 in a pile the only difference is the silver ones are generally lighter and the milling on the cupro-nickel ones is closer.

About the florin, well I have a fondness for florins of all types but I wouldn't want to pay a lot for anything struck from 1920 onwards (when the silver was debased). Cupro-nickel coins generally aren't as attractive as their silver counterparts in my opinion, in one way simply from an aesthetic point of view, silver is softer and the details appear sharper. The other thing is I simply just like silver in and of itself, moreso than gold.

[Colin G.]

I'm such an obsessive neurotic I hve to have a system for everything, and coin collecting lends itself beautifully to that. I even have a system for digging the allotment. Then you can constantly review the results and adjust the system, see if that works. I'd feel helpless doing it by instinct!

That sounds just like me!! I think that is one of the reasons for the die comparisons and variety chasing because the project will inevitably always be endless.