PURE collector? ...... or Investor/speculator-ish?

topstuf

Would you enjoy your collection if it were guaranteed to drop in price at a steady 5% APR?
Would you add more as it dropped if you knew prices would keep falling with no end in sight?

What if a lab discovered a molecular duplicator that made PERFECT counterfeits? Perfect in EVERY respect. Down to exact chemical composition so oxidation would be duplicated exactly as the subject being copied. Even to the surface marks or lack of.

Gotta stop wit dese lazy afternoons. Think too much.

nwcs

>Would you enjoy your collection if it were guaranteed to drop in price at a steady 5% APR?


Depends, would it end at 0 value?

cladking

I'd put off more purchases than I do now.

mgoodm3

I would probably buy less expensive coins. If there was a coin replicators out there, it would be great. Everybody could have tonecoin2003's latest creations.

topstuf

nwcs....



<< <i>Depends, would it end at 0 value? >>



LUVVIT!

NO!.......After it hit zero, you would have to PAY to keep a penny book.

aem4162

i don't care what my collection is worth. i enjoy the beauty of the coins. the sentimental coins are priceless, of course

investing/speculating ruin any hobby imo

tmot99

I would change some of the coins that I buy. In general, I look for nice coins and don't mind spending the money on them. There are other coins that are nice, but aren't in my general interest. I may buy those because of value and hopes that they increase. For example, I am not a big Lincoln collector, yet I have a 1931-S in MS65RD. I couldn't pass it up.

As far as the replicator theory, let me have them. The prices of the real ones would probably drop and you couldn't tell the difference. I'ld be buying more. I am budget limited now and the replicator would lower prices so I could get the stuff I want.

BBN

Collector plain and simple. I don't care about ther value unless I discovered I had one worth a million $$$

numonebuyer

collector all the way.

FrattLaw

Collector -- I could careless of the value. I don't even keep track of prices paid or if I sell a coin, what it sold for.

Michael

Shamika

Yes, I would enjoy my collection regardless of it's future value.

No, I would not continue to purchase coins knowing that they'd drop in value. I'd wait a few years until the value was insignificant for me to pay.

If a coin could be perfectly cloned, I'd quickly loose interested in collecting. I like the idea of REAL history.

291fifth

I'd dump it as fast as possible. I'm too old to fool around with bad investments.

airplanenut

<< <i>Depends, would it end at 0 value? >>

Couldn't

Although the values will approach zero, they'll never make it

morganbarber

If you have never read any of the Travers books, there is one section of one of his books where he talks about speculators, dealers, hoarders, investors, collectors, etc. One need not be purely any one of these. Most people involved in coins are a mixture. He goes on to say that the ones who do the best, financially, are always at least part collector. The collectors passion and appreciation of nice coins always works to his advantage. I am a true collector and desire never to sell any of my babies. (except, perhaps after upgrading) That would change if I knew for certain that I would be losing 5% every year forever. Fortunately, that model is silly. My coins will always be worth around what I paid for them, if not more. Perhaps, a lot more. Only my heirs will ever know.

mrearlygold

All of the above.

Dealer

Tom

FatMan

I am a pure collector. Are you actually suggesting that my collection might be worth something in the future? Hmmmm....that thought never crossed my mind.

razorface1027

Would you enjoy your collection if it were guaranteed to drop in price at a steady 5% APR?

Yes! However, it would depend on what type of a collection. Simplified:..Big $ or Little$

Would you add more as it dropped if you knew prices would keep falling with no end in sight?

Refer to the answer in query#1

oreville

A better question would be if you would have bought your home if you knew it would drop 5% in value every year?

Sure, some of us own trailers and at the very least, they hold their value.

haletj

No, I wouldn't enjoy my collection as is at all, but I'd sell it and start collecting coins by date from pocket change, and I'd enjoy that.

alergar

If the values fell it would give me a better chance to fill some holes in my colections. I am just trying to get me collections complete if they go up in value thats a bonus!!! I plan on leaving them to my nephew and niece anyways!!!

earlwbollinger

I don't think it would be a problem at first.
Mainly the cost of replicating something would be extremely high.
So high that it would cost millions at first.
Even thinking about a Star Trek transporter doing this is still expensive, as they don't show or tell you about how much energy it used to perform the operation.
So if something like this really comes about, it would cot maybe $32,000,000.00 to replicate 1803 dollar for example.

I remember a number of years ago someone had brought in a rare coin to PCGS and they were able to determine that it had been stolenmany years earlier.
The coin had been well documented so much that one could identify the tiny marks and scratches on it as unique to that coin specifically.
Thus really rare coins suddeny showing up would set of alot of alarm bells as to why they match some special museum or rare collection piece.

I think we still have a few hundred years before anything comes outlike that, thatis cost effective.
But then you'd run a quantum particle scan to detemine it's real age.

Jody526

Yes, I will always enjoy my coins (as well as all my other numismatica) regardless of their future market value. I've never sold a coin, but I have enjoyed giving some away from time to time.
Actually, some of my favorites are the ones that cost me very little, and will probably never be worth much more than I paid for them.

No, I would have no interest in coins that could be replicated without detection.
One of the main interests in coin collecting, for me, is history. Without history, we are simply left with small metal discs.

BAJJERFAN

As I have said before when you start paying $100 or more for a silver dollar its hard to ignore the "investment" that you have made in your hobby!! When I sell to upgrade I like to at least recover my costs and if the coin has appreciated in value since I bought it then some profit taking is in order too!

BillJones

If we knew for certain that coin prices were going to drop by 5% a year, it would be almost impossible to sell high priced items. Very few people would go out and buy something like a coin, which kind of "sits there" as opposed to car, which one uses and enjoys, with the full certainty that is value is going to decrease no matter what.

I'll answer the question like this. I've never bought anything for my collection with the idea that the price was going to go up. I purchased it because I wanted to collect it. I also avoided over paying for coins, and I have held off on buying coins if I was quite sure that the price was going to go down in the future. That's been my approach to modern gold commemorative coins, which I do enjoy. Very often I have waited a couple of years or more and then bought the coins after the selling prices fell below the issue prices in the secondary market.

As I have written before, no sensible person who earns a middle class income, can afford to buy expensive coins, costing hundreds and thousands of dollars each, without some eye on the future. You need to consider that you might sell some day, and if the day comes, one needs position things so that most of not all of the money you have spent on the hobby will be recoverable. That's just prudent.

I dabble with HO trains too, and I like to assemble the buildings from kits. I know that I will never see the money that I have put into that hobby again, but my totally expenditures have been a lot less than most any moderately prices coin in my collection. So the cost is manageable. Now would I go out an buy a top of the line Marklne HO engine at $350? Nope. I don't have that kind of commitment to that hobby.