Share the story of your first $100-plus coin...

RGL

I remember scrimping and saving in 1989 until I had about $150 and then looking for months before I found the last coin I needed to complete my set of Buffs ... the 1913-S Type 2. I finally found it at a local coin show in Cincinnati, an XF-40 example for which I paid the king's ransom of $120. I still have it, as well as the set of Buffs, to which I added my second $100-plus coin, the Three Legged in VF, for about $150 a year later.

Oh, and the happiest of New Years to you all ...

JrGMan2004

None of the $100+ purchases seem to have stuck in my collection... Both have been sold within a few months after being purchased...

kryptonitecomics

That's a tough one...........I know I paid $80 for a 1914-D lincoln quite a few years ago....and I paid about $250 for a PCGS MS65 1884-CC Morgan, but I don't recall what my first $100 dollar coin was per say.

100proof1957

I dont remember !

Likely was a Short set Walker in 65,around 1987 or 88.

This go round was a PR68CAM roosie that i over paid for !

RYK

In 1977, for being the last remaining sixth grader in the newspaper-sponsored local spelling bee, my father allowed me to pick a coin from the Stack's catalog (up to $200). I picked an 1890 $2.50 in AU (for $175). The coin is now in a PCGS AU-58 holder and worth about $175, perhaps a tad more.

dthigpen

About a decade ago I paid exactly $100 (Tax Included) at a local shop for a very nice, raw, blast white San Diego Commemorative Half with an excellent strike. That was the start of my San Diego Half Hoard. It later graded MS-67 by PCGS and is still in my collection.

LeeG

Bought this for $159.80 before I joined this board. I've learned quite a bit since then. Thanks to all here. Pay's to do your homework!!!!!! Lee

LanLord

Mine was a 1872 vf seated half dollar that I needed for my Dansco album.

longtimecollector

Mine was a BU 1923-D Saint that cost $ 165......... It was purchased soon after the restrictions on private gold ownership were lifted..... 72?? 73?? 74??

66Tbird

Being young and ready for an old coin of value I saved and worked for the Continental Dollar 1776. A Nevada dealer sold it to me as real for $200. It was not. The year was 1981-2 something. Kind of shot down the collecting bug for a decade after I found that out five years later. A good time to get out looking back on it. Still have it BTW.

mgoodm3

Probably was my 1914D lincoln cent I bought for $120 a few years ago. Nothing really special about the purchase. Got it in Portland at a coin shop. Now resides in a PCGS vg10 slab.

BAJJERFAN

IIRC my first $100 likely wasn't any great remembrance. I probly paid too much tho.

KlectorKid

My first 100+ coin was an AU-58 1915 Eagle for $480.

ARCO

It was a F12 1896-S Barber half. I decided to collect Barber halves in the VF range and saw that the retail price for most of the common to semi-key dates was under $100.00. I came across a F12 1896-S Barber half on a web site that was listed at a whopping $117.00. I had just started collecting and here I was contemplating my first over $100.00 purchase, and on a lowly Fine to boot.

I thought about it for a few weeks and kept visiting the website every day to look at the coin's image. I finally pulled the trigger and bought the coin. When I sold off some lesser graded coins about a year later, the coin sold on Ebay for $350.00! It took me a couple of years collecting the Barber halves to realize that the 1896-S rarely shows up nice and original in midgrade, and that the dealer selling the coin sold if for hundreds under the "market" value.

Tyler

In fact, this is the very coin.

WACoinGuy

When I was in college, after one of my internships, I had some money burning a hole in my pocket. It was just after my birthday, and I had been given a $50 gift certificate for the local coin shop. I went in, and saw an MS-60 1955 double die penny -- a coin that I had always wanted but that had been far out of my price range. With the extra money burning a hole in my pocket I bought the coin for $550 -- 10 times more than I had paid for any coin up to then.

It was a raw purchase, and several years later I decided to send it in to ANACS to be slabbed. To my relief, it came back MS-60. It was the first coin I had ever sent in to be slabbed, and it still sits in my collection.

ziggy29

I'm not sure which one it was, but it definitely came in the mid-1980s while I was in college. My dad used to participate in a lot of mail-bid auctions from the former Bowers and Ruddy, and after I was working for a few months and saving money, I was able to buy some "bigger ticket" coins which included several over $100.

I'm not sure which was first. Among the candidates would be an 1829 half dime graded MS-63 in the auction (later graded 64 by NGC), an AU-55 1895-S Barber Half (graded MS-61 later) and an 1896 Liberty nickel in MS-65 (also graded MS-65 later).

I wish I held on to these coins for a couple years more than I did...

Shamika

Mine was a 1909-S PCGS MS64BN Lincoln. It had just about the most amazing velvety luster I'd ever seen on a brown coin. I was trembling at the idea of spending so much money on a single cent.

ChuckC

I just bought my first $100+ coin last month. It was $150...I hope I didn't overpay. (PCGS 66FB)

Jdurg

I bought my first $100 coin a few weeks ago. I play poker on a weekly basis, and over the course of the year had made a profit of a few hundred dollars. So I decided to liquidate some of that profit and buy me a nice gold coin. (I had always wanted a gold coin that wasn't a modern bullion coin). I also put a limit of $150 on how much I would spend. I knew that the double eagles and probably the eagles would be way out of my price range. Then I went and tried to find a date to purchase. I was born in 1980, so I thought that a gold coin from 1880 would be a nice addition to my precentennial set of coins. (Though it's not much of a set. I've only got an 1880-P Morgan in XF condition). So I went on E-Bay and saw a lot of gold coins from 1880. Of course the slabbed ones were WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY out of my price range, so I decided to go and get a raw coin that looked good from the pictures and came from a seller with perfect feedback. I found a few and placed my max bid of 150 dollars on them. Each time I was outbid by 20 or 30 bucks. After getting sniped at the last possible moment on an auction, I looked a little further down and saw an 1880 $5 Half-Eagle with a BIN of $149.00. It was perfect so I purchased it. The seller took PayPal, had perfect feedback, and the pictures looked better than many others I saw on E-Bay. I got the coin a few days later and it looks so much better in person than it does in the photos. I was also pleasently surprised to see how big the coin was. It has nice size, nice luster, nice color, nice 'heft', and everything I was looking for. Not only was it my first $100+ coin, but it was my first 'real' Gold Coin. I think now I'll try and get one gold coin from 1880 each year and slowly build up my precentennial set that way. This way I can save throughout the course of a year to get the expensive ones like the double eagles.

jdimmick

My first coin over 100.00 was purchased when I was a Jr collector at the Dec 1985 coin show in Lumberton, NC. I was working on a Vf/Xf set of indian heads. I was down to only two coins the 09-s, and of course the 77. At that time they were the only two indian heads priced at over 100.00 in VF with the exception of the 69/8(as it was called then!) but I cherried it from a regular 69, so I had it. I saved a few bucks and bought a nice VF 09-s from one of the local dealers thier for $117.00. Today, that dealer is a very close freind of mine , who I have the utmost repsect for getting me started and showing me the ropes. (Thanks John Wills)

jim

MyWorldCoinTypeSet

I decided to get back into collecting in 2000 after collecting as a kid. I watched the coin market for about 6 months, and decided that higher grade PCGS or ICCS Canadian 5c pieces would be my goal.

So, my first purchase was a 1932 Canada 5c in a PCGS holder at MS63. I'm still happy with that purchase today.

safetymankwj

my first 100 dollar coin was this summer in Miss. i went in to a coin shop and saw a 1907 indian head cent. it was 105 but it was the best looking toning I havew ever seen on a penny. I just dropped it off today to send in for the club submission. It is RB and should go MS 65. i had been wanting a indian head cent for a while.

construct

My first three $100+ coins were at one swoop. I bought a 1908 No Motto Double Eagle and 1893 and 1901 Eagles. Less than $650 for the group. They are raw, but I've shown them to dealers who have assured me they are real. The Saint is an MS-61--nice surfaces, but it has a planchet flaw that is a black line in the right obverse field. The eagles I would call EF.

halfnut

Still looking forward to that 100.00 coin - heck still looking forward to that 50.00 coin. I'm sure the 50.00 plus is coming soon in my Kennedy set, and there are a few 100.00 coins coming up for my type set.

MrSpud

The first $100 plus coin I own is a PCGS MS63 that my wife bought for me off of e-bay. It is the first slabbed coin I ever owned. Why she bought it for me is a funny story and is the reason I felt motivated to join this forum so I could learn what is going on with collecting coins these days. Here's the story.

I had not collected coins for many years and I got back into it just a couple of years ago when my wife started to get interested in collecting. We were just starting to figure the whole grading thing out. The MS grading system didn't really exist when I used to collect as a kid. There was pretty much just G, VG, F, VF, XF, and uncirculated back then. Well, we were looking at e-bay and the III cent piece was up in just a few minutes. We had found and saved the PCGS price guide in our favorites and quickly looked up the III cent piece because it looked like a nice uncirculated version of a circulated III cent piece I had since I was a kid. Well, new as we were, we accidently looked it up in the proof section of the price and thought it was worth over $1000. We bid on it in a hurry and ended up getting it for $135. Afterwards, I looked it up again and realized our mistake. Fortunately we got it for pretty much what it is worth. Even more fortunately, it is a nice PCGS coin, very solid for a MS63 with no marks on it and just a hint of light even toning that makes it look really nice. It is one of my favorite coins now.

Attached is a pic of it.

SanctionII

I do not remember my first $100.00 coin purchase, but since the first I have had more than a few.

Two that are my favorites took place on the same day. I was at a local shop. The dealer told me he had recently bought a Lincoln cent collection from an elderly couple and wanted to know if I was interested in any. I said show me what you have. He pulled out many, including a 1909 S VDB (circulated), and 1909 S (MS) and a 1914 d (circulated).

I passed on the 1909 S VDB because it was priced at over $500.00. However, the 1909 S and the 1914 D were priced at $100.00 each. I pulled the trigger because I had never had either coin and simply wanted them. Both are raw and are now sitting in my Dansco Lincoln Album.

The 1914 D is Fine (IMHO) and has a nice look to it.

The 1909 S is definitely MS and is one of my favorite coins. It has nice luster, eye appeal, strike and has few marks. It has a streaky appearance, which I understand is very common for the era due to the planchets used to produce the coin. It has nice multi colored toning to it. I have showed to it multiple dealers at shops and at shows. Many have wanted to buy it but I told them I am not selling. I have asked there opinions on grades and have been told 65, maybe 66.

TommyType

Like many on the boards, one of my first "goals" was the Dansco Type Set book in F-VF grades or higher when they were cheap. But there are some holes that are pretty expensive even in that grade....for a new collector. We all have a "price comfort zone", and back then (1998)mine was about $50.

Two of those tough holes are the Seated Dollars. I found a nice raw one in one of my favorite dealers case labeled as F+. With a lump in my throat, I asked how much. $147. With great worry about what I was doing, and why I was doing it, I forked over the money.

Long story short, I sent it in to ANACS a year or so ago. Came back VF-30 and is listed at $230 in CDN today. Nice experiences like that have allowed me to move my "comfort zone" to about $300 today....but I'll still get a lump in my throat when I start buying those early quarters and halves still left on my type set list. They don't come with a price tag of $300.

pharmer

I got back into coins coincidentally about the time Teletrade start up, and the first $100+ coin I bought was a PCGS64RD 1909s-vdb. Wanted one since I was a kid, but once in hand, it didn't do anything for me. Plus it had this streaky look I didn't like, wondered if it was fake.Sold it 10 months later for twice what I paid, it would be ten times today. Used the money for a NGC64BN 1955 1c ddo-1, still has a lot of red, and realized I liked varieties better, especially if they were also high quality specimens.

LindeDad

Dec. 20 1980 I bought a 1970 Small date proof set. Still have it, Paid $212 according to my records and according to the 2005 price guide it's now worth about half of what I paid. Bought a bunch of stuff in the eightys that I've lost a lot of money on. Just for the fun of it went and dug it out. Boy am I glad that was poker winnings.