The "what was I thinking" thread...

kryptonitecomics

That's right...this is the admit your mistakes thread


I am not talking about the time you paid $1000 bucks for a 1 oz Gold eagle when the spot price of Gold was $850 an oz but rather post a coin that you bought with say limited knowledge of the series and then later you realized it was a big mistake. This especially goes for those that specialize in a series and when they first began they were buying all the wrong coins and then years later they realized they threw a bunch of money away on dogs whether they be cleaned, damaged, overgraded, low end for the grade etc


Since I am a toning fanatic I will post 3 coins I just found in a box that were 3 of the first toned coins I ever bought. Not only were the coins cleaned, they were AT and I overpaid by a huge margain since they were essentially worth pocket change


Coin #1

1955 Washington quarter in AU.....dipped and stripped with no luster but NT album toning that can typically form on a dipped out coin. I paid $35 dollars for this coin and even had the nerve to show it off to David Hall at a show many many years ago cause I was so proud of my purchase. He took one look and said yeah so what it's a dipped AU? I don't think I got it then......





coin #2 & #3

I bought these at the same show as the other coin from a traveling merchant if you will.... I was at one dealer table looking at toners when a guy walked up with a few albums of coins and asked if I was interested in toners.....well of course I was but I didn't want to let the guy know that as I certainly didn't want to pay too much. Imagine my surprise when I talked hime down to $20 a piece for these winners I am just glad I never tried to send them in for certification back then....I am sure the graders would have gotten a real good chuckle


Outside of being AT, ugly and probably lightly circulated I think they are very attractive coins












So now it's time to man up...or women up and show off how far you've come in your collecting adventure

rainbowroosie

I don't have a photo, but years (many) ago I was in Greattoning's shop showing off my newly bought MS-63 Lincoln commem. A dealer friend came in and I showed it to him. He threw it across the floor calling it a piece of sxxx. Very cheap lesson for me as I returned it and began to educate myself on what real coins look like.

That said, Shane -- those be some NASTY coins!!!

darktone

I don't even know if I could remember all the bone headed coin deals I have done. I got some so bad I can't even talk about them.

adamlaneus

The reverse of that nickel has certain hypnosis effect.

IGWT

-- The "what was I thinking" thread . . .

I collect Shield Nickels.

Swampboy

First coin show I ever attended I picked up a Liberty nickel.
I knew nothing about nickels not to mention rub at the time but the dealer seemed honest and I'd never seen one before.

I ran out to double check the various price guides I was armed with (I'm cracking up now , excuse me) and thought to myself the dealer was asking a fair price for a MS64 1883 No Cents nickel so I went back in and picked it up.

Member seanq let me ride his coattails on a submission some time later and so I sent it in for grading and here it is in it's AU55 PCGS holder.................

Type2

I think we all did something like that I know I did.

lope208

Here's my first large cent, and it's not even cleaned!

In my defense though, I was like 10 or 12 years old though and thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen
And it was only $9.

SkyMan

Ah yes, mistakes... a subject with which I am intimately familiar.

For example, in 2005 I bought, via auction, a couple of toned Peace dollars that looked attractive AND were slabbed by NGC. I knew Peace dollars fairly well, having put together a white set in the late '80's, (and eventually sold most of it in the early '90's... I stopped collecting between 1991 - 2003 as I had kids by then), but I didn't know much about AT toning in 2005, and was naive enough to assume that if either PCGS or NGC slabbed a coin then, BY GOLLY, it MUST be NT. I proudly showed the coins to assorted members of the Toned Coin Collectors Society, TCCS, and was gently informed that both were probably AT. I put them up for auction and lost around 50% on both of them. To make things even worse, when I look through the catalogue of the auction I originally got them in, there were several stunning NT toned Franklins that I could have gotten if I hadn't spent the money on the Peace dollars. Nothing quite like going to school, bending over and saying, "Please sir, may I have another"...

Here are images of the dollars, they do not look as wild in hand as via these images, e.g. the images are a bit juiced.

RedTiger

I don't have an image handy. However, I paid way too much for a circulated 1862 dollar, holed and repaired. The dealer I bought it from paid too much, marked up too much, sold to me, and I remain buried in a problem coin.

Lessons:
* some dealers are better at acquiring inventory than others. I believe this particular dealer went out of business not long after I bought my coin, probably in large part because he was paying way too much to acquire not so great coins.
* problem coins, even hard to find ones have limited audiences. This means most dealers will offer very low on them, even if they ask near a full price. Now, at some price the coin would have been a decent deal. At a lower price, perhaps even a good deal, but at the price I paid, it was a burial. Price does matter.

seanq

I also had about a dozen cents with "clips" in my date set which were actually damaged. One of the first coins I bought for the set from a dealer I thought was an expert was not a genuine error but suffered from rim damage. Because I trusted the dealer's attribution I repeated his mistake on several other coins until I traded a "duplicate" away and my trading partner set me straight. It took me years to replace all of the coins I pulled from the set after that lesson.


Sean Reynolds

Justacommeman

It was just one of those days and I did need a lift into town.......MJ

kryptonitecomics

<< <i>It was just one of those days and I did need a lift into town.......MJ
>>




I just threw up a little bit......but I bet she is a good cook