Sunday, March 18th, 2007 - The Day I Became a Colonial Coin Collector

MidLifeCrisis

Going through some old files (I keep practically everything coin related), I found an email in which I was contemplating trading several popular, key date federal issue coins in relatively high grades for one very rare colonial coin - a copper Myddelton Token. Here is an edited excerpt from that email -

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I've been talking/thinking about trading for the Myddelton and concentrating on colonials on and off since mid-January when the Myddelton first became available. I think I subconsciously made my decision a while back! ...the rarity, availability and desirability of colonials vs. modern key dates...

...I've gone through the Red Book and several other books looking for coins I'd like to own. I looked at grades I thought were attainable and prices I thought I could afford. However, I chose coins based on my coin collecting experiences as a kid. Back then an 09-S VDB, a 55 doubled die, and a 3 Legged Buffalo were the coins to have...so these and the other "modern" keys were what I chose when I started collecting again about six years ago. Now I own nice examples of those coins.

But until recently, I never knew enough about colonials to think about specializing. However, the more colonial era, truly historical and interesting coins I bought, the more I wanted....and the more I wanted to know about them...The idea of trading my keys for the Myddelton is something I had not thought about until very recently. But I've now had a chance to re-think what my collection plan should be.

So my collection plan is changing. I'm now going to focus on colonial era coins. I like the Myddelton (I'm from Kentucky so I like that it has that connection in addition to it's design beauty and rarity).
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There you have it. In retrospect, it was a great decision!

keyman64

Interesting to find a snapshot of your thinking from back then. So you collected colonials for 5-6 years?

MidLifeCrisis

<< <i>Interesting to find a snapshot of your thinking from back then. So you collected colonials for 5-6 years? >>


Yes. Almost exclusively.

And not long after this, I decided to limit my collection to only coins with a traceable provenance; i.e., a pedigree.

TomB

It appears that you bore furiously into this niche and with great success only to find the need to leave in a relatively short time period. Do you think one strategy helped lead to the other decision?

MidLifeCrisis

<< <i>It appears that you bore furiously into this niche and with great success only to find the need to leave in a relatively short time period. Do you think one strategy helped lead to the other decision? >>


Very good question.

I don't think my strategy to focus on colonial era coins contributed at all to my decision to stop collecting. If anything, it enhanced my collecting experience and made it more enjoyable.

However, in retrospect, I do think my strategy to limit my collection to only pedigreed coins did contribute some to my decision to stop collecting because it led to longer periods between purchases. I stuck to that requirement pretty strictly, especially with my colonial type set. I saw many coins come and go that were very nice and worthy coins, but I didn't buy them because they didn't have a pedigree.

Eventually I started to put together a denomination set of Pillar Coinage minted in Mexico as a side project for which I did not require a pedigree on the coins. That was cool and fun. But it was a very short set and I was one coin away from completing it when I decided to sell everything.

If I had to do it all over again, I would still focus on colonials. But I would strike a better balance between pedigreed coins and non-pedigreed coins, allowing some non-pedigreed coins to be part of my collection when they exceeded my other standards.

MidLifeCrisis

I just realized I became a colonial coin collector about the same time that I joined this forum.

Too many Morgan Dollar threads I bet!