Aging. In what annual leaps did you accumulate your collection ?
IKU
Posts: 65 ✭✭✭
How many coins do you need to have if you are a serious type collector ?
I mean when do people start to "recognize you" as a one ?
Realizing that I'm few years away from 40y.o and I have only around 60pcs of my favorite type.
At what age periods did you accumulate coins ?
What is the pace that collector needs to have to make it big or just stop and give up ?
Any milestone amounts of coins that people here had when at certain age ?
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Comments
You may be overthinking this. Life is short, and this is a hobby. Set your own pace and enjoy it.
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
There is no answer to this. 60 might be 59 too many or 60 too few.
That’s not many for your age, man. By forty, I had one-half of a five gallon jug of pennies, a dozen mint sets, all the semi key Lincolns, a handful of 90%, and two Spiro Agnew souvenir tokens. You don’t spend enough time looking for what you want and clicking for it. With your kind of restraint all you have left is disposable income that you can use to make others happy, or put away the loupe and go outside and enjoy the fall weather.
With just sixty coins you have to move to a tiny home to piss off your other half with the tubes, flips, holders, coins, rolls, mailers, albums (do you even have an album?), loupes, and mini-staples. How do you even know if you have a collection if you don’t see it everywhere? Three score coins? You don’t seem to be obsessed enough to be a real collector.
Oh yeah, you probably know your inventory well; where’s the excitement of the unknown, the disappointing delta between face and collector value of a large hoard of coins? No junk, no fun!
You’re okay.
My advice: less is more and quality over quantity.
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
I think you need to better define your goals - what does it mean to you for collectors to “recognize you”?
Is this being recognized as a whale by dealers and auction houses? Having other collectors come to you for advice? Publishing a book and selling a certain number of copies?
Once you define your specific goals, define success and identify steps to achieving the goals, you will be able to measure progress and answer your own questions.
There are no set milestones for collecting. It's as individual as each collector.
That said, for Type collecting I settled on a Dansco 7070 album. There are 76 slots for coins in the album, but that hasn't limited me from adding to my overall collection and expanding into areas not covered by the album... 18th Century type, for instance.
I'm also accumulating Large Cents. I call this more of an accumulation than a collection since my overall collecting goal is just nice, problem free pieces, regardless of grade with concentration on the Middle Dates... I can't recall exactly how many of these I have...
Best of luck in all your collecting endeavors...
Successful BST transactions with: SilverEagles92; Ahrensdad; Smitty; GregHansen; Lablade; Mercury10c; copperflopper; whatsup; KISHU1; scrapman1077, crispy, canadanz, smallchange, robkool, Mission16, ranshdow, ibzman350, Fallguy, Collectorcoins, SurfinxHI, jwitten, Walkerguy21D, dsessom.
Catbert is correct. For example, say you want to complete a type set that consists of 100 coins. When I was young I would have purchased the 100 low grade pieces for $10 each. Now I would purchase 1 coin in the top population group for $1,000. If you follow this method, then you would better gain the recognition you mentioned but more importantly increase your enjoyment of ownership and chances for asset growth.
I sort of rekindled my interest in coins that had been on the back burner for all of my teenage, twenties and thirties years when I was around 45. Since then I've measured my success in the hobby by the enjoyment and the diversionary levels that it has provided me. Over the years I've enjoyed many small coin shows, visits to brick and mortar shops, antique shops and garage sales. I've met and visited with a whole bunch of folks with like interests and even formed a lasting friendship or two. Yeah, there's the money part of it because - hey, we're collecting money - but if that's all this is then why not just have a pile under the mattress or an account somewhere? A lot of what you find in life kinda depends on what you're looking for. I wish you many years of enjoyment from your hobby.
Edited to add: @IKU you've got me curious what is your favorite type?
?Who cares?
7-71 (I am 71 now)
Any pace you want - I never give up
It's not the amount - collecting is a hobby. I never count how many coins i have.
Do what feels right. It takes some into "competitive collecting" (i.e. the registry races). It's never had any attraction for me, but I suppose it can provide recognition, whatever that means to you.
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins, justindan, doubleeagle07
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me. . . . . . .
I don't think there are any age benchmarks in this hobby. There have been many nice collections assembled and dispersed anonymously. Recognition isn't for everyone. For others, the sense of community is everything. Pave your own trail.
IG: DeCourcyCoinsEbay: neilrobertson
"Numismatic categorizations, if left unconstrained, will increase spontaneously over time." -me
There is a general trajectory collectors follow. They tend to start small with what they can afford, and move onto bigger and better things as their budget allows.
I am still on small and medium sized things for the most part. My goal is to still assemble something that could not be replicated easily or quickly, even if the cost is not extremely high. I think those sorts of things are likely to survive in my collection without being sold if I ever move up into the next "tier" of collecting financially.
I'm about 10 years in, and I've probably sold over 70% of what I've bought and reinvested that money into something better or something that better fits how my tastes have evolved. I'm not even confident that if I could lower that 70% to 40% that I could consider myself having done a "better job" at collecting. I think evolution is part of it and it's not just a growth over time equation.
IG: DeCourcyCoinsEbay: neilrobertson
"Numismatic categorizations, if left unconstrained, will increase spontaneously over time." -me
I've been collecting since I was 7. I completed the below by the time I was 20.
But I only completed this one early this year.
But in the mean time I completed several other sets and picked up a nice paper money collection.
This isn't a race. Its a long walk. Take your time, find what you like and buy it or save up for it.
My current registry sets:
20th Century Type Set
Virtual DANSCO 7070
Slabbed IHC set - Missing the Anacs Slabbed coins
What are your collecting goals? Are they reasonable? Are you enjoying attempting to reach them? If you can't answer the first question or answer either of the other two "no," it's time to revisit your collecting goals.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
When I started collecting I focused on silver coins in the between the 1880's and 1950's. I then switched to gold coins from the 1880's to 1932. I am now focused on gold coins pre-1840. It has been a fun journey.
Successful BST with drddm, BustDMs, Pnies20, lkeigwin, pursuitofliberty, Bullsitter, felinfoel, SPalladino
$5 Type Set https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/u-s-coins/type-sets/half-eagle-type-set-circulation-strikes-1795-1929/album/344192
CBH Set https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/everyman-collections/everyman-half-dollars/everyman-capped-bust-half-dollars-1807-1839/album/345572
I agree with much that has been said, there is no amount of coins owned or dollars spent that makes anyone a serious collector. There are plenty of folks that have thousands of coins that might not be worth much more than face value, some would consider them serious some would not.
For myself I bought the majority of my coins in my 30's and 40's, and the majority of my expensive coins in my 50's. Now in my 60's I find myself buying far less coins and simply enjoying the coins I have.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
For me, it was a matter of lacking two critical resources (time and money) that kept my coin collecting to passively saving coins from change, until (i) we were done raising our brood of kids, and (ii) I retired. Now I can spend time hunting down coins I want, and I have the resources to buy them when I find them (within reason; I don't have the resources of many/most here, but that's fine).
As others have noted, it's entirely up to you, your goals and the resources of time, money and energy you can/care to bring to the party.
It's all about enjoyment, isn't it?
I'm one of those guys who collected like crazy as a kid, wheat pennies & pre-65 silver in my change, filling in those blue folders, occasionally a coin shop pickup here & there, then forgot all about it .. until Covid hit, then dug it out of my attic and rediscovered the hobby.
I went back in time and assembled most of a US type set, minus the most expensive stuff. Now working on colonials, it's been a great way to learn about a whole new world that I never gave any thought to, and in fact now find colonials even more fascinating than regular US mint stuff.
There's no right or wrong way to collect as others have said, but I did make the mistake of "too much too fast", filling holes frantically without regard to quality, and now I am backtracking a little on some of my earlier purchases.
Most collectors transition "upwards" or at least roughly "sideways" in their collecting interests as their finances permit. This is subjective but it's very unusual (from anecdotal accounts such as on this forum) for collectors to noticeably move "downwards".
I've had several iterations as a collector, where I started and paused. The current one started in 1998 and since about 2010, I have focused primarily on one Spanish colonial design covering multiple denominations from two mints. It's all my budget permits and I will likely never complete it.
I still have a few secondary collections but ceased buying coins I previously did. Now, aside from budget limitations, I don't buy anything else due to poor marketability and lack of interest, most for the latter because the coins are too common.
I wrote this post early this morning but was concerned it may be too preachy and/or negative. Fortunately, others have said the same thing and I don't want an hour of thought go to waste so I'll add this...
First of all, my type collection is more of a collection of coins I received from my family, my best finds from circulation, and random purchases of type coins just to have an example of them. I'm not interested in having a "serious" type collection.
A little history, I started collecting with my older brother when I was 7 years old. Like many here, by age 11, I had thousands of collectable coins and junk silver from coin roll hunting and had filled several of the easier 20th century albums. As many here have done, I also took long breaks from coins until I was about 47 when I logged on to eBay for the first time. I've been collecting ever since, mostly raw coins off of eBay as well as TPG slabbed coins. I have about a hundred TPG coins now and I'm starting to slab the better raw coins in my collection. The only collection I've 'completed' since my youth are, mid-grade Newfy halves and Canadian small cents. I'm close yet far away from completing other sets. Finishing sets is not nearly as important to me as other aspects of the hobby. I'm not going to buy a 09S VDB or 16D because my interests have changed.
I personally find your questions to be odd. For me, this isn't a race. This is a "fun run", so there's no pace to strive for. I don't do registry sets at all. If I ever do, it'll be to display what I have to other collectors, not to compete with them for numismatic glory. How would one compete in collecting mid-grade SLHs, Newfoundland halves, or circulated commemoratives anyway?
I think people can start collecting at almost any age and still build an outstanding high-grade collection. Some here have assembled really nice collections of mid-grade coins in a 5–10-year time period with coins that are awesome for the grade. On the other hand, my collection has gotten larger over the last 18 years of steady collecting, and it still isn't a collection worthy of note or a name on a PCGS label. I don't care because, for me, finding a really nice raw coin or a rare variety or die marriage for a good price is what it's all about. As someone else mentioned, "Quality over quantity", except for bullion coins.
It also depends on the person (e.g., type A vs Type B ) and how much they really like coins and the focus they bring to their collecting. It's never too late to start collecting a series or set if you really like them. QDBowers assembled all sorts of notable collections even in his later years! He just loves coins, exonumia, and the stories around them. Asking such a question suggests to me that you may not be into coins (or have the resources) to the degree that those who have built top collections are. Where there's a will (and enough cash), there's a way. If you want a top type collection, then stick with it.
"Endeavor to Persevere!"
If time is an issue for collecting the quality of type series you'd like, then collect less collected series such as 2-cent pieces, 3-cent pieces, 20-cent pieces. Chop marked SLHs would be cool set to work on, same with wartime nickels and 2-cent and 3-cent piece varieties. How about collecting all the known die marriages of a certain date in a series? You may find a new one along the way.
This is only my opinion but turning coin collecting into a competitive sport like gymnastics or some other endeavor with milestones to achieve at a certain age just doesn't seem like fun to me. I may be overly presumptuous here, so forgive me if I've misinterpreted your question and offered up irrelevant answers, but it sounds like it's not fun for you, either. Is it?
I don't leap... I trip.
Seriously... stop and look at what interests you and what is available. Numismatics is a journey that can take you anywhere. And along the way the direction can change as one develops an appreciation for what exists
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Do everything at your own pace and within your own budget. Could take years or could take decades. Just make sure that you listen and learn and enjoy the ride.
Put in the work. Research and search constantly. It was like a second job to me but it was a labor of love, so I didn’t mind.
I don’t regret a minute of it nor should you.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
The trajectory of buying a lot of cheap-ish stuff early happens a lot and it was very healthy for me.
I like a little bit of everything and early on I bought stuff for cheap that I don’t really like. I took the. Janice and it didn’t stick with me. I could have been more disciplined as a 14 year old and I might have two more coins that are worth $100 each today instead of a folder full of $3-$5 coins, but I was too young and new to the hobby to concentrate. Now I’m just too immature to do it.
Having turned 40 myself recently, I feel behind in my collection because of so much time away being broke (paying my own bills took a big bite out of my coin budget. Not to mention the kids).
Now I probably buy 10 coins a year and they’re almost all decent (for my collection). I hope to buy more coins in the next few years and spend more on each of them.
I’ll never have a nationally recognized collection, but I definitely count as a collector.
Have fun and buy what you like. Set your own milestones.
I thought about this question today. You teach and learn to become recognized as a serious type collector; I will read your posts in discussions with other experts.
You can draw attention other ways, though.
Thanks for letting my shtick in your thread earlier, and the food for thought today.
If you have one more coin than you intend to spend, then you can call yourself a "coin collector".
"Seriousness" isn't about the raw count statistic. It's about what you do with what you have. I have 14,316 coins in my collection, but that raw statistic doesn't make me a "Serious collector". If you have a million coins, but they're all sitting in 44 gallon drums in the basement, and you don;t really know exactly what's in any of the drums, and you've never opened them up and looked at any of them since you put them in there, then you're not a "serious collector", you're a "hoarder".
You certainly have every right to call yourself a "Serious collector" with that many coins.
The core difference between a "serious collector" and a "hoarder" is intent. Do you have a specific reason for keeping every single one of those 60 coins? Can you explain that reason to another coin collector? If the answers are both "yes", then congratulations! You're serious!
Obviously, my collecting - by sheer acquisition numbers - declined while I was in high school and college, then went back up again once I got a full time job. In the past decade, it's slowed down again, mainly because I don't seem to have the time and patience for bulk-lot foraging any more.
Understand, I've always been a "quantity rather quality" kind of collector. Well-meaning people always tell us to "buy the best you can afford", but to me, that advice sounds suspiciously like "buy fewer coins". I'm much happier buying 10 mediocre coins that add to my collection goals than one super-amazing coin. So I'll happily buy bulk world coin lots and pick out several hundred "keepers" worth a few cents each. This is me, and how I enjoy collecting. Other coin collectors would find my collection eclectic and boring. That's OK. I find albums full of coins that are identical except for date and mintmark, boring. That's OK too.
There is no "recommended rate of acquisition". It entirely depends on your budget, and on the quality thresholds you personally set for yourself.
I hit 10000 back around 2012 or thereabouts. That was a pain. Because I've given every single coin a unique number in my coin database, and I'd only allocated four digits for the coin number. So I had to go through the entire 9999-entry database, adding a zero to the start of each number. Thank goodness for keyboard macros.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
Louis E. Eliasberg
Completed his every U.S coin challenge in 1950.
So he was 1950-1896= 54y.o when he completed his goal.
"Early on he set a goal to own every Federal issued U.S. coin"
"Eliasberg had reached his collecting goal within a decade=10 years. "
https://www.moderncoinmart.com/blog/post/famous-coin-collectors
These things make you speed up the collecting.
I think there is always a certain time line.
I have quality coins. I have a large quantity of coins (most of which are not high quality). I am a collector of coins that interest me. Could be design, quality, history, rarity or just something unique that interested me. Sometimes I get a few in a couple of months, sometimes I do not get any for several months. There is no schedule. Cheers, RickO
A collection containing a type set of 19 or 20 (or however you want to define it) nice gold coins would be most impressive.
I'm 46 and the majority of my collection was purchased over the last 10 years. I've messed with coins much longer, but have nothing going past 2012. I just buy what I like, but definitely focus on quality and originality. It's been very fun so far.
My YouTube Channel
I'm a fan of having a few special coins versus the volume path. I buy coins that I perceive (for my reasons) as special. If they survive in my box long enough, they become permanent additions. Sometimes I build sets, but that's not as important as particular coins, and generally feel dissatisfied when I make exceptions to my "special" clause just to fill a hole.
That said, I have at times gone years without making any permanent acquisitions. I'm not in any hurry, at least not yet.
Empty Nest Collection