How did you feel when you found coins you were looking for every day for years and years (or more)?
Early_Milled_Latin_America
Posts: 6,518 ✭✭✭✭✭
Tell us your stories and post some images.
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You really need to change your board name to:
Collecting_Vicariously_Through_Others
karlgoetzmedals.com
secessionistmedals.com
Hahaha....I have a few coins myself like the title says. But wanted to know about you guys. I enjoy stories about rare finds.
The other thing I have only been collecting Latin American coins since late 2019. Unlike some of you here for decades. That means some of you have experience waiting 10 years or more locating coins you have been after. I would imagine waiting 10 years or more and then finding a coin would make for good stories.
Don’t tempt him…🤦♂️😂
I find that, when waiting a long time to find a specific date, when it is found, it happens in multiples. You don’t see one for years and years, then one day you find one! And a week later you find a better one. Now you have two…which you’re reluctant to let the duplicate go, because they’re so difficult to find.
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
Seems to be true in your case since without your duplicates I would be short many very rare coins for my Peru 1 real collection (1752-1772). I am very much appreciative of owning the coins you have sold me over the years.
@Early_Milled_Latin_America
Well thank you sir, a win-win situation for sure. I too am very pleased with the coins I’ve liberated from your hands. It’s only two, but they’re two wonderful coins.
Both from very very far ends of the spectrum, interestingly enough.
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
Unable to participate in this discussion from a world coin perspective…..but certainly can from various US endeavors.
My first serious collecting pursuit was a PCGS Everyman Barber Quarter registry. I was committed to putting the entire set together in AU grades, minus the Big 3 which I simply couldn’t afford to acquire at that grade level. However I did force myself to include the 1909-0, which is an absolute bear at the XF/AU level. That fact is a bit more widely known now than it was when I was putting my set together.
About 2-2.5 years into putting my set together, I was presented with an opportunity to purchase an AU50. Frankly not an attractive example, but I was so deep into the hunt and so fixated on filling that hole in my set that I was blinded to the simple fact that the coin was not appealing. I absolutely knew to “buy the coin, not the holder” at that stage in my collecting journey, but I broke that cardinal rule because there were 8 PCGS graded AU examples extant at the time (something like 5 at NGC…..all washed out fwiw) and I didn’t know if/when I’d ever have the chance to buy another one.
So I stretched myself very thin to buy it.
In all honesty, I never really enjoyed that coin. I’m a person who likes to get my coins out and play with them a lot, and I’m not afraid to study the same coin under magnification 1000 separate times. I have a strong preference for original surfaces and that coin had clearly been dipped. The detail was more like XF49 but it had been squeezed into a PCGS AU holder and in hindsight that was what had me so excited and willing to (over) pay up. I was buying rare plastic to fill a self created “need”.
Breaking up my set and auctioning that coin off (at a loss) was a pretty big lesson for me. It was beyond “buy the coin, not the holder” tbh. The end result is I have probably pursued my last date/mm set of any coin series. I’d much rather have a stash of appealing coins that I love individually than feel beholden to adding coins to my collection that I don’t really love.
Most importantly, it taught me to stay a lot more patient, and I learned that conditional rarity isn’t nearly as important to me as overall appeal. The thrill of the hunt should probably should not supersede the thrill of ownership……for me, anyway.
@MEJ7070 that’s a really great response and story. A lot to be learned there.
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
True for me too.
I bought both 1756 Peru NGC MS-61 1R within one week of the other. I could have bought the second NGC MS-62 1765 1/2R about two months after I bought the first one. (Still regret that one.) Haven't seen one since and that was in 2006. I didn't buy it because Gilboy's reference lists it as "common" which it isn't, but even if it is generically, it certainly isn't in this quality or anywhere near it.
I have other examples too, but not necessarily in such close proximity. More generally, the coins I've followed most (not just pillars) tend to show up in small groups because it's apparently or is part of one collector's collection.