Shop Around

When making purchases it will pay you to become acquainted with a number of different sellers. Some sell high-quality coins, while others tend to sell to a price, and mainly handle low-end items.

I recommend that you purchase hand-picked items and endeavor to secure premium quality pieces. It is obvious that the seller of low-quality "bargains" can offer coins cheaper than can a dealer who spends a great deal of time carefully looking at many coins before making even a single purchase.

One of America's most successful numismatic publishers told me that he was commissioned by his uncle to purchase some silver dollars, and looked through many hundreds of slabbed pieces but was able to find just six which he felt were sharply struck and with good aesthetic appeal. Of these six, just two were real beauties, and the other four were marginal.

At a convention I examined over 600 certified copper, silver, and gold coins, and purchased just three which I felt offered the proper combination of sharp strike, pleasing surfaces, and reasonable price. The seller, an East Coast professional, was an active trader on the electronic circuits and catered primarily to investors. He made no effort to acquire exceptional pieces. Whenever he did buy coins which had special appeal, they were quickly cherrypicked by dealers like me!

Writing in the field of stamps, Herman Herst, Jr., one of America's best known professional philatelists, made the statement that no great collection was ever formed by anyone who was a slave to published values. Stamps of special quality often sell for special prices, and scarce and rare stamps typically bring over market, he stated. So it is with coins. No great collection was ever formed by someone who tried to buy the most coins for the cheapest prices.

A Connoisseur

A collecting success story is that of Jimmy Hayes, a connoisseur from the word go, who elected to buy coins only of hand-picked quality. Seeking to raise funds for what turned out to be a successful bid to be a delegate from Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives, Hayes consigned his coins to Stack's, where they did extremely well at auction. Certain of the pieces were purchased by Dennis Irving Long, another connoisseur. After Mr. Long, a respected financier and businessman from Louisville, Kentucky, passed away, his magnificent collection was consigned to us for auction, where further price records were established. One coin, a certified MS-65 1839 Liberty Seated half dollar without drapery at the elbow brought $99,000, or more than double the bid price at the time of $42,000, and was purchased by Kenneth Goldman, a dealer with a discerning eye who undoubtedly considered it to be a bargain even at that level. And, indeed it proved to be a good value, for by a few months later the bid price had jumped to $100,000. Today's auction record is often tomorrow's bargain. I have seen it happen many times.