Collector Spotlight: Pocketpiece Commemoratives

Classic United States commemorative coins, which were struck from 1892 through 1954, are a challenging run of coins to collect. There are 50 different types, not even counting the multitude of issues and varieties. Many collectors try building such a set of coins in the top uncirculated grades, some toughies to locate in the better grades. But that’s not what Pocketpiece Commemoratives did. He sought these coins in the lowest possible grades. And those who know commemorative coins understand just how much more difficult that can be.

But Pocketpiece Commemoratives is no novice. He knows what he’s doing. He started collecting coins at the age of eight or nine years old. “This was back pre-1959,” he said. “My aunt worked at a bank where the penny gumball guy deposited his pennies. The bank bought them by the pound and put them in $25 or $50 bags.” He added, “My dad would get a bag or two, and my brother and I would look through them and check them against our coin folders for the ones we needed. I can remember putting a magnet in the bag to see how many steel cents would stick to it.”

After getting his start in Lincoln Cents he moved on to Buffalo Nickels. “The first coin I bought was a 1938 Buffalo Nickel from a kid on my baseball team for 15 cents.” But even by then he had his eye on commemoratives. “As a kid I had looked at pics of commems in the Red Book [A Guide Book of United States Coins] but never really understood them. I did think that they were neat looking.”

He built his commemorative collection over the years that followed, purchasing a Stone Mountain Half Dollar around the year 2000 that eventually graded PO01. He continued building his collection, finally entering his 50-piece commemorative set in the PCGS Set Registry in 2004. “At that time there were no lowball categories for them.” He recalled a handful of other collectors that owned lowball commemoratives and he reached out to them. “No one was close to finishing a set. That became my goal.”

Pocketpiece Commemoratives has several sets, though his complete 50-piece Not Mint to Be set recently garnered a PCGS Set Registry Hall of Fame honor. It was a challenging set that took many years to build and much camaraderie with fellow collectors searching for this piece or that. “The Cincinnati and Columbia Half Dollars were difficult to find,” he recalled of two coins grading VF20 and VG08, respectively – extremely low grades for their issues. “Three of my favorites are my FR02 Albany and FR02 Hawaii.”

How does a lowball collector build a set around a series of coins that saw virtually no circulation in the general public? “Study the lowball commems in the lowball PCGS Set Registry,” he advised, recommending collectors join the PCGS Forum and learn from other posters. “Study the pictures. Decide if you enjoy a certain look or if you’re going for the lowest grade. Collectors now have a great opportunity to collect commems that are already graded. When you buy a PCGS-graded commem, you know what you have.”