Six Tips on Coin Collecting

If you want your numismatic coin collection to grow, not just in admiration, but also in value, it is best to keep abreast of the latest news and become as knowledgeable as possible on the subject.

Please consider these five suggestions that can help you become a knowledgeable collector of coins.

Understand the Terminology

Like any profession and hobby, there are a prothea of terms that are familiar to just the category or subject you are working with. Coin collecting is no exception. Familiarizing yourself with the language can help you set your feet better into the coin collecting hobby. Get to know terms such as bag marks and business strikes. All are important terms in numismatic coin collecting.

Set a Goal

Creating an objective or objectives is a can be fun as well as challenging.  It provides you with a purpose. It is a satisfying feeling once you achieve your goal. Then you can boast about it to your friends, post on social networks sites and if you become somewhat known in your community, you may even make it into your local newspaper.

Be Patient

Take your time to gain adequate knowledge about buying your coins. What one store or website might be selling a particular coin for, another one might be less. Research to get the best price for your coin .Learn about the coin’s quality, history and artistic appeal.. The more you know, the better you’d be at this hobby (or any hobby for that matter).

Be Careful How You Handle Your Coins

If your are a beginner, you might have inadvertently made one of the most common mistakes when it comes to handling coins and that is touching the coin with your hands and fingers. The natural oils in your skin will etch your fingerprint onto the surface of the coin. Not so much an issue with older circulated coins, but the ones that were hardly touched and those that are uncirculated will result in the coin having these oils permanently on the coin and it is impossible to remove them without further damaging the coin. This will result in the coin losing some of its value and if the coin is worth a lot, you could stand to lose a lot of money when you are ready to sell. Always hold a coin by the edge, never the faces!

Invest in a Good Magnifier

Many collectors can spot the difference between an amature and someone who is well experienced. Never examine a coin with your unaided eye. Use a magnifier as, “The mark of the experienced collector is the magnifier hanging from a lanyard around his neck”.

Magnifiers come with glass or plastic lenses and some come with build-in LED lights. Using an aide such as this will allow you to see much more detail. Without it, you may just miss something that could cost you thousands. Coins may appear bright and shiny to the unaided eye, but under magnification (glass or plastic), you may notice that it has been buffed, polished or possibly, even sand blasted to create that bright finish.

Focus on a Theme

A good rule of thumb would be to stick to certain types of coins, rather than buying coins that come from ‘all over the place’. It is highly suggested that you stick to a theme in order to keep your collection focused and build from there, but you can have more than one theme at any point in time..

You could look focus on coins created in the early 1900s or just old quarters or coins from varying times that have noticeable defects or even build a theme of old paper money.

You could even get more diversified and invest in silver or gold coins. This is called precious metals investing and could become a great and valuable asset to your old coin collection.