I was in my local coin shop to pick up some "America the Beautiful" quarters for a swap, and idly took a look through their US junk silver buckets to round up my price to an even amount. Fished out a few Mercury dimes in better condition. I figured it was a good way to buy silver right around spot price and maybe I can swap them to people who need them. I have a very nice AU specimen for my type set, and I thought that was enough for me.
Then after I got home and spent some time grading them and putting them in the junk silver jar, I thought to myself, "As long as I'm going to have a bunch of these sitting in a junk silver jar, maybe I should get a folder and organize them nicely."
So today I bought a Whitman folder and another 24 dimes of different dates and mints at spot, and I guess now I am collecting Mercury dimes by date and mint.
Quote: "neilithic"It doesn't happen to me because I have pretty open collection parameters. I'll collect anything that's pre-1945 and worth enough to put in a flip.
Do you collect by year/mint, though? Other than modern US coins, I collect by type and will upgrade my coin if a better one comes along and swap the first one.
Strictly speaking, I'm probably still going to consider these dimes "surplus" and make them available for swap (at least until I get duplicates) but I figured I may as well organize them into something nice to look at.
As an aside on that note, wasn't 1916 a banner year for US coinage? Winged, Standing, and Walking Liberty - I don't think these coins have ever been equaled for beauty among US coins.
In mid 2016, my collection was packed away and off site as my marriage officially came to an end. I still had the "itch" so decided to collect circulation, non-silver Canadian 25 Cents by date/type/mintmark.
So for 48 years, 1968 - 2016, that works out to about 120 different coins. I just need a few more from the 1990's and it is complete.
I was never a big fan of our "commemorative" craze but then I got to thinking (yes I know, dangerous at best). If I was a youngster, this would be a pretty awesome start to the hobby. And all culled from your everyday change.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so. Mark Twain
Happens to me all the time. I normally collect by type, but every so often I see a bunch of coins from some particularly pretty series in a single bargain bin and try to get a year set.
That said, while Mercury dimes are one of my favorite coin designs, they are so expensive (on the account of being silver) and have so many different dates (um, somewhere around fifty?) that the idea of making a set of them feels silly (even ignoring the assorted more expensive keys).
Odd I don't have that problem. I just want one of everything , or more. Mostly cents and pennys. My problem is I find it hard to get rite of all my extra's. Here are 125 extra UK 2 p coins. not part of my collection or swap list. And I even have more of them.
And the UK penny's are in the thousands now, large and small. Maybe this summer I will have a fire sale and gave away
I basically collect only Canadian circulation coinage and tokens, especially Canadian colonial. This includes a few type foreign coins that were known to circulate here, especially French, English, Spanish colonial, and American. I also have an interest in Roman coins, though I've not purchased any for over a year now. If I see anything else that I like that is somewhat expensive, but doesn't fall into those categories, my trick is to ask myself:
Would I rather spend that money on my Canadian colonial series?
