Knowledge may be power, but it can save a person money too

I have not written in my journal in a while-except for my little April Foll's prank about the gold formula. The main reason is that I have purchased several books on our great hobby recently and have been doing more reading than writing or collecting. David Bowers book "The Experts Guide to Collecting and Investing in Rare Coins" has been a real eye-opener. It seems that I have done several things naturally correct, and really blown it on others {overall my collecting has been a pretty good investment though}.

One chapter that really was an eye-opener was that Rarity is Subjective!!! I have known for a while that even with set grading standards that grading can still be subjective to a degree, within a point or two {and sometimes a single point can mean $thousands $} However I had not considered that rarity is subjective. A 1916-D mercury is almost always known as rare, yet its mintage would place it as the 11th easiest date in the 3-cent nickel series. Demand, condition rarity, high grade hoarding, and other factors all help explain why more common coins often sell for more than lower mintage ones.

Anyhow, my big project has been looking for World Coins with ships that fit my High Seas signature set. I spent the $60 on the new Krause catalog of World Coins 1901-2000...and there are a lot of cool older ship coins. I wanted to try and add more coins from the 1800's and earlier 1900's to my set. It is quite a project looking through this 1000 page book and writing down interesting coins, doing a bit of research on them, and then trying to find some of them for sale. It is however a true labor of love.

I added 2 beautiful Daniel Webster Hard Times Tokens from 1841 {with sailing ships} to my collection-they are 2 gorgeous copper coins that have gotten that beautiful blue toning that you rarely get on copper-and I had to have them.

I also finally bought the "Holy Grail" for my ship themed coin set...The Hudson Commemorative!! I got it at a Heritage auction an NGC MS63 {should be receiving it anyday now}. It is the final US coin that I needed with a ship to add to the set, and I had put it off for quite a while because the it's a bit pricey for a non-competition set coin.

Finally, I just mailed off a 10 coin submission to NGC with some super coins in it, and I'll probably be checking the order status every day for the next few weeks.

Well, it has been a busy first quarter of 2007 for my collecting experience-even if my actual collection has grown little and my library and knowledge have grown more....here is a photo of one of the few coins I have added to my collection this year-Daniel Webster HT-21 Hard Times Token with a die break and great coloring {which is hard to photo}..