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CoinsbyGary

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Coin Collecting Fun at an Inexpensive Price

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coinsbygary

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Strategies for building inexpensive sets with key dates and having fun doing it.

Not all my collections are contained within my registry or signature sets. For instance, I have a complete date and mint Mercury Dime set housed in an intercept shield folder (less the over dates). Most of the coins in this set grade good or very good, with higher grades in the later years. One coin in the set, the 1916-D, is NGC certified AG-3. The design for the Mercury dime is one of my favorites and plugging holes in an album took me back to my early years of collecting and the fun I had.

Most series of coins have key and semi key dates, and the Mercury Dime series is no exception. While I could justify not buying the over dates, there is not getting around the 1916-D. When I started this set, I had to decide how I was going to handle this key date. I decided on purchasing the 1916-D first, buying the best specimen I could afford. The advantages to this strategy are:

1. I get the hard coin out of the way. The coin I purchased on E-Bay cost me $415. Buying the key date early allowed me to save money with a higher quality coin. Today I see coins grading FR-2 offered on E-Bay for $550.

2. If I ever decide to upgrade, I can do it for less by buying the higher-grade coin and selling the lower-grade coin.

3. I usually insist on purchasing key coins that are certified to guarantee the authenticity of the coin I buy. With the 1916-D this is very important since this coin is frequently counterfeited.

Having the 1916-D, I purchased the folder and populated it with the loose dimes I already owned. Next, I bought a 200-coin lot of un-searched dimes for $60 and populated 30 to 40% of the slots in my folder. With the duplicate coins, I assembled a few short sets and resold them on E-Bay. This left me with having to purchase a few common dates and the scarce dates such as the 1921 and 1921-D dimes.

After I completed the set, I went through and graded each of the coins according to an old grading guide in my library; ?New Photo Grade, a Photographic Grading Guide for United States Coins? by James F. Ruddy. In 1972, this book was the official grading guide of the ANA. This gave me hours of fun while helping me to develop my grading skills.

In all I had a set that gave me hours of fun at relatively little cost. My only problem is that I have one empty slot in my folder, the 1916-D. You can have 80 coins in a folder, but when you look at it, all you notice is the empty slot. I guess that I will have to get over it or crack the coin out of its holder (this is not going to happen).

Some time ago, I thought to start an Indian Head Penny collection. Currently, an 1877 Indian Head Penny, PGCS graded AG-3 is waiting in my collection for me to start. Happy collecting everyone!

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