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CoinsbyGary

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Eating My Words

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coinsbygary

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How other Society members help me to become a better collector and enjoy coin collecting all the more.

In an April 4, 2009 post, I talked about the joys of building a signature set. Now six months later as my collecting interests are developing I am finding that I have to eat a few of my words from that post. It is not that I enjoy building signature sets any less, but it is more about expanding my horizons and discovering by experience the joys of collecting in other areas.

Today I stand by the opinion and comments of that post with the exception of one. In a comment about signature sets vs. registry sets, I stated ?Filling slots determined by Collectors Society, while fun is mechanical and non-flexible.? For that comment, I was mildly rebuked by another Society member, in it he said, ?While it might seem mechanical 90% of the time I would encourage you to check out some of the 2008 'Best Presented' sets. They're competitive sets, but they definitely have a lot of extra work put in and a lot of character.? Subsequently, I did check those sets out and saw what he meant. However, some things you can only learn by experience. This experience came with building a registry set of my own.

Type collecting is what I cut my numismatic teeth on more than 35 years ago and today remains one of my key interests, so it was only natural for me to start in the registry by building type sets. One of the type sets I am currently working on is the 20th Century set. With many of the coins being recent and in good supply, I can fill most of the slots in this set with coins grading from MS-63 to 66 for less than $100 per coin. Even at this, I still cannot compete, but the coins in my set are handsome and attractive. Maybe the fact that I could not compete, spurred my previous comments.

My stated reason for loving Signature sets is that the coins represent my personality and what interests me, and that is still true. My error in thinking was that I could not express myself in a registry set because ?Collector?s Society? defines the slots. Now I am finding that I can express myself within the coin comments. If a coin has storied history that interests me, I can include that in the comments and if it is the coins historical context, I can state that. Furthermore, if a coin has special significance to me, I can include that also. For instance my set has a 1913 MS-62 ?type 1? Buffalo nickel. Now I realize that I can get a better example of this coin for relatively little cost, but this particular coin I received as a gift for my high school graduation.

Yet another thing I found that has a profound impact on me as a collector is the conversation and input I have from other collectors within ?Collectors Society?. The honest input of other collectors is serving to make me a better collector. Because of input I recently received, I will soon be making improvements to the aforementioned registry set. My hope is that others can glean things off my knowledge and experience to become themselves, better collectors.

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