Taking bottom fishing to a new level

My budget for buying graded coins is $50 a month. During the summer, June through August, it is $0. I blew the budget this summer and bought three graded coins all of them PF70UC. I spent less then $50 total including shipping, handling and transaction fees. (Let?s face it going 3 months without adding to my collection is pure torture!) I add a 2008S Clad PF70U DC Quarter, a 2008S Clad PF70UC Roosevelt Dime, and a 2007S Clad PF70UC Kennedy Half to my collection. When I did the math, I got the three coins, on average, for 21 cents to the dollar of FMV.

I spent a good bit of time watching the various auction boards for coins that seem to be overlooked. (What else is there to do when you are a teacher out for the summer and not getting paid for your time?) I began to notice a pattern. Depending on the time and the day, I would see the same coin sell anywhere from 20% to 60% of FMV. And while my evidence to this point is purely antidotal, I ended up using this pattern to sell my extra slabbed coins to help our budget and found that after shipping and fees I had made 20% over what I had originally paid for the coins. (A very pleasant surprise.) I hadn?t intended on selling my extra coins but desperate times call for desperate measures. Being a math teacher, I am now convinced there are models that describe when is the best time to buy and sell coins on the auction boards. While I am not opposed to paying FMV for any coin, I believe I can populate large parts of my sets at a significant discount to FMV and use the savings to pay the higher prices for key coins when they become available. Another huge advantage to my bottom fishing for coins comes when I trade my extra slabs for coins I need. Since I trade at comparable FMV for coins, to equalize the playing field, I can offer a premium for the coins for which I trade. Everybody wins in that case. I transfer the prices I paid for my coins to the coins for which I?m trading and on paper I?m still getting the coins I want at a discount to FMV and the other party is getting a better deal for their coins.

Anyway, I decided to try to build a model that would tell me when the best times to buy and sell coins would be. I chose just PF70UC Kennedy Halves for my initial try at the model. (I suspect the models for different coins will be very similar but that is yet to be proven.) I?m normalizing the prices of the coins by dividing the selling price plus S&H by the FMV of the coin. This should mitigate the differences in price between Clad and Silver coins and the availability of coins from different years. I am currently tracking the day and time of day each coin is sold. I am also recording the year and the composition of the coin just in case there is a significant difference. I am hoping to collect enough data over the next few months to give me a definitive picture of the ebb and flow of buying and selling coins. I figured if there are technical traders on the stock market why not in the coin world. (Yea, I have way too much time on my hands.)

Oh I know I am not going to build my sets quickly but I am, over time, going to build them on a budget I can afford. Fortunately, as a teacher, while I don?t have a lot of available resources I do have a good bit of time.