"The best time to buy is when there is blood in the streets" - Warren Buffet

It sure has been a while since I put back-to-back weekly entries in my journal. Like I said last week, I have been plodding along scouring the web for deals and steals on coins. Interestingly enough, I have been bottom fishing long enough now to notice there are distinct trends and cycles to where you can find the best deals. These cycles can vary as quickly as a week or take a couple of years to mature. But alas, I am only interested in the cycle effect because if significantly affects what I can afford. Let's face it, collecting on a teacher's salary is a challenging endeavor to say the least. It also explains why the vast majority of my collection is relatively modern. I am of the belief that while there will be very few modern coins that rise to the lofty levels, the compilation of complete sets may prove to be quite beneficial over the long run. I did forget to mention that there is just something intrinsically satisfying in building a complete set to any collector.

Anyway, of late, it seems that PF70UC Lincoln Cents are selling at a significantly greater discount to FMV than other proof coins of like years. I can neither offer an explanation for this observation nor will I attempt explain it. I can say that I have added a number of very nice upgrades to my Lincoln Memorial, Bicentennial and Union Shield set, "Making Cents of My Life". It was the Lincoln Cent and a couple of Blue Whitman folders that got me started in collecting about 40 years ago. I guess I never lost the love of the "common" penny but I sure have used it as a base to build my collection over the years. I will say I do not like the Union Shield reverse on the current Lincoln Cents. I hope we don't have to wait another 50 years for it to change.

Another interesting thing happened on this journey. Like every other collector, I have my favorite coins namely, the Indian Cent, the Winged Liberty (Mercury) Dime and the Franklin Half. While I have very nice albums for each of these, I have precious few of any of these coins in my registry collection. Somewhere along the way, I got hooked instead on Roosevelt Dimes but not just your run of the mill PF or MS varieties. No, I became enthralled by the concept of a MS full torch. Granted in 2 years I've only managed to add about 20 coins to my collection and most of those being minted after 1964. My goal is to build an MS 66 FT set, better if I can afford them. I will pick up MS 64 FT and MS 65 FT examples to fill holes if the price is right. If I counted correctly, the entire set currently stands at just under 150 coins in total. I do have to admit that Todd Peters also inspired this set. If you are patient, you can find some very nice examples out there. Oddly enough for as little silver as there is in a pre-1965 dime, they do seem to have been affected significantly by the drop in silver of the last year or so. The full torch, however, does command a premium over a standard MS grading but it is well worth it. Interesting side note here, the full torch does not seem to command the premium that Full Bell Lines does for the Franklin Half Dollar.

Since I mentioned silver, I would be remiss if I did not point out that it appears that silver has found some stability in the $19.00 to $19.50 range. This might be a good time to consider picking up some silver coins if you are so inclined. One of those cyclical trends I noticed is the price of circulated silver dollars, Morgan and Peace, which has been creeping up slowly and now appears to be at the $30 level. It had been in the low to mid $20 range. Please note I said CIRCULATED. Graded coins carrying more numismatic value than just melt are actually running at a slight discount to Fair Market Value. In fact, since selling all of my gold coins and a high percentage of my extra silver coins when gold was in the $1900 ballpark, I recently just began buying raw silver coins again.

I will leave you tonight with a picture of my most recent Lincoln Cent, a 2013-S PF70UC. Have a great evening everyone. It is good to be back on a regular basis.