The Gothic Florin

On 9/25/2020 at 5:05 PM, World Colonial said:

... Whether you choose to keep your coin in the holder or not, TPG has still inflated the price level.  No one can deny that it has brought in a large pool of financially motivated buyers into the US coin market.

The inflated price of US coinage isn't an issue for me because I do not collect any US coinage.  But one reason I made this decision back in 1998 when I resumed collecting is because I couldn't afford hardly anything I considered worth buying and bought something else.

I hate those plastic holders, for starters. I understand why the coin and the cert must remain connected, but I don't like them, especially since they are showing up in price levels where there seems to be no point in doing it, like a $15 slabbed 1963 Franklin half-dollar. Seriously? Why? 

I collected coins and currency when I was a kid, in the 1970s. When I resumed temporarily around 2003 I focussed on British/World currency because US currency was so horribly overpriced, and more so now, worse than coins. (Yet paper is more fragile, and seems to call for some kind of protection.) Same for most US coins much before the 1930s. I hope the investor classes stay away from British/Channel Islands/colonial stuff I'm interested in, I have a limited budget for this kind of thing. I honestly don't plan on selling any of these, they are for my own pleasure, so proving to someone else that an MS-64 is MS-64 and not 63 or whatever is not an issue. If I wanted to invest, I'd try to pick something that doesn't yo-yo so much in price (precious metals) and is more easily converted to liquid. You can't flip a coin on the stock exchange.

I'm here for the discussions. They cost less than coins. When I do buy coins I'm into UK/colonial coinage now, rather than US coins like when I was younger, probably because I'm into English history. I'd still buy US paper currency if it didn't cost so bloody much. 

So Google sent me here after I went looking for lengthy arguments over using MS70 to dip coins (I found them). I've come back to numismatics after many years, because of, yes, covid. But I'm not investing--that's what my 401(k) is for. I buy coins because they're beautiful and they're little pieces of history. Same with banknotes.

I guess for me it's a matter of sorting out sites selling *gold gold gold!* from sites for those who are primarily coin collectors, whatever their price point. And I'm not interested in slabbed/TPG coins, either. I don't plan on selling them later, and I can't see them very well when they're encased in plastic. So I'm just "here for the beer," I guess. And looking at other people's collections. Thanks.