Bottom line="like what you collect, and collect what you like!" 100% agree about collecting, but 100% disagree about "bottom line" tag
Top Line: "like what you collect, and collect what you like!" Collecting gives one satisfaction of owning things that provide personal gratification, with little regard to investment potential. Collecting is fun and a great hobby to pass time and build camaraderie. Collecting cost money similar to buying a fancy car with little regard to future value of the purchase, but you get to enjoy your purchase everyday. I used to collect baseball cards back in the 1980s, today they are worth much less than when I purchased them in the mid 80s, despite keeping only cards in top grade with low populations. I will continue to collect them because I enjoyed buying wax packs, sorting and grading cards as a teenager and even if they are only worth the paper they are printed on in the future, my living standard will not be impacted in any way. This is collecting or owning someting you like with little regard to the future value. I used to do it when I was young, I still do it as tiny faction of my income. How much income you devote to collecting is a personal decision and should not be questioned by anyone.
Bottom line: "invest in what is undervalued, sell what is overvalued" Investing is finding opportunities in which the market opinion of the masses is incorrect, but at some point will be corrected or at least improved upon. Books, COAs, blogs, forum, etc provide a guide to what the masses believe. The more popular a book or forum is, the more likely it is an excellent representation of the market view. All books, COAs, blogs, forum, etc are going to be proven wrong as the market matures and as more coins get graded, however, in the meantime there are abundant opportunities to "front run" inaccurate mintage estimate based on your OWN research of the market, while making outstanding returns in the process. For example, in the summer of 2011 I put up a 1979 year of child silver piefort on ebay for $45,000 Best Offer and an estimated mintage of 100-200 vs published mintage of 2000 (Mr. Gee book and Red Book). I got several emails from people wanting to buy the coin at $10,000-$15,000 with the statement that I am misrepresenting the mintage of the coin by a factor of 10. My response, I will gladly buy as many of that coin priced at five times the price of a comparable 2000 mintage 1 oz modern Chinese silver coin, no one took me up on the offer, despite their initial bold statement. How did I estimate the mintage, I looked at NGC population reports and found only 10 silver piefort coins had been graded and this was slightly higher than the graded population for my 1992 platinum invention and discovery coins that had 7 coins/each graded at the time. The COA for the invention and discovery coins stated a mintage of 100, so using that as reference post, I estimated the mintage of the silver piefort was 100-200 (10/7 = 1.4). I have no certainty that this range is correct, but it is better view of future estimate of the mintage than what the masses believe of 2000, therefore I priced the coin like a 100 mintage piece rather than 2000 mintage piece. The coin did sell shorty close to my initial offer price to a more sophisticated and deeper pocket collector or investor than myself.
Final Line: invest prudently based on your OWN research, so you can have more money to collect what you like in the future. If you can't do your OWN research hire someone to manage your investments or find an investment in which you can do OWN research. Following the masses will usually end in tears, seen this play out 100s of times in stamps, sports cards, stocks, futures, options on stocks/futures and modern Chinese coins - don't let it happen to you. Luckily for all of us, the true masses are yet not in this market, when they will be, I will not be in this market, with exception few collector pieces (TBD).
Arif
