Professional Coin Grading Service Coin Guide

"Why collect coins?" or, "Why acquire coins?" (Some buyers do not collect coins; they simply buy or accumulate them.) Ask a dozen different buyers this question, and you will receive a dozen different answers.

For Example:

• "I heard that coins are a good investment."
• "I want something to do in my spare time, and I think collecting coins would be a good idea."
• "I inherited a 1908 $5 gold piece from my grandfather, and I became interested in numismatics when I sought to learn its history and value."
• "I received a telephone call at my office, and the person on the other end of the line told me that I would make a lot of money if I bought coins, so I sent him a check for $35,000, and I am expecting a package shortly."
• "I have been looking for a high-grade 1846-O Liberty Seated dollar for over five years, and the MS-60 piece you quoted to me is just what I want."

Coins are the footprints of history, it has been said, and without question it is interesting to hold history in your hand. Whenever I see a Morgan silver dollar with a CC mintmark, minted in the 1880s, I can conjure up in my imagination a vision of Carson City, Nevada in the rough and ready days of the Wild West, of miners working underground to take precious silver ore from the Comstock Lode, and of the main street of nearby Virginia City, with its saloons, gambling parlors, red-light district, and perhaps even a shootout between the sheriff and an outlaw. I almost forgot to mention Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), who early in his career in the 1860s was on the staff of the Territorial Enterprise, the local newspaper.

However, even if coins are the stuff of which nostalgic and romantic dreams are made, the inescapable fact is that most buyers of coins are in the game for the money (no pun intended). While an 1882-CC Morgan dollar might for me stir up notions of a bygone era, the typical buyer of such a coin sees it as a store of value, an item to buy today with the hope that down the line it can be sold for a profit. Whether the coin will yield an investment return seems to be a more timely and important question than whether this very same silver dollar once figured in a Saturday night poker game in Virginia City.