Better Than a Museum
In an introduction to a section of one of our auctions a few years ago, the cataloguer, Michael Hodder, stated that the personal possession of a collection of coins brought a far greater pleasure than viewing cold objects in a museum. Coins are history you can hold in your hand; the past comes to life. This is what connoisseurship is all about.
Connoisseurship requires some effort, but it is an enjoyable pursuit. Once you buy coins and add them to your collection, it is rewarding to learn as much as possible about them. Perhaps this is putting the cart before the horse. Ideally, you should study about coins before you buy them - but not everyone does, particularly when a specialty is just begun. In fact, most coin buyers make some purchases in a specialty and then learn about the specialty in depth.
At a Bowers and Merena auction sale a few years ago, a gentleman bought a Proof gold coin, paying about $20,000 for it. After the sale he came to me and asked if he had made a good buy, and I queried him as to the reason for acquiring it. He had no particular explanation, except that he enjoyed the catalogue description, which pointed out that only a few dozen had been struck, and fewer still survived. As he seemed to know nothing at all about the market price, I gave him the assurance, correctly so, that he had not gone too far wrong, for also competing for the same coin were several dealers and collectors who did know their values, and his winning bid was just $1,000 over the next highest increment.
I suggested that he would add to his knowledge of this Civil War-era gold Proof rarity if he did some reading on the subject, and I recommended David Akers' books on gold coins as well as a copy of Walter Breen's Encyclopedia. He brushed me off, stating he had no time to read. His office was on Wall Street, and he was busy buying and selling securities. A few months later he telephoned me to say that he had decided to give up collecting, and that he would be consigning his recently acquired Proof gold rarity as well as a few other coins he had purchased to one of our auction sales, which he did. As it turned out, the market had risen in the meantime, and even after our selling commission was deducted, he registered a small profit. The point of this is that the gentleman entered numismatics, stayed for a short time, owned some very nice coins, but never took the time to appreciate them, therefore he never enjoyed what he had.
