The advanced collector would give an eyetooth for any of
the following: 1859-S Liberty Seated silver dollar, MS-63 grade; 1876-S $5 gold,
MS-65 grade; 1808/7 overdate half cent, MS-60; 1915-D Lincoln cent, MS-65; and
the 1941-S Walking Liberty 50c, MS-65, sharply struck. Of course, a collector
would also need the commoner coins as well, as no silver dollar collection would
be complete without a common 1881-S, etc., but it is the rarities which are the
hardest to find and which create the most interest.
On the other hand, the typical uninformed investor would
probably not know which coins were scarce and which were common, and in any
event, if he didn't make his own investment decisions, he would be apt to
accumulate in quantity such items as the 1881-S Morgan silver dollar, MS-63
grade; 1901-S $5 gold, MS-64 grade; 1909 V.D.B. Lincoln cent, MS-65; and so on.
An investor once told me that his entire holdings consisted
of a quantity of bank-wrapped Uncirculated rolls of 1963 Washington quarters
which he had purchased for $10,000 the group. After owning them for five years
and not realizing a profit, he sold out and left the field of coins to become
involved in investing in baseball cards, which he was told were "a real
growth area." This was a shame for numismatics, for he was a professor of
English literature at a well-known Eastern university, and undoubtedly he could
have made some interesting contributions to the rare coin hobby.
The uninformed investor usually ends up buying coins which
are desirable in high grades but which are not rare. I suggest that while owning
one each of such coins is fine, as each is a necessary part of a specialized
collection of its particular series, it is important to acquire rarities as
well. On the other hand, anyone with a limited budget can form a truly
interesting and numismatically important collection simply by acquiring
inexpensive examples of coins with "stories."
