Have a Plan
Quantity and Quality
Being somewhat of a numismatic purist and traditionalist,
to say nothing of being an idealist, my quick answer to the question,
"Should I buy a large quantity of common coins or a small quantity of rare
ones?" is "form a collection and acquire one each of the pieces needed
in the collection, some common and others rare."
If you were to ask, "If I don't want to form a
collection, should I buy common coins or rare ones?" I would answer:
"Buy the rare ones." If you enlisted Bowers and Merena Galleries in
the search for rarities we would relish the challenge to put together a
first-class holding, and at some later date hope to have the opportunity to
showcase it in one of our auction sales, to the appreciation and delight of
buyers from all over the world.
However, there may be more than one correct answer to each
of these questions. Without a doubt, those who have carefully formed collections
of high quality coins in the past have, in nearly all instances, done very well
upon their sale. In an advertisement Stack's cited the instance of Harold
Bareford, who formed a collection over a period of years - and this was long ago
- and who paid approximately $12,700 for it. Upon its sale at auction it
realized about $1.2 million.
Then there is the Eliasberg Collection. Addressing an eager
group of listeners at a gathering held in Baltimore in 1976, Louis Eliasberg
related that his collection cost him slightly over $300,000 and had appreciated
in value at a compounded rate of about 18% per year. In 1982 my company sold
just part of his collection at auction, and that part brought $12,400,000!
In my book, High Profits From Rare Coin Investment, which
was first published in 1974 and which has in the meantime gone through over a
dozen editions and has become the best-selling volume ever written on the
subject, I stated that over a long period of years I had purchased or had sold
at auction numerous old-time collections, and in each and every instance anyone
who had carefully formed a collection and who had held it for a period of years
had realized a profit upon its sale. To this date I know of no exceptions to
this statement. This is really remarkable, for in what other field - securities?
real estate? - could a leading dealer make the statement that over the long term
all of his clients who had purchased with care and forethought had made money?
