Yes, great blog. You describe human nature, especially the part where a collector starts out tentative and then builds confidence to buy higher end coins. That pretty much sums up my relatively recent (six years) entry into the coin collecting hobby.

Another cost of churn is state sales/use tax. Yes, I live in one of those states and yes, I am a good citizen and pay the tax – 5%. That makes it hard to want to sell anything, and so I create duplicates when I have had the opportunity to make geniune upgrades, such as the one you describe with the AU55 1854-D quarter eagle. So, this behavior ends up developing a pretty interesting shadow set. What to do?

Another topic: how long does a coin have to be held to be considered “fresh” when it returns to the market? 10 years, 20 years? Longer? In other words, what should be a serious collector’s time horizon, assuming it is not forever? I don’t want to leave it to my heirs to sell my collection, as I think that would be irresponsible. They don’t know what I know about the collection and the market. On the other hand, I don’t have any need or desire to sell any time within the next decade. Hopefully, anyways.

I find it interesting that we collectors are always trying to build a “set”, that consists of all the dates of something. Why is that? I am certainly in that camp, and yet when you step back, you ask yourself, “why has it evolved that way?” Yes, there is a certain pride in becoming a specialist. Plus, this is what builds confidence. Hopefully, this element of human nature will still exist when it is time to sell. Otherwise, these little piece of metal have a whole lot less value. That also means that you need to live foreever, Doug. We are counting on you!

Final question, are all pedigrees pretty much already created? Or, are new pedigrees being created today, when we look back from the distant future? When will the next big pedigree collection come on the market in our rare, pre 20th century, gold coin space. How many are out there that are worthy of this distinction?

JL

I believe you mentioned years ago that you had a “back-up” collection of Wash Qtrs with beautiful toning. My back-up collection is what I started with over 20 years ago, before getting addicted to branch mint gold: original better-date Indian eagles in AU58 or so that look MS at casual and even close inspection. These better dates would be any San Francisco issue, some of the No Mottos, and a few Denver and Phil issues. While this was challenging 20 years ago, it is now really hard to find these Indian eagles that fulfill all the desired qualities. However, the good news is that prices for AU Indian eagles are about what they were 20 years ago! Maybe most of these coins are now either dipped or are in MS 61-62 holders.