One of the oldest jokes in the book goes, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.” Hoary? Yes. Old when your grandpa was a kid? Sure. But oh so true and applicable to the subject of this blog which is, as you no doubt already know, “how to become a good numismatist.” Because to become a good collector, you do need to practice. But what exactly do you need to practice most?   
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Say the words “double play” and most people think of Jeter to Cano to Texeira. But in the world of gold coins, the concept of the double play has another meaning altogether. Back in the 1980′s and the 1990′s it was common to see large-sized U.S. gold coins marketed with the “double play” strategy.   
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If you follow economic news in even the most cursory fashion you are, no doubt, aware of the fact that the news has been pretty grim for the last few days. Lehman Brothers is gone, Merrill Lynch has been sold in a distress situation to Bank of America, AIG is looking perilous and the stock market yesterday had its single worst day since immediately after 9/11. How does this affect the rare coin market?   
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Back in the Old Days of coin collecting (say 1998…) we dealers continually preached the mantra of the Five Year Hold. What the Five Year Hold said was that in order for your coin purchases to have a chance to mature financially (a euphemism, of course, for making a little dough…) you needed to hold your coins at least five years. But in the Age of the Internet, this maxim seems to have gone the way of the numismatic fixed price list.   
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At the end of my last blog, I mentioned that the price gains in the coin market that many collectors and investors have been seeing are somewhat misleading. My guess is that if you took a random sample of 100 miscellaneous coins and calculated their price appreciation since 2003, fewer than 20% would show plusses. Some would even show minuses.   
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There is no doubt that we are currently experiencing a very good coin market. Many areas have increased exponentially in price in the last three to five years with the top end of the market now out of reach for most collectors. And this has created a market that has proven very frustrating to long-term collectors. Let’s say that you are a collector who has focused on early gold for the last decade.   
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