Читать книгу Coin Collecting For Dummies - Neil S. Berman - Страница 13

Coins have been collected by everyone from Roman emperors (Julius Caesar and Trajan) to U.S. presidents (Harry Truman and Thomas Jefferson) to kings (King Victor Emmanuel of Italy , King Farouk of Egypt, and King Louis XVI of France) to millions of commoners like us.

You can join millions of famous and not-so-famous folks of the past and present and have lots of fun collecting coins, but first, you need to arm yourself with some information. Every coin collector builds their collection differently. Some people with little imagination go for the simplest and least interesting coins; others with more derring-do go for complex and confusing ones. The good news: There isn’t one right way to collect coins, so no matter how you go about it, you can have a good time. For an overview of coin collecting, including the whys and hows, turn to Chapter 2.

Before you spend a dime on collecting coins, you need a buying strategy. You need to know how to research the coins you’re interested in, as well as how condition, rarity, supply, and other factors influence the coins’ values. Most beginning coin collectors get hung up on values. Don’t get me wrong: Value is important, but it’s just one of the things you may want to consider when collecting coins. Also important, are discovering which coins interest you and building a collection you can enjoy. I cover all these topics in Chapter 3.

When you’ve decided to give coin collecting a green light, and you’ve set up a plan for building your coin collection, you’ll want to be sure you know how to hold a coin correctly (because if you don’t hold it correctly, you could damage it) and how to store your collection (to keep it safe from all the evils that can befall a coin). Turn to Chapter 4 for more information on storing and handling your coin collection, whether it consists of one coin or a hundred.