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Introduction

Welcome to Coin Collecting For Dummies, 3rd Edition. You may have just discovered coin collecting for the first time and want to find out more. Or perhaps you’ve collected coins for a while and want to take your hobby to the next level.

Coin collecting is a hobby you can share with family and friends. It’s relaxing and as expensive or inexpensive as you want it to be. Coin collecting teaches history, geography, observational skills, organizational skills, and analytical tools — all without your thinking about it. If you buy properly, coins can be an excellent place to park your money for a rainy day, and if you buy the right coins and the market improves, you may even be able to make a profit on your collection someday.

About This Book

The purpose of this book is to turn you into a world-class coin collector in as short a period of time as possible. The chapters are laid out in parts that focus on particular areas of numismatics (the study of coins), including getting involved in coin collecting; deciding what to collect; protecting yourself and your coins; and grading, buying, and selling coins.

This book is designed to appeal to collectors at every level, from beginner to advanced. We’ve written it in everyday English without overloading you with a bunch of coin terms. (If you run across a term you don’t understand, you can find a great glossary in the back of the book.) This isn’t a hardcore coin book but a great general reference that points you in different directions for further investigation. You can always come back to this book to regroup, resupply, and ready yourself for something new.

Perhaps the most important goal of this book is to get you excited — and to keep you excited — about coin collecting. Coin collecting has been an important part of our lives for many years, and we hope you’ll develop a sense of appreciation for the hobby as well.

No one needs coins, but if you decide to collect them, you certainly need this book. We wish we’d had one like it at the beginning of our collecting careers. Coin collecting can be a confusing maze of choices sprinkled with little traps along the way. Sure, you can go it alone, but why not make your journey into numismatics a lot easier by picking our brains and learning from the mistakes we’ve made over the past several decades?

Coin collecting is a huge, wide-open field. Think of this book as a road map to help you navigate. Different issues may become important to you as your collecting evolves, so keep this book handy, and refer to it often.

Foolish Assumptions

We don’t make many assumptions about you, but we do assume that at least one of the following statements applies to you:

 You’ve never collected coins, but you’re interested in getting started, and you don’t know where to begin.

 You’ve collected a few coins here and there, but you want to get serious and take your coin collecting to the next level.

 You’re an advanced coin collector who loves to read every book on coin collecting, just to make sure you haven’t overlooked something critical.

 Coins, schmoins — you’re a collector of For Dummies books. You own every book in the series, and you’re not about to let this one be the first gap in your collection.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book are handy road signs, called icons, that point you toward valuable advice and away from potential hazards.

This information is the type you want at your fingertips. Consider marking these pages for quick reference.

This icon highlights deeper, more technical information that may come in handy as you pursue coin collecting. Feel free to read or skip these mini-lectures!

An old hobby that continues to evolve has developed many shortcuts to help its participants have more fun. This icon highlights some of the most important tips.

Heeding the advice next to these icons helps you spend wisely so you’ll have additional pennies for the stuff you really can use.

Beyond the Book

This book’s Cheat Sheet offers lists of useful coin dealers, auction houses, websites, and magazines for numismatists. You can get it simply by going to www.dummies.com and searching for Coin Collecting For Dummies Cheat Sheet.

Where to Go from Here

This book is a reference book, which means you can dip into it when you need a piece of information; you don’t have to read it from beginning to end. (If you want to read it from beginning to end, of course, we won’t complain!)

If you’re getting started with coin collecting, Part 1 is a good place to begin. If you already know the basics, and you’d like to start looking at specific coins to add to your collection, parts 2 and 3 are for you. If you’re ready to buy or sell, check out parts 4 and 5, respectively. And if you’re short on time but still want some fun and useful information, you can’t go wrong with any of the chapters in Part 6.

We hope that your journey through the world of coin collecting is as much fun as ours has been!