A coin buying routine is like a golf putting routine.  When Tiger Woods gets ready to make a putt, he follows the same putting routine every time.  You need a similar routine when buying coins.

Any good putting routine takes the golfer from reviewing the layout of the green, to assessing the break of the shot, to addressing the ball, to determining how much force is needed, to striking the ball with your putter.  Having a similar routine for buying coins will give you a system for determining whether to buy a coin or move on to the next.

The coin buying mental game is no less important than having a good golf mental game.  The first thing that you must know is that there are tons of coins out there for you to buy.  Unless you are looking to buying an ultra rare coin, you don’t have to buy the first coin you see.  Take your time.  With a little patience, you will be able to buy a much better coin for your collection.

In today’s buy it now world, coin collectors are buying slabbed coins looking solely at the grading number.  Many of these coin buyers are not selective in their buying.  If they want to buy a 1921 high relief peace dollar graded MS-65, they look at a bunch of certified 1921 peace dollars and buy the first MS-65 they see.  But with a little patience and developing a good coin buying routine, you can buy the best MS-65 1921 high relief peace dollar with stunning eye appeal.

I have not mastered my coin buying routine, as the following steps are being improved as I gain more experience.  However, I do think that it is a pretty good system.  This system assumes that I am looking for a particular coin.  For this example, let’s assume that I am looking to buy a 1921 Peace Dollar.  The 1921 Peace Dollar is the high relief Peace Dollar which just so happens to be the first Peace Dollar ,minted.  It is one of the key date Peace Dollars and perfect for both a U.S. type set collection or the anchor for your Peace Dollar collection.

Here is the coin buying routine I use when looking to buy peace dollars.

1.  Know the grade you want to buy. The 1921 Peace dollar is a key date peace dollar and therefore is not a cheap coin.  The Red Book lists the price of the 1921 Peace Dollar at $120 for VF-20, $285 for MS-60, $775 for MS-64 and $2,500 for MS-65.  If you know that you don’t want to pay in the thousands, you might as well not look at MS-65 1921 Peace Dollars.  Likewise, if you don’t want a circulated Peace Dollar you might as well only look at Mint State coins.  For this example, I am going to  look for an MS-64 Peace Dollar.

2.  Look at the coin grade. Now that I know that I want to buy a MS-64 1921 Peace Dollar, I only look at coins graded MS-64.   Therefore, if I am looking through a dealer’s box of Peace Dollars, I will look at the dealer’s grade on his 1921 peace dollars.  This works great for slabbed coins, but can be a little more difficult for raw coins.  If you are looking at raw coins, you will have to use the rest of this coin buying routine to determine whether the coin is accurately graded.

3.  Determine if coin has good eye appeal. When I started my coin buying routine I learned a lot from Scott Travers’ One-Minute Coin Expert. However, Scott lists eye appeal as the last step in his coin buying routine.  But for the average coin collector, I think that eye appeal should be one of the first steps in determining whether to buy a coin.  If the coin doesn’t have good eye appeal, I don’t want to buy it.  Additionally, eye appeal is an easy tool to quickly weed out the dogs.

4.  Check the rim for dents or nicks. The next step is to start to check out the surfaces of the coin.  I like to start with the rim and move inward.  I find that most people focus on the picture on the coin and often miss imperfections on the rim and surfaces because they become myopic.

5.  Check the fields for scratches, wear, bag marks and other blemishes. These surface imperfections should not detract from the coin’s eye appeal.  If you are looking at MS-65 coins and below, the surfaces might have imperfections.  I don’t like to buy any coin with blemishes on key areas of the coin.  For the 1921 Peace dollar, I don’t want any coin with a mark on Miss Liberty’s face, neck or fields.

6.  Determine whether the coin has good luster. Determining mint luster is about determining how light reflects off the coin.  The more luster a coin has the more light will be reflected from the coin.

7.  Determine whether the toning of the coin is appealing. As coins age, they often tone.  As the coin’s metal interacts with the environment, the metal can turn colors.  Some toning is beautiful and some is unattractive.  When I look at a coins’ toning, I want to make sure that it is appealing and not artificial.

8.  Determine whether the coin has good details. The next step in my coin buying routine is determining whether the coin has a good strike.  Finding full detail coins is one of the most fun aspects of coin collecting for me.  I have written a lot here about collecting full step Jefferson Nickels.  Full Step Jefferson Nickels have a good strike.  Jefferson nickel collectors focus in on the steps of Monticello because this area of the nickel is a good indicator on whether the coin is fully struck.  If the Jefferson nickel has full steps, chances are the rest of the coin will be well struck.  Each coin series has its areas to look at to help determine whether the coin is fully struck.  Remember that just because a coin is Mint State does not mean that it is fully struck.  In fact, in my example of buying a 1921 Peace Dollar, the MS-64 description allows for some weakness in key areas of this coin.  Therefore finding a fully struck 1921 Peace Dollar will be extra special.

9.  Determine how much you are will to pay for the coin. The last step of my coin buying routine is determining the appropriate coin price.  Most coin guides list prices for average coins by grade.  If you have followed this coin buying guide and found a coin that passes all of the above tests, you have a beautiful coin in your hand.  This coin will not be average for its grade, it will be a primo coin.  Continuing with buying 1921 Peace Dollars, following this coin buying guide would have lead me to finding a primo 1921 Peace Dollar.  Chances are that this Peace Dollar is on the very high end of the MS-64 grading scale.  Therefore, since the coin is at the upper end, don’t be afraid to pay more for it.  Use the coin price guides to give you a ballpark price for an average coin of this grade and then determine how much more your are willing to pay for this primo coin.

Like any golfer, you need to consistently follow this coin buying routine everytime you look at buying a coin.  If you practice the steps outlined in this coin buying guide, this routine will become automatic.  You will consistently be able to buy the best coins in a given grade.  This will help you to build a superb coin collection that will be worth more money in the long run than the buyer who just looks at the grade on the certified slab.

Here is the full list of the 2009 Summer Seminar Schedule.  The ANA Summer Seminar includes courses for beginning coin collectors, intermediate coin collectors, advanced coin collectors and coin dealers.  Some of the classes that I am interested in are Introduction to Grading United States Coins, including the intemediate class and advanced class.  I also think that the Collecting/Investing in Morgan Silver Dollars course will be awesome.    Additionally, there are courses for coin die variety collectors, coin photography courses, and courses to help detect counterfeit coins.

I would love to attend the ANA Summer Seminar this year, but I am not sure that I am going to be able to convince my wife to go there for our vacation.  Maybe next year I can plan for it a little better.  Are you thinking about attending the ANA Summer Seminar?  Have you attended a previous year’s session?  If so, please tell us about your experience in the comments below.

CAC offers two services to the coin collecting community,

• Verifying the grades assigned by PCGS and NGC are accurate, and
• Market making in CAC approved coins.

Why does market believe there is a need for CAC to verify the accuracy of PCGS and NGC slabbed coins?  Well, according to CAC, it is because of th gradeflation that is supposedly occuring at PCGS and NGC.  CAC founder John Albanese believes that the coin investing community and coin collecting community needs CAC to ensure that coins are being accurately graded.

But, I have to ask, wasn’t this the purpose of PCGS and NGC?  Aren’t slabbed coins supposed to already perform this function?  If PCGS and NGC have succumbed to the business pressures of their clients and are improperly grading coins, what stops CAC from doing the same?  Sure right now they might not be, but it seems to me that over time these same pressures will exist for CAC.  In fact, the pressures will probably be greater because there will be added pressure from PCGS and NGC to not make them look bad.

I am also concerned that coin slab holders are going to start to look like NASCAR race cars with stickers all over them.  I mean if seeing the CAC sticker is necessary, maybe we need to triple check the accuracy of the coin grades.  To me, this seems crazy.

My solution is to stop this and demand that PCGS and NGC accurately grade coins.  That is what we are paying them for.  What do you think of CAC verified coins?

These coin collecting forums are in no particular order.

1.  CoinTalk Forums – These forums are perfect for beginning coin collectors and expert coin collectors.  I really love the community here.

2.  Coin Community Forum – Like the CoinTalk Forums, the Coin Community Forum feels more like a family.  Everyone there is very friendly and helpful.

3.  Coin Network – This site is more than just a coin collecting forum.  It is a social network for coin collectors.  The Coin Network has a forum section, a blog post section, and a section to create groups.  In fact, I have created a group for coin collecting bloggers.  If you are a blogger who writes about coin collecting, please join this group.  It is a great way to network with other coin collectors and bloggers.

4.  Susan Headley’s Coin Forum – Susan Headley is one of the best coin bloggers.  She writes the Susan’s Coins Blog at About.com.  If you have not read Susan’s blog articles, head on over there right now.  She is an excellent writer and very passionate about coins.  In addition to being a great writer, Susan has a great coin collecting forum.

5.  Collector’s Universe Forums -  Collector’s Universe does not just cater to coin collectors.  However, this forum does have an active coin collector community.  Like the other forums mentioned here, the community at Collector;s Universe loves coin collecting.

Do you have a favorite coin collecting forum that is not on my list?  I would love to hear about it.  I am always looking for more places to meet interesting coin collectors.

As I have been working on putting together a list of key date coins, I thought that the 1950-D Jefferson Nickel fit this bill.  If you look at the mintage numbers for this coin, it only has slightly over 2.6 million coins.  This is the lowest mintage for any Jefferson Nickel.

However, when I read Scott Travers’ Top 88 Coins to Buy and Sell: 44 Winners and 44 Losers, I was surprised to see him state that this coin is over priced.  Scott’s analysis has taught me an important lesson.  You can’t just look at mintage numbers when investing in coins.  You have to look at the history of the coin.  According to Scott Travers, when this coin was being struck, coin collectors realized that the mintage numbers were low.  Therefore, they started to hoard this coin.  So, while the mintage numbers are low for the 1950-D Jefferson nickel, the number of saved coins is higher than other Jefferson nickels.

This is an important lesson for coin collectors.  Don’t just make your buying decision based off of  mintage numbers.  Research more about your coins.  This research will help you to make good buying decisions and build a more valuable coin collection.  Additionally, this research is the fun part of coin collecting.

So is the 1950-D Jefferson Nickel a key date for this US nickel type?  Yes, and no.  I will list it as a key date because of its low mintage number, but you have to make sure that you don’t over pay for it.

If you would like to read my other articles about my U.S. Nickel type set collection, here are the other articles in this series.

• US Nickel Type Set Collection

• U.S. Nickel Type Set

1857 Flying Eagle Cent

The 1857 Flying Eagle Cent was the very first small cent coin type.  I love collecting the first year of any coin type.  In addition to being the first of this coin type, the Flying Eagle Cent was only produced from 1857 to 1858.

This 1857 Flying Eagle Cent is perfect for US type coin collectors because it is historic and it is not too expensive.  This is the perfect way to get a Flying Eagle Cent design coin.

When looking at a new coin type, I always want to know, why did the Mint decide to create this coin?  And, what was wrong with the old coin type?

In the case of this Small Cent, there were two reasons for the change.  The Flying Eagle Cent replaced the Large Cent.  The large cent was weighed 10.89 grams, which is over 4 times the weight of today’s pennies.  People didn’t like to carry these large cents.  For a coin as common as a one cent, people wanted a smaller coin.

The second reason for the change, and probably the more important reason, was the cost producing the Large Cent was too great.  The cost was starting to be more than one cent and the U.S. Mint couldn’t afford to lose money on this ubiquitous coin.  Therefore the U.S. Mint started designed the Small Cent.

Another interesting fact is that the 1857 Flying Eagle Cent was the first US coin to use nickel.  It was composed of 88% copper and 12% nickel.

So, if you are looking to fill a hole in your coin type collection, think about buying the 1857 Flying Eagle Cent.

I primarily collect U.S. coins, but some world coins are just so beautiful that I like to collect them too.  So even though I generally cover U.S. coin collecting, I hope that the world coin collectors who read this coin collecting blog will share their knowledge of world coins.  In fact, if any coin collectors would like to write articles here at Coin Blogger, please contact me.

So, what can you expect here at the Coin Blogger?

I am a beginner coin collector who also love to blog.  I have written several other blogs that you can check out, including the Online Banks Blog, MMO Explorer and Newest on the Net.  I hope to combine my love of blogging with my American coin collecting hobby.

I have three goals for Coin Blogger.  First, I want to make Coin Blogger into a premier source for coin collecting news for both beginner coin collectors and veteran coin collectors.  Second, I want to discuss how to make money collecting coins.  And, third, I want to create a community for coin collectors to share their love of US coins and world coins.

If you are a beginner coin collector or an experienced coin collector, please leave a comment here on the blog.  Hopefully, we can create a great discussion on many coin collecting topics.  Additionally, if you would like to write any coin collecting articles, I would be happy to have you publish them here.  So again, welcome to the Coin Blogger.