American Silver Eagle Bullion COINS

A SECRET COLLECTING AND INVESTING TIPS BOOK EXCERPT

- JOSHUA MCMORROW-HERNANDEZ

There are many collectors who have purely numismatic ambitions: They collect to collect and pay little regard to whether they make a profit if they ever sell their coins. Then there are investors, driven by the overarching objective of making more for their coins than they paid, and they won't be happy unless they beat inflation with their portfolios.

And then there exist the folks who are a bit of both. There are no polls out there that reliably track how many people consider themselves collectors, investors, or somewhere in between. Ultimately, many if not most people who are involved in the arena of buying and selling coins are something of a hybrid-they both appreciate coins as collectibles and have ambitions to make money from their collections.

INTERSECTION OF COLLECTING AND INVESTING

This is where the intersection of collecting and investing occurs, and it happens far more frequently than many may guess-certainly more than some diehard numismatists or steely investors are willing to admit. There is probably no greater niche of the numismatic realm where this occurs than with the American Silver Eagle series, which arguably draws the largest share of investors due to its popularity and affordability, as well as its alluring connections to the historic numismatic legacies it draws upon.

Expert coin market analyst and former American Numismatic Association president Jeff Garrett has been asked countless times if rare coins are a good investment. "My answer has always been that you should never buy coins as an investment, but that if you collect rare coins, they are usually a good investment," he said.