Imaged Collections

Before the loads of explanatory text, here's the important part of the site: Photographs of my collection!

What I Collect

US Coins (almost exclusively). Specifically, my collecting habits can be broken down into three main areas:

    1. Current
    2. Type
    3. Series

Current

By "Current" coins, I mean that I collect a lot of what the Mint is currently producing. So I collect circulating Lincoln cents, Jefferson nickles, Roosevelt dimes, Washington quarters, Kennedy half dollars, Sacagawea dollars, and Presidential dollars. In the case of the last three, which unfortunately don't really circulate, I get my fix from the bank or from the Mint directly (in the case of the Sacagawea dollars).

I also collect proof American Silver Eagles (1986-present), business-strike American Silver Eagles (2006-present), and I collected 1/4-oz American Gold Eagles and 1/10-oz American Plantinum Eagles before the ginormous price increases around 2009.

Plus, I collect annual proof sets, annual mint sets, and annual silver proof sets.

And ... I collect any commemorative that the Mint puts out that strikes (ha!) my fancy (this numbers few), and I have also elected to collect the "So-and-So's" Liberty coins from the First Spouse $10 gold coin program. The reason I've limited myself to just the Liberty coins is that it numbers very few (4 ~ Jefferson, Jackson, van Buren, Buchanan) and these are expensive coins, and because the Mint is reproducing classic coin designs that I consider significantly more artistic than much of the current stuff it puts out today (I've had enough of old dead men on coins).

Type

I started to collect a "type set" before I knew what a type set was. Effectively, I would go to the coin store and buy an example of a coin that I did not have, like a Walking Liberty half dollar, or a silver trime (3¢ piece).

I have recently formalized my intended type set to - for the moment - be a 20th-21st century type set with the first year of issue or 1901, Philadelphia mint, mid-grade uncirculated. One of the benefits of a type set is that you can customize it in almost an infinite number of ways. And, since you only "have" to collect one of each type, it is considerably cheaper than collecting the entire series.

But it can still be incredibly expensive, and I will make a few exceptions. Notably, the 1901 Morgan dollar from the Philadelphia mint runs over $2000 in MS-60 condition (the lowest uncirculated grade). 1901 O, on the other hand, costs $40 in the same grade. The Type I Standing Liberty quarter was made for about a year and a half, from 1916 to part-way through 1917. A 1916 specimin in MS-60 costs $16,000, while the 1917 costs $250.

Series

Finally, the good ol'-fasioned series collection. This is where you collect every coin of every year and every mint mark within a series, such as all Susan B. Anthony dollars, or all Lincoln cents. Obviously some series are longer than others -- in the two examples I just mentioned, there are 20 coins total in the SBA dollars with every main variety included, whereas there are easily over 300 Lincoln cents to make a complete collection since the series has been minted since 1909.

Actively, I'm working on raw currently circulating series (the ones listed in "Current" above). I'm also actively working on assembling a few other series, as described in the links above. Some of them I'm more active with than others, such as my Washington Quarter set versus my Jefferson Nickel set versus my Susan B. Anthony Dollar set ... it really depends more on my mood, budget for the month, and what I see on auctions.