Coin collecting is a prestigious hobby across the world today, but many do not realize that collecting coins didn’t become popular until the 16th century. This started with the resurgence of interest in Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. By the late 1500’s coin collecting had become very popular amongst nobility and the first rare coin auction was held in Leyden, Holland in 1598.

Over the years this once hobby to the kings has become popular to many well known persons, such as, John Quincy Adams, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Enrico Caruso, Theodore Roosevelt, Buddy Ebsen and Chris Schenkel. Today there are many collectors around the world. It is estimated that there are between 5-7 million collectors in the United States and as any as four to five times that worldwide.

Some of the world’s greatest coin collections are housed in popular museums around the world, like the Smithsonian in D.C. Because coins have been minted for over 2,000 years collectors have many options to choose from including: ancient Greek and Roman coins, U.S. rare gold coins and modern proof coins to name a few examples.

Values are determined not only by supply and demand (availability), but also rarity and quality. Rarity and quality are probably the two biggest factors in determining a coins value. The higher the quality/grade of a coin the more valuable, and the rarer a particular coin is the more valuable it will be. Values can range from under $100, up to multi-million dollar coins such as the 1933 $20 Saint-Gaudens which sold at auction for $7.9 million in July of 2002.

When amassing a coin collection many use the set building strategy, of which there are two basic forms: building by type or series. A type set is built with coins that share a single characteristic, ie design, designer, or denomination. A series is built with one coin from each date and mint of a particular type.

Other strategies are collecting by
die variety, historical period, mint mark and individual year or first and last year of issue of a particular coin.