As we roll into the halfway point of the first week of 2021, I thought it would be an appropriate time to share some of my Numismatic goals for 2021. Like most people, with each coming year, I try to set goals and resolutions in my personal life. Mine, as you would expect, orbit around the garden variety resolutions such as eating better, getting more exercise, and the like. But this year, for the first time, I set a couple of goals when it comes to my coin collection.
I call them Numismatic goals rather than resolutions because these are things I would like to achieve in 2021. My life, nor my collection, will suddenly fall apart if I don’t achieve these goals. Think of them more of areas of concentration. These are things I want to focus on in my collection to improve it and bring more personal satisfaction from it.
That said, my first goal is add Proof Sets to my collection. Late last year as I was working through the seemingly endless backlog of coins to grade and catalog, I opened up the box in which I kept my Proof Sets. I was surprised that I had just 4 sets. Four! I honestly thought I had more but with my focus being on some other areas of my collection, I somewhat lost track. So I’ve decided that I want to add at least 12 years of sets to my collection – effectively 1 per month. Now the good news is that many of the Proof Sets from the 1960s through the 1990s are very affordable. Most of them are less than $15 each and a great number of them from the 1970s are under $10 each. That’s pretty affordable. In turn, however, I fully appreciate that I need to buy these for the sake of my collection, not necessarily on the hope of appreciation in value later. Let’s face it: a 1971 Proof Set is now 50 years old and is under $8.00 to buy in original government packaging (Affiliate Link). Something tells me it isn’t going to suddenly double in price in the next 5 or 10 years. So for me, adding Proof Sets to my collection is about the enjoyment of filling in the blanks and these beautiful coins in their lenses.
My second Numismatic goal for 2021 is on Buffalo Nickels. On this one, I knew I didn’t have a lot. In fact, out of the 2,976 coins in my cateloged collection today, a solid 8 of them are Buffalo Nickels. That’s .003% of my collection. I want to change that in 2021. My goal, like on the Proof Sets, is to add 12 of these to my collection this year. Doing so will certainly be more expensive, especially in the early years of this coin. In some cases, like the 1913-D is going to be $200 to acquire and that’s in Fine condition. Ouch! But the later years, like the 1930-S can be found in Extremely Fine condition for under $50 (Affiliate Link). This goal is a stretch goal for sure because, like many, I have a coin budget each month and with multiple releases from the United States Mint that I also want to acquire, I will have to balance things out.
I’ll report back at the end of the year to let you know how I got on with these goals.
Do you have any Numismatic goals for this year? If you are willing to share, put them in the comments below. It’s always great to hear what others are focused on in their collection.