Coin Collector?

A round of Facebook postings a month or so ago had me looking at my old coin collection and has rekindled my interest: something to do during retirement when I'm not playing guitar?  I collected as a teen-ager (and may even had gotten a coin-collecting merit badge when I was a Boy Scout).  I 'inherited' a number of coins from my grandfather, but except for a few Indian head pennies, I have lost most of them.  Over the years I have occasionally added to the collection and I even bought a couple of folders when the series of 'state' quarters came out.

I have been focusing on the Indian Head Collection which has over 30 coins in it.  I had taken a few pictures with a USB Microscope of some coins and one or two of the nicer Indian Heads, so I started a project to get pictures of all of them.  And of course, I have taken advantage of a few things that weren't around when I was a teenager.  In Google Docs, I started a spreadsheet to make an inventory of the Indian Heads with columns for such things as year, mint, condition, wholesale & retail value etc.  And I store the pictures on photoshop.com.

Here's a couple that I've taken:

This 1859 is one from my Grandfather and is in great condition (I grade it VF35 which is one notch below "extremely fine" (XF40).  'Wholesale' price is about $40, this is a fairly common date, but the 'quality' gives it some value.

This one from 1869 is a much rarer date, but is in pretty bad condition - maybe AG-2, since you have a clear view of the date.

I also started tracking coins on EBay and found that thousands of them are up for bid: usually around 12,000 for Indian Head cents alone.  I've bid on a few and won some.  I bought the 2011 "blue" book, which gives wholesale prices and I just ordered the 'red' book, which is 'retail'.
Here's a 1908 I got from EBay which I consider XF40, this is a fairly common date, so even in this condition it is only worth about $5.00 (which is about what I paid for it).

A coin's value is determined by it's rarity and condition (and of course 'the market').  One thing 'new' is that the grading has become much more precise since my initial days of coin collecting - here's a link to current grading system used by most folk (and the 'blue' book): PCGS Coin Grading Standards.  This site will actually grade your coin(s) and 'freeze' them in plastic, something like this:

This same site has photographs of coins for grading, and I have started to use that.  I found that I was probably 'undergrading' many coins: something I would grade G4 was really VG8 or higher.  The 'photograde' site for Indian Head Cents is here.

The photo album for my Indian Head Cents is here.

I have also bought some folders for some other coin sets, including 2 books for Lincoln Memorial Cents.  I moved the few I had from another Lincoln set book, then started going through our 'penny jar'.  Perhaps because we are in Minnesota, I have filled in all the 'D' slots (Denver mint).  I am missing quite a view 'plain' (Philadelphia) and 'S' (San Francisco) pennies.  Note that only a few years have the S mint mark.  Lincoln Memorials were minted from 1959 through 2008. (I remember when they first came out).  In 2009, there was a special series for the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, then starting in 2010, a new 'reverse' is used.  More information from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)#Lincoln_penny.  Most Lincoln memorial pennies are worth 1 cent, unless they are in 'mint state' (MS-65) or a proof (PF-70).  I won't be searching EBay for missing dates, but will check the pennies I get in change.

I have a fair number of Lincoln 'Wheat' cents and will probably start categorizing and photographing those as my next 'project'.
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