Are some things boring?
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2020 4:58 am
I collect Newfoundland (1st) and Province of Canada (2nd) coins. As I've contemplated my priorities I've come to view scarcity and eye appeal as two defining points of interest. Eye appeal is relatively easy - a combination of grade and overall balance, surface, etc.... Scarcity is a little more complicated. At the most basic it's just a coin that's graded much higher than most of its peers or a coin that was minted in (or has survived in) especially small numbers.
Against that backdrop there are rare years (e.g. Newfoundland 1888 50c; 20,000 produced) and there are rare varieties (1945 5c, narrow date; est. 1,700 out of >200,000 produced). Those are both high priority coins for me. (I've got one but still looking for the other!).
But there are other varieties that, while rare, I find much harder to get excited about. Little minting boo-boos that are so tiny you can only see them on a digital photograph that's been blown up 20x or more. Some of the variety spectra are so big as to be demotivating: the 1881 and 1882 Canadian 1 c for example - at least 6 varieties *each*, not including die clashes/cracks etc...etc....
I can imagine a white-whale goal of getting all of those varieties but, across the whole span of coinage, I just can't get excited about many of those tiny mutations.
Thoughts?
Against that backdrop there are rare years (e.g. Newfoundland 1888 50c; 20,000 produced) and there are rare varieties (1945 5c, narrow date; est. 1,700 out of >200,000 produced). Those are both high priority coins for me. (I've got one but still looking for the other!).
But there are other varieties that, while rare, I find much harder to get excited about. Little minting boo-boos that are so tiny you can only see them on a digital photograph that's been blown up 20x or more. Some of the variety spectra are so big as to be demotivating: the 1881 and 1882 Canadian 1 c for example - at least 6 varieties *each*, not including die clashes/cracks etc...etc....
I can imagine a white-whale goal of getting all of those varieties but, across the whole span of coinage, I just can't get excited about many of those tiny mutations.
Thoughts?