The Expert’s Guide to Collecting & Investing in Rare Coins
– This book is a no-brainer. Written by the biggest expert in rare coins for the last 50 years, Q. David Bowers has produced a guide for the investor in mind. Most of his books focus only on the fun of collecting and history involved. This book goes into depth about how to select rare coins that are going to make you great money in the future. He even talks about past market performance and how to buy online without ever even seeing the coin. He even covers how to invest in paper money, tokens and medals. This book will pay for itself!
Pleasure & Profit: 100 Lessons for Building and Selling a Collection of Rare Coins – This book is a no nonsense guide to making money with coins. The author goes right into how to build up an impressive collection, including how to select coins, who to buy from, how often to buy, what prices to pay and then tells you in great detail how to unload your collection and take the profits right to the bank! This one is perfect for the long term investor. He walks you through a collection he put together for a client, step-by-step, reveals the mistakes he made and the successes that few people use. This one is an easy read too.
A Guide Book to United States Coins: Deluxe Edition – Every serious coin collector (known as a numismatist) has a copy of the recent Red Book, which is updated every year with the latest up-to-date market prices. This one is the deluxe edition and is especially designed for rare coin dealers and investors. It goes into so much more detail than any other price guide and is simple to use. If you want the regular RedBook, you can get it here for half the price. No internet price guide is as accurate or reliable for long term price trends. Stick with what the professionals use. If you don’t have this, you can’t even begin to invest in rare coins!
Handbook of United States Coins: Bluebook – This is the companion piece to the Redbook. You won’t need it until you are ready to sell. It explains how dealers will buy your coins from you and on average how much they will pay. The reality is, coin dealers and auction houses need to make money too so if you sell to them, they will buy at a discount of what the Redbook price is so that they can cover there overhead and make a profit for themselves. You can skip the Bluebook if you sell to a museum or to an individual who doesn’t really know about coins. Stick to Redbook prices then.
The Official Blackbook Price Guide to United States Paper Money – You can make a ton if you pay attention to paper money investments over coins. Paper money has yet to catch up with a lot of coin prices and in many cases can be much more rare. Just recently demand for these pieces has started to rise, but has not risen to appropriate prices yet. This price guide for paper money will tell you what is a fair price now so you can make sound investment and buying decisions. For fun, pick up an earlier copy from five years ago to see how far we have come. Increases have been big, but rare coin dealers think they have been a bargain for way too long. Now is your chance!
Rare coins are continually proving to be great investments. On average rare coins are realizing gains of at least 10% a year (way better than many stocks) and are a great opportunity because you only have to buy one or two and not a hundred shares. Veteran investors love them because you can buy them without the government knowing and often sell them that way. Thus they often trade tax free. If you have ever wanted to get started investing in rare coins, check out these five books that are essential for you to make money!