Investors often look for rarities
Arizona Coin Collector
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20090111/BUSINESS/901110345
Investors often look for rarities
Column by John Norris
January 11, 2009
In the past, you have listed things like baseball cards
and old coins as being in赳estments. Given the stock
market collapse last year, will more people start
look虹ng for easier to obtain items like these and
others as pos貞ible alternative invest衫ents?
The truth is people should always be on the lookout
for a scarce or hard-to-find item at a reasonable
price. It doesn't matter if it is a baseball card, a
silver coin, a dish or an old record.
If it is truly rare, someone will value it more than
you do. The problem is most things aren't as rare as
people would like to believe. In fact, few things
really are.
"The Antiques Roadshow" is a fun little program on
public television where folks bring in their
heirlooms to see what their market values are. I
bet there isn't a single person who has seen it who
wouldn't like to take something to the show just
because "you never know." Still, judging from the
long lines of people in the background and the few
people who actually make it on screen, you can
imag虹ne a lot of people are bringing down a lot
of junk.
That doesn't mean you dis苞ount things or throw out
collec負ions and the like. Far from it; have fun
and find out what your items are worth, or could
poten負ially be worth to another inves負or. They
might be worth pen要ies or they could be worth a
small fortune.
Last year, a client asked me about some silver coins
he had collected as a child. He said he was thinking
about dividing them equally, in number, among his
five grandchildren. Each child would get the same
number of silver dollars, quar負ers and dimes. This
way, he could just go ahead and be done with it. I
told him to slow down and hold his horses.
You see, he didn't know what he had, but someone
else out there does. Given the way he planned to
divide the coins, it was perfectly conceivable the
true value of each grandchild's gift would be
dramatically dif苯erent, I told him the last thing
he wanted to do was give one grandchild coins
valuing, say, $10,000 while the rest of them got
coins valuing $500 or less. He agreed.
I told him a good place to start was buying
something called "A Guide Book of United States
Coins (The Official Red Book)." While he might not
un苓erstand all the terminology and the subtleties
of the various grades, he would be able to get a
pretty good idea of what he had. If the coins had
been in standard usage and well worn, he proba苑ly
wasn't sitting on a fortune, but he wouldn't know
until he researched it.
Heck, he might have had an 1881-CC MS66 Morgan
dollar. He didn't, but now he knows it.
Whether or not people will look for these types of
things in 2009 as alternative investments is really
anybody's best guess. A lot of shrewd investors
have been doing just this for years, buying things
like coins, cards and even bottles of wine they
never intend to drink. You see, being a good
investor has more to do with anticipating future
demand for an item in limited supply than just
about anything else.
If you have some old cards and coins and the like,
dig around and have some fun. You likely won't
have a gold mine, but you will probably be
sur計rised by what you do have.
John Norris is managing di訃ector of wealth
management at Oakworth Capital Bank. He may be
contacted via e-mail at
John.Norris@OakworthCapi負al.com .
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