What coins to collect for a beginning numismatist. Collecting for beginner numismatists Modern gold coins what a beginner needs to know

What distinguishes a numismatist from an ordinary person who has collected 10-20 coins purely by chance is the presence of a collection and the conduct of at least one transaction for the purpose of acquiring or exchanging coins. Numismatists treat their occupation as a hobby, but still more seriously than the average person. They should always be aware of current prices, visit online auctions to replenish their collection and view advertisements for the sale of coins.

What does it take to become a numismatist?

Becoming a numismatist is not difficult, but for this you need a certain amount of free money that you are willing to invest in the purchase of old coins. Without this, it is unlikely that you will be able to start collecting your own collection.

For coins made of precious metals - gold and silver, this amount can start from 50 thousand rubles. For regular coins 5-10 thousand is enough. A skillful investment in coins can provide good “interest” in the future, which can cover inflation. It’s hardly a secret that today bank interest on deposits may sometimes not be enough even for this.

It is also very important to decide on the period or theme of the coins you want to collect. For a novice numismatist, collecting coins by year is quite enough, for example, for the Soviet period or collecting a collection commemorative coins Russia with a denomination of 10 rubles. All coins in this series cost about 20-25 thousand rubles. But their advantage is that you will see how sometimes it can be difficult to find some specimens and learn how to exchange coins with other numismatists in your city, if possible. You can also try in large stores and ask for 10 rubles as change for the anniversary coin.

Having collected the first collection in your life, you will either join this movement or quit at the very beginning. To all numismatists, receiving each new one is not even very rare coin brings, at least a little, joy. If you feel a surge of vigor and strength, you can safely continue to be a numismatist.

My passion for numismatics has been with me for many years, besides, I don’t hide it much and often show off my collections to friends, acquaintances, relatives, and in general to everyone who is interested. Many of them at the moment of contemplation beautiful coins, neatly laid out in album cells, involuntarily become eager to do something similar, and most often ask me: " How to start collecting coins?" or " Which collection to choose to begin with?" To be honest, I usually laughed it off or advised me to choose, but a few years ago one of my friends came to visit me and almost from the doorway demanded that I teach him how to collect (this really was practically a requirement, incl. I even decided not to resist).

"So what is the first coin collection you should collect, where to start to understand whether this is your occupation or not? Will you like it, won’t it be painfully offensive for the time and money spent when you'll understand by now, that all this is not interesting to you?..." I’ll be honest - at that moment I was even confused. I myself have always been interested mainly in coins from the period 1961 - 1991, issued in the USSR. Probably nostalgia for these coins made its mark, because they were the first the money that I consciously owned and even managed to earn honestly (at the time of the collapse of the Union - I was only 10:) was precisely the money from the times of the USSR.

And really, where to start? What coins should a novice numismatist collect? The first coins appeared before our era. (more detailed history their appearance can be read in the article “When the first coins appeared”) In almost every country in the world they were minted for many hundreds of years and are issued to this day. Dollars, Euros, Rubles... Coins of regular mintage, commemorative and commemorative coins. Copper, Nickel, Silver, Gold and whatnot. So which ones should you choose for your first collection?

After thinking a little, I rejected the idea of ​​​​advising starting with a fairly common, but also quite complex collection of USSR coins, which I myself am passionate about, and the following thought led me to a truly correct decision: “After all, if a person wants to try to start collecting his first collection, he doesn’t know where to start.” what coins to start with, and he’s also afraid of wasting a lot of money, but wouldn’t it be easier for him to start with modern coins, those that you and I can easily find in our pockets and purses?!" Realizing quite quickly that the idea was quite sound and had solid insurance against budget overruns on the “trial numismatic feat” of my friend, along the way I thought out and built several options for the development of events, I began, so to speak, to give experienced advice.

“Let’s start with this,” I suggested, “take out your wallet and pour out all the coins that are there on the table! This is where we will begin to build your first collection.” My still perplexed comrade, without arguing, did everything as told and on the table I found twelve coins of different denominations.

So, we saw two copies worth 10 rubles, another one worth 5 rubles, four pieces worth 2 rubles and five coins worth 1 ruble.

Here he could not stand it and asked: “Well, what’s interesting here? There are a dime a dozen of these coins, usually I don’t give away full pockets in the store, I don’t know how to get rid of them, but are you still offering me to collect them?” “That’s right, it’s on these coins that you should understand whether it will be interesting for you to create a collection, whether you want to study the varieties of coins, and many other subtleties of numismatics,” I retorted.

Since there were the most coins in denominations of 1 ruble, my first task for my friend was to try to look at them as carefully as possible for about five minutes and then tell me how they differ.

And soon I was pleasantly surprised, my friend, after the five minutes allotted to him, gave me almost all the existing differences in the coins, naturally, the first thing he did was find the year the coins were minted, pointed out the differences in the monogram of the mint (although at that time he called them “small” incomprehensible icons,” but he could be forgiven for it), drew attention to the different spelling of the words “BANK OF RUSSIA” on different coins, and even noticed that some rubles were more silver-steel in color, and some were yellower, although at that time he mistakenly assumed that this was due to their long-term use. (note: A novice collector can read more about determining the types of coins -.)

Seeing that my friend was a little carried away by the topic, I decided to tell him about the types of coins into which collectors usually divide them, thereby classifying some coins to one collection and others to another. I explained to him that the coins that we were immediately working on are classified as coins circulation or as they say regular coinage, issued by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation of the period Modern Russia, i.e. 1997 model.

But no matter how much I wanted to, it was simply impossible to explain everything at once, and I suggested that my friend do the work on his own. After all, the main thing that my friend did was that he himself posed the necessary questions to continue our “study”: what are these “small, incomprehensible badges?”, “and were rubles minted from what years to what years?”, “and other coins also have so many differences? Giving him a “homework assignment”: try to figure out these issues himself, and besides that, read a little about how to store coins, and decide how he himself would like to design his first collection. As a parting word, he advised him to try to collect everything he could and bring it to the next meeting. And as first aid, I gave him several books from my library and recommended that he not hesitate to turn to the great and omnipresent Yandex and Google. This is where we parted.

And at the very end of his fiery speech, he made a significant pause, made a very sly face, and finally took out an album with coins from his bag. "Look! My first collection! Indeed, it was a Collection with a capital letter, each sheet was filled in order, large denominations on top, smaller ones below, obverse to obverse, reverse to reverse, each sheet by year, and even empty cells for the still missing coins and especially rarities (to me it was not difficult to guess, because I knew the year of modern coins of the Bank of Russia almost by heart).

So, my dear readers, why am I remembering all this? I started this article with the question - How to collect your first collection of coins? As you can see, it's not that difficult. You need to decide what collection you will choose to start with (what coins you will collect). The example offered here is not the only one; you can choose what is more to your liking and pocket, for example: coins of Tsarist Russia, but it will be expensive and difficult, because there are the most rarities there, you can take “tips” (coins of the USSR), again not necessarily all at once - these could be, for example, anniversary and commemorative coins from base metals period 1961 - 1991 or circulation coins 1924 - 1957. There are many options - the choice is yours. And, of course, I definitely advise you to familiarize yourself with the price tags for coins in order to have an idea of ​​how much you will have to fork out.

Summarize. In order to start collecting coins And create your first collection You will have to master the following knowledge and skills:

• know the types of coins and the corresponding types of collections;
• identify types of coins, incl. by mint;
• determine the degree of safety of coins;
• be able to work with catalogs and other numismatic literature;
• evaluate the value of coins and their degree of rarity;
• have knowledge of the technology of care and storage of coins.

Is that really all? Of course not! Based on all this knowledge, you will smoothly move on to mastering the intricacies of identifying varieties by stamps. So what is next? And then you will no longer be a beginner, and what questions will interest you to a greater extent and what you decide to study - you will have to answer this yourself, we will only help and suggest as much as possible.

With this, I consider the topic to be resolved and my work not in vain. Which collection you personally choose to start with is entirely your choice, and no one has the right to impose their opinion, we only gave advice on how to start with modern coins. I hope everyone who read this text to the end found it really interesting. Let the first collection open the door to the mysteries of numismatics for you and bring you truly great pleasure from the process.

Investments in Russian numismatics for beginners

• How I started investing in numismatics;
• Strategy for increasing the collection;
• Principles of numismatics.

Grandma's piggy bank

I've been running this blog for over 6 years. All this time, I regularly publish reports on the results of my investments. Now the public investment portfolio is more than 1,000,000 rubles.

Especially for readers, I developed the Lazy Investor Course, in which I showed step by step how to put your personal finances in order and effectively invest your savings in dozens of assets. I recommend that every reader complete at least the first week of training (it's free).

It all started with a banal piggy bank. I don’t even remember how it appeared in our house, maybe it was a gift from someone, or maybe it was left from my grandmother. This is an ordinary Soviet piggy bank made of strong ceramics, in the form of a well-fed cat in a kitchen apron. Various little things were thrown at her with or without reason. Somehow, on New Year’s Eve (I think) 2009, at the family council a unanimous decision was made to open the piggy bank, because it was full, and for the sake of satisfying everyone’s curiosity. We opened it carefully by cutting off the thick cardboard covering the bottom. An autopsy and a lengthy recount showed that the cat’s budget was: about three and a half thousand in ten-ruble anniversary bimetallic coins and bills, two thousand in five-ruble coins and somewhere a little less than a thousand in rubles/kopeck piece. In general, it’s a small thing, but nice.

Several anniversary coins (Soviet rubles with Lenin and the anniversary of the Victory, two-ruble Gagarin, Murmansk, ruble Pushkin from 1999 and something else like that) have been gathering dust in a glass mayonnaise jar since time immemorial. “Anniversary” from Kote in a small number of non-repeating coins joined their ranks, and the rest of the savings migrated to the SberBank card, and then, soon, were mercilessly spent. From this event, one might say, my collection began.

And the piggy bank serves us to this day. It has become a family tradition, a modest annual investment with a one-year horizon. At the beginning of January the piggy bank begins and at the end of December we collect it. If once a month (for example, from your salary) you throw 1000 rubles into the piggy bank and daily dump the “ten coins” and “nickels” lying around in your pockets, then by the end of the year the “contribution” is 12,000 (in bills) + 6-7,000 (in iron), sometimes and more. Iron is only 10 and 5 ruble coins, as the largest representatives of their class. Agree, 20,000 rubles is a good bonus for the end of the year, during a period of acute shortage of gifts. And it turned out that the piggy bank has absolutely no effect on your overall financial condition, but it always makes you happy in December.

If the monthly contribution amount is increased to 2,000 rubles, then the final amount of savings will be different, but it will still be limited by the size of the piggy bank. As Anton rightly noted, in one of his articles, investing should have a goal. Likewise, we always have a “piggy bank goal”: gifts for children, vacations together, buying a computer, etc. The last December opening allowed us as a family to travel from St. Petersburg to Belarus for four days and go skiing during the New Year holidays. “Kopiloshnye” 22,000 rubles covered the costs of gasoline, accommodation and skiing accessories.

In the office of our company, probably like everywhere else now, coffee machines are installed. Many of my colleagues apply them daily, at least once, but often more. The price of a glass of coffee is 35 rubles. Let's do some simple arithmetic: 35*5-6 (working days) = 190 rubles. – this is the average price of weekly coffee cups. 190*4=760 – monthly amount. And to calculate the annual amount, let’s take 10 working months, excluding vacations, holidays and additional days off as much as possible. 760*10=7600 additional rubles. The victims of coffee machines, of course, are our dear, jingling and always interfering pennies. In my opinion, the effect of such coffee is doubtful, although, to be honest, I try to hide it myself. But this, as they say, is a personal matter for everyone. Someone might add the cost of a daily pack of cigarettes to coffee, for example.

Collection strategy

When transferring the money earned from the piggy bank to card accounts, I still left some of the new anniversary ten-ruble coins in a long drawer, gradually replenishing the collection. I kept 2-3 copies of some coins in good condition, so that I could later exchange them for the missing coin in the set. For accounting and sorting, I bought a cardboard album with two spreads. This is how collecting grew into my hobby. Initially, I kept a collection of only bimetallic tens - the current Russian anniversary, that is, from what was most accessible. I currently have 4 parallel collections. I’ll talk about them another time, but for now I’ll focus on bimetallic tens and give several examples of collectible investing.

I think many people remember the series of “ten-ruble notes” dedicated to the ministries of the Russian Federation. The coins were not particularly different, they were in free circulation and were generously given as change. Now the price of such a coin is about 140 rubles. That is, if I had left at least 10 sets of “ministries” back in 2001, I would now be able to enrich myself with an extra 7-8 thousand rubles. And this comes from the sale of coins whose face value is only 70 rubles. As the classic said: “Alice, give me the melaphone!”

As a second collecting strategy, I can give the following example. The plan for the annual issue of all coins is approved by the Central Bank in advance and, in principle, anyone can find out in what month and in what circulations certain coins will be issued. My point is that you can generalize the annual issue, put together a collection consisting of coins of different denominations, but of the same year: 1 kopeck, 5 kopecks, 10 kopecks, 50 kopecks, 1 ruble, 2 rubles, 5 rubles and 10 rubles.

The greatest interest today is the annual set of coins of 2010. Its cost, according to various estimates, ranges from 20 to 35 thousand rubles. This price is formed due to the very limited editions of the three anniversary tens issued this year: 10 rubles “Perm Region” - circulation of 200,000 coins (approximate price ~3400-4000 rubles, depending on the condition of the coin), 10 rubles “Chechen Republic” — circulation 100,000 coins (~8000 rubles), 10 rubles “Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug"—circulation of 100,000 coins (~12-13,000 rubles).

The limited circulation, and indeed the existence of such coins in general, tells me that this situation was the result of politics and some kind of government speculation - firstly, and secondly, a kind of artificial boost to the numismatic market. There can be many examples of choosing a strategy; it depends only on the depth of your imagination, desire and ability to invest money in coins.

Numismatics in Russia for beginners

I will highlight the main aspects that need to be taken into account when:

1. First of all, it is necessary to “get over” the desire, characteristic of all beginning numismatists, to buy everything in a row that is at least somehow similar to coins. It is not possible to collect everything.
2. Determine for yourself the purpose and area of ​​numismatics for collecting. Still, the main purpose of collecting coins is not speculative, but aesthetic and educational. If you want to collect a collection in order to sell it profitably after some time, then you need to remember that “some time” is a period of 5, or maybe 10-15 years. A short-term perspective is possible only with the resale of rare collectible coins, purchased obviously cheaper than their current price.
3. You need to know which coins are most in demand now. Predict market changes, predict which coins will increase in price in the coming years. In short, you need.
4. Where to start? I recommend starting with the two most affordable collections. The first is the current collection of current Russian commemorative coins. Such coins are always in use; you can get them for change in a store or public transport. In 10-15 years, such a collection will increase the price by 2-3 times. Price complete collection, already mentioned by me, bimetallic ten-ruble coins, and these are 111 pieces (including varieties) today, vary from 7 to 35-37 thousand rubles. However, it is.

The second collection consists of ordinary small change coins: kopecks, 1, 2, 5, 10 rubles. This is surprising, of course, but ordinary is not anniversary ruble, some year 1986 may cost 1000 rubles, and the anniversary one of the same year 100-150 rubles. Such collections are very popular and are called “weather collections”.

1. To be an active participant in the collectible coins market, you need to know the current prices, as they say, be aware of the quotes. How do I do this? I analyze the state of the market in relation to the coin I am interested in at the moment on 3-4 sites: Avito, Meshok, Coins of Russia, Coin Archive, etc. There are plenty of options online.

Practice shows that for the same coin the price range can vary and vary by several times or even tens of times. On Avito you can buy a coin in your own city, look and feel it while buying it in person, and verify its authenticity. And from an auction site, most likely, you will buy the same one a little cheaper, but immediately add the cost of postal services to the price of the coin (these are usually paid by the buyer) and take into account the existing risks: the seller may not be reliable, the post office may lose the letter, the coin may turn out to be fake or simply not of the declared quality. Honestly, I have never encountered deception; sellers on auction sites value their reputation.

Alexander Igorevich

Reading time: ~6 minutes

Experienced collectors often joke that it is not antiques that are becoming more expensive, but the money for which they are bought is becoming cheaper. Most often, numismatists say this when referring to their collections. In fact, the demand for pieces of antique or rare value is growing every year. And if demand increases, then the price rises. Today we will talk about the coins that are valued the most.

True, so far there are not so many investors interested in investing in coins, so there is a chance to succeed in this field. If everything is calculated correctly, then you can get up to 100% profit, because time is on your side.

But which options are currently valued? Naturally, most beginners are afraid of both making a mistake and being deceived by scammers. But this is not a reason to give up numismatics; you just need to study the market for valuable coins.

Segments of the valuable coin market

The most important difference: modern varieties are minted today, while antique ones have long been part of history. Therefore, to understand antique coins, you must at least have a good knowledge of history.

It will also not hurt you to have familiar numismatists or people “in the know.” But such acquaintances are sometimes difficult for a beginner to acquire, so many experts advise starting collecting with representatives of later years of production.

The coins that are most valuable right now

If we talk about antique options, then Russian collectors-investors mainly collect, oddly enough, Soviet and Russian coins. This is due to the fact that such collections are highly valued abroad, because the specimens presented in them are considered rare and cost 20-30% more than in Russia.

Varieties that were considered rare back in the USSR are extremely popular, for example, those produced in small editions or trial batches different years coinage that for some reason came into circulation.

A real example is the 50 kopeck coin from 1929. One such copy in 2011 it was sold at auction for 10 million rubles. We can say that this is an astronomical price. But this cost is due to its extreme rarity.

Although beginners should still start with less rare specimens, and therefore not so expensive. For example, silver rubles from the early 20th century are quite easy to find, as long as they are in excellent condition. A good example of this type can fetch several hundred dollars, as was the case with a 1924 variety that sold for $800 not long ago.

Also, a good opportunity for investment is provided by the so-called “remakes”.

They are coins minted with the original dies, but at a later date. Such copies are produced specifically for collectors. An example is the varieties released in the 19th century, which, in turn, . True, their price is still fabulous, because their circulation consisted of only about 100 pieces.

The ideal solution for a new numismatist can be called. Some experts believe that they are undervalued on the world market, and therefore have good potential for further increase in value.

So, for example, they stand out against the general background. The same representatives Chechen Republic" a series " Russian Federation” can cost up to 2,500 rubles apiece. Naturally, this only applies to very well-preserved specimens. And in the future the price will only rise.

A video that will tell you what ancient coins hide

So if you want to get into numismatics for the sake of making a profit later, you know how to find coins that are valuable. If you simply intend to acquire an interesting hobby, then the cost of your collection is not so important, the main thing is the pleasure of owning it. And this depends on your personal numismatic preferences.