MORE ON RARE COIN INVESTING BY DAVID GANZ

My new book for Krause "Rare Coin Investing: An affordable Way" has an interesting twist. In 1998, I wrote "Planning Your Rare Coin Retirement" (Bonus Books), which I always thought of as a catchy title. While this new book talks about current coin investing, it takes a look at my picks of 1998 which include everything from MS-60 (and MS63) Carson City silver dollars to the 1991 1/4 ounce $10 Eagle gold coin. There was even a foreign gold coin portfolio.

The original premise was selecting a $10,000 portfolio and letting it grow. There are a couple of chapters in the new book that trace the outcome of Planning your rare coin retirement.

The coins and prices that I used in 1998 were all taken from then-current ads in Numismatic News, Coin World, COINage and Coins Magazine. Here's a hint of how my picks were: (in some cases there were choices, so the original portfolio (all coins) [if you bought every recommendation of these mostly contemporary issues] was $12,640. (The fair market value in 2010: over $60,000).

The world gold and platinum portfolio had around 100 coins (actually 104) with an average cost per coin in 1998 of $86.56 ($9,001) for the portfolio. A typical coin was a British sovereign at $84 apiece (Elizabeth II) or "old style" at $87 -- all in XF-AU. Since the sovereign has .2354 troy ounces of gold, With $1,300 gold, sovereigns are now selling for about $333 (or equivalent to $1,414 an ounce); the Swiss 20 Franc (Vreneli) in my book at $70 is on the APMEX site at $275 (about $1,472 an ounce equivalent)..

It's a fair bet that the return on this portfolio of 104 modern gold coins exceeds four times investment (gold never exceeded $300 an ounce in 1998 ands today ($1,313) 4.66 times the 1998 average or about $41,000 on the recommendations.

Not every coin pick was a winner... but overall, it was a pretty good deal. We'll see if the picks this time work as well a dozen years from now. The coins involved in this are very affordable for the typical collector. There are no major rarities (they did well, too).

Debbie Bradley did an outstanding job editing the book.

Of course, in addition to this book for 2010, a bunch of non-numismatic books came out of my typewriter (computer). It included a second edition of "A Critical Guide to Anthologies of African Literature", which the African Studies Association first published in 1973; I brought out a second edition available on Amazon inexpensively when I saw an original edition on eBay for $198. Another book: "Proof of Entitlement to Relief before Planning & Zoning Boards", a 275pp book, part of American Jurisprudence Proof of Facts 3rd series (West, 2010) meaning my writings now span from "A" to "Z".

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: NEW BOOK: RARE COIN INVESTING BY DAVID GANZ (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v13n40a04.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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