By Gary Eggleston - BellaOnline’s Coin Collecting Editor

Many people enjoy shopping online where there are great buys of coins that can be found. A person may prefer do his shopping while he is at home because it is convenient and time-saving instead of going out looking for stores that sell collectible coins and other souvenirs.

A person can differentiate between a live auction and an Internet because an online auction can take several days to complete. They entertain bids for the highest price up until the time the auction is about to close.. Many people that are bidding online enjoy the experience and they may be familiar with the strategies to use to win an online auction.

There are also online sites where a person can buy any item that may capture his interest. This is where most coin collectors purchase their desired coins. By searching and finding the item that they want, they can actually negotiate and make the payments through the Internet. This can be very risky as you are dealer/seller that is unknown to the buyer, yet many people are still making transactions and payments through this kind of online auction. Read Full Story

The following interview was posted on the Blanchard & Company Website:

BLANCHARD: Is there an affordable area of the coin market that you think may be undervalued?

ALBANESE: We have experienced a rare coin bull market over the past three years and as it increases, it becomes harder and harder to find high quality coins. However, there has been a slight lag in the silver commemorative market, which has just begun to rise, but is still well below historical highs. I think we will see an increase in this sector of the market based on the low mintage, large variety and exquisite designs.

BLANCHARD: What is the long-term outlook and potential for the silver commemorative market?

ALBANESE: This sector has a very strong outlook. In addition to new investors and collectors, many of the silver dollar collectors have begun to collect and invest in silver commemoratives. In order to complete a high quality silver dollar set it would cost in the range of $3 to $4 million dollars, where a 50 piece silver commemorative set can be purchased for as little as $25,000. These coins are also becoming popular overseas in Europe, which will only increase demand. (more…)

Although counterfeiting techniques keep improving, mintmarks are still added to coins using the same two methods. Skip Fazzari describes how to spot these fakes.

When many things get old, they are discarded and new things, perhaps better made, take their place. Not so with old counterfeit and altered coins. Although some fakes are taken off the market each year and are either put into reference collections or destroyed, others remain to plague another generation and are passed on to one unsuspecting collector after another.

Most will agree that coin alterations consist of the addition or removal of parts of a coin’s design. Interestingly, although techniques of fakery have improved over the years, a majority of the coins with added mintmarks are still made by two methods. For the most common type of alteration, a numeral or letter is applied directly to the surface of the host coin. The micrograph taken at 20x shows an example of a coin altered in this way. In this case, a “D” mintmark has been placed on the reverse of a genuine 1916 Mercury dime to produce a coveted 1916-D coin. Read Full Article

It seems that I discovered the existence of Die Variety News #11 just in time, because reader Danny Chapman dropped me a line earlier this morning to tell me that Die Variety News #12 has just come out! Die Variety News is a bimonthly variety coin magazine published free of charge in PDF format by variety coin expert Billy Crawford. If you enjoy hunting through pocket change to find rare and valuable coins, you don’t want to miss Billy’s great magazine, which is loaded with photos showing you exactly what to look for.

The lead story in Die Variety News #12 is about the recently discovered 2000-P Lincoln Memorial Cent doubled die obverse which shows an extra section of Lincoln’s beard, rotated about 40 degrees and then offset a ways onto the neck. The doubling can be seen with the naked eye, which makes this variety an important type. Billy provides several photos that will help you find your own specimen in your pocket change (or you can just take the lazy man’s way and buy it on eBay.) Read Full Story