Friday 13 February 2015

Resurrecting my alternative coin investments plan

A couple of years ago I wrote about my first foray into alternative investments.  I purchased my first set of collectible coins which were then followed by another set a few months later.  Every month when I get my wage I put away $50 to keep investing in the coin collection with the idea that every few months I will buy a selection of coins.

Unfortunately I didn't stick to my plan...


Unfortunately my plan didn't quite work out. I did faithfully put away the $50 almost every month but when it came to actually buying the coins...well that always got put off for another day.  Honestly the reason was probably that they are such a small part of my portfolio that I just ignored it and would keep putting it off.

As a result I had hundreds that I had allocated for alternative investments sitting in a bank account (earning close to nothing).

...but I am committed to having an alternative portfolio...

I keep tossing up whether this alternative portfolio is worth pursuing it at all.  The amounts I am committing to it are very small and it is rarely going to get a significant amount of my attention.  I also don't want to commit a large amount of money to it because frankly I'm never going to want to be an expert on coins.

However I do
think it is a worthwhile exercise.  Contributing $50 per month may not seem like a lot but after 5 years I would have already bought $3,000 worth of coins.  Even if those were worth exactly the same amount I paid for them it would start to become an interesting amount.  If I stick with it longer term...well that's the power of constant saving.

...and so I started investing in collectible coins once more

After re-committing to my alternatives investment plan I decided to start spending some of the money that I had saved up (which had been allocated to coin collecting but had not been spent).  I had $500 built up in the account to spend.  I found ~$200 worth of coins that I was happy spending (again all mint condition new issues).

I still have another $300 to be allocated.  I may have to do a little bit more research and branch out into older issues from coin dealers.  I'm not 100% sure that this is the way I want to go yet but it feels good to be getting this plan back on track.

As a quick update my coin portfolio is now worth $400 which represents 0.08% of my net worth.  Eventually I would like to get this to ~1% of my net worth but that is still a fair way off!

You May Also Be Interested In
More tentative steps into the world of coin collecting
Alternative investments: my first foray into collecting coins
Alternative Investments: Initial Thoughts
Alternatives: All Posts

2 comments:

  1. Alternative investments into collectible coins sounds like an interesting and fun way to allocate small percentage of your portfolio 90million! If you don't mind me asking, what made you choose collectible coins?

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    1. I was actually tossing up between art, collectible coins and stamps. I knocked out art because the entry costs are much higher and also if I'm going to have an artwork up in my house I want it to be something that I like and that may not always be the best investment.

      I collected stamps as a kid so I did consider that but in the digital age I wonder if there are still going to be people collecting them in 50 years time.

      I have always had a fascination with coins and currency and so it seemed to fit really well. One thing I haven't sorted out yet is storage though...

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