Have you ever heard of the Franklin Mint?

Perhaps you're curious what the Franklin Mint is, what they make, and if they are connected at all with the United States Mint.

Here are the differences between Franklin Mint coins and U.S. Mint coins...

You've seen the infomercials on TV offering special "one-time only" offers for coins, great deals, and rare coins. But are these claims true? Are these really good deals?

I did some "window shopping" on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) website to see what they were offering and to compare their coin prices to those of Jake's Marketplace, a major Illinois U.S. coin dealer which I have purchased many coins from over the years.

Here is what I found....

Selling coins is something that must be done with careful consideration beforehand.

After all, you wouldn't want to sell your coins for the wrong price, or wind up having to hang onto them for longer than necessary because you chose the wrong (and uninterested) market for selling your coins.

I have sold coins many times over the years. Every time I sell my coins, these are some of the things I factor into my thinking before I commit to selling them:

Is it time to sell my coin?

Will I want it later on?

Am I trading up for a better coin or simply want cash for the sale?

What is my coin worth?

Does the coin have any problems?

Where should I sell it?

Is it time to sell my coin?

For those who are considering buying coins on eBay, I have a few recommendations.

I have bought coins on eBay before and have yet to experience any trouble.

However, having said that, I do think you should know that I exercise several precautions that can help me to avoid running into any online auction hassles.

Here is some advice, before you buy coins on eBay...

The business of buying and selling coins sure has changed over the years. Once something done strictly behind bricks and mortar, coin dealers have in recent years made the jump to the Internet, and this has allowed once-localized retail shops to go international.

Today, there are hundreds of coin dealers who sell coins over the Internet. I personally have loved this trend, as now my ability to buy virtually whatever coin I want is no further away than my computer.

In my years of coin collecting, I have sometimes wondered where my collection would have been without the service of coin dealers.

That's right, coin dealers, who as a group buy and sell all kinds of coins from all over the globe and from all time periods, have allowed me to span my collection far beyond the reaches of what U.S. circulation yields me.

Without coin dealers, my hopes of obtaining silver coins would be only a prayer, my ability to acquire coins struck before the 20th century would come only from hitting an old box of buried treasure, and my type collections would contain very few "types" of coins indeed.

Here's a little about my experience with buying coins from coin dealers.

When I began collecting coins, one of the first goals I set for myself was to construct a twentieth century coin set.

What is that? Quite simply, a 20th century type coin set is a collection of coins which includes one of each design from each denomination the United States produced between 1900 and 1999.

In a previous article I wrote about coin folders and gave some suggestions on how to collect coins using them.

But maybe you found or inherited a folder that's already complete, or you just completed your own.

How much is it worth?

Perhaps the easiest way to get answers to your burning questions about coins is to ask the people at coin shows. That is, as long as you can wait until there's a coin show in your area!

It's just that you've got a lot of "experts" at your disposal there -- from the coin dealers behind the booths to the coin collectors attending the show.

Price guides are an essential part of coin collecting whether you're a beginner or an expert.

Not only do they offer current prices on all of your U.S. coins, but they are also loaded with tons of useful knowledge about coins.

Where do you think I learned everything I know today? Only half of it came through actual experience of owning coins. The other half is from reading through several price guides, coin books, and articles on coins.

Here are some of the differences between the most popular coin price guides...