As CeeDee said in #6 "Greed took over".  I bought a 1oz silver Britannia from the Mint as a keep-sake of the millennium, it cost £13.  Then I decided to buy one for each of my nephews plus the previous issues and to continue buying them each year until I drop off the perch, something to leave them that might even have increased in value if I live long enough.  I sometimes wonder if I'm doing them any good or if it would be better to just put the money aside for them.

I stopped buying from the mint and bought elsewhere when their price hit £65.  What amazed me was all the marketing material from the mint and the plethora of "collectors" coins they issue.  £5, £2, £1 and 50p coins, different every year and available in Platinum, Gold, Silver, tinted, Proof, BU or uncirculated and all with massive mark-ups.  An uncirculated £1 was about £20.  Even the catalogue I used to buy every few years said it couldn't keep up with all the new issues and they only had an approximate list.

Who can keep up with this flood and how collectable are they?  To me this is plain greed and a lot of investors will get their fingers burnt (just as with the collectable plates mentioned already).

On the other hand I've just paid well over the odds for a couple of pieces of Rosice Glass which I think are truely beautiful and evocative of their era.  As they don't come up for sale they may even be a good investment.  That really doesn't matter to me as I enjoy seeing them.

To me that is the crux of the matter.  I buy what I like and enjoy seeing around the place, some things will be a good "investment" but most likely most will not.