Although it is very easy to buy and sell coins online these days, one of the best things a new coin collector can do is find a good local dealer. By having someone to talk to directly, you can learn much about the hobby. When you visit your local coin shop, you can handle and examine hundreds of coins personally, rather than just looking at the photos of them on a computer screen.

One of the drawbacks to using a local coin dealer is that they are often not as knowledgeable as their larger counterparts. This article tells you how to find the good ones and avoid the bad.

• How to Find a Local Coin Dealer

The United States Mint has announced that it will take subscription orders for the final two coins in the four-coin Lincoln Bicentennial Cent series. The four coin series features designs that are emblematic of four stages of Lincoln's life:

• Birthplace - Log Cabin design
• Formative Years - Rail Splitter design
• Professional Life - Illinois Statehouse
• Presidency - Unfinished Capitol Dome

The U.S. Mint hadn't previously made the 2009 Lincoln Cents available by subscription. In fact, it hadn't planned to sell regular circulation-quality rolls of them at all until it became apparent that new coins were not being distributed to Americans because of the worsening economy.

The Mint eventually began selling the Log Cabin pennies in 2-roll sets, but quickly sold out. They were better prepared for the second penny (Rail Splitter) which remains on sale now at the U.S. Mint Web site. With the Subscription option, collectors can place their orders now for the last two cents in the series and get them shipped automatically when they become available.

The price remains the same: $8.95 per 2-roll set, which has one roll each from the Philadelphia and Denver Mints. A standard $4.95 shipping and handling charge is added to each order. The Mint says it is not including the first two 2009 Lincoln Cents retroactively in this program.

• U.S. Mint Web site

The topic of ethics is a popular one in coin collecting. Collectors are always asking questions such as, "Is it ethical for a coin dealer to pay an elderly lady 5% of market value for her coins?" or "Should a dealer be allowed to reprice something after you've agreed to buy it?" (such as when you find a rare coin in a flat-price pick box, but once you pick it out, the dealer wants more for it.)

I write an occasional column called Coin Dealer Ethics, where I ask readers to weigh in on ethical questions like these. I've collected some of the best into my Top 10 Coin Dealer Ethics columns.

One of my favorite types of error coins is the type where one or more letters doesn't show up on the coin because of "die goop" clogging the die. Die goop is a non-technical term that many collectors use to describe the accumulated machine oil, dirt, metal shavings, and other gunk that collect in the small parts of operating machinery. When this goop collected in the first T of Trust on a Kansas State Quarter die, we ended up with a coin that reads In God We Rust!