On 12 Mar 2004 12:45:42 -0800, (Miles Carson)
wrote:

Extremely well-put. Turn-Key coin collecting?

"Get'em all in one call?"

"Buy'em today and salt them away?"

For what ... for the comfort of knowing you had them?

Thanks. It's interesting thinking about motivations, what motivates
collectors. This has been discussed here before, of course, but it's a
core issue.

Much of collecting has to do I think with an innate drive to acquire
and store, to salt away as you say, as humankind has done for
millennia in preparation for harsh winters or an impending siege or
whatever.

But there can also be a quality of obsessive-compulsiveness to some
types of collecting, I think. Not among all collectors or even most or
many, but I think this can crop into it.

My view is that appreciating is every bit a rewarding, or more so,
than acquiring. This is the approach I take anyway (to each his own).
Sure, there's the thrill of the hunt, but there's also the attraction
of learning background information about the coin, the circumstances
of its minting, the people who minted it, and so on. And there's the
glom, the in-the-moment awe from appreciating the coin's history and
aesthetics.

--

Email: (delete "remove this")

Coin Collecting: Consumer Protection Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos