mmarotta

What do you mean by "collect"? I make it easy by saying since 1992. I started in late 1992 and in late 1993, I joined the ANA and MSNS. That's about it, just over ten years. Michael

I voted for the honest paper toning, but I would not pay for that, so putting my money where my mouth is, I have nothing to say. I have to ask -- when I saw the topic, I thought, "Windows NT or IBM-PC/AT? What kind of choice is that? The AT was way better!" but then why post a picture of a red Morgan dollar? After a few clicks back and forth, the light went on and I understood: Natural Toning or Artificial Toning. My immediate reaction was "What's the difference?" I mean that. Sure, I know. On the one hand, the coin sat in a paper roll in a vault for 100 years and came out like that and otherwise, someone achieved this artistry last week in a couple of hours. But so what? You can tell an added Mint mark. You can tell a cleaned coin. You can tell an overgraded coin. In every case, the way to tell is to compare the suspect coin to a genuine coin. Toning, however, is toning. There is no standard against which to measure the "originality." OK. I have a silver-dollar sized French 5 Franc silver coin from 1830-something and I got it cheap because it was harshly cleaned. I have done "nothing" to it, except to put it in the top pocket of a suit coat hanging in my closet. (When I wear the suit, I take the coin out and put it in a different suit.) That was three years ago. Artificial toning? Natural toning? How can you tell? Color? Hue? Value? My motives or intentions? At a coin show, I was working the table and a guy brought up a small box of Mercury Dimes and other 1940s coins, all golden brown and golden yellow and yellow brown. "They were my aunt's," he said. "She was a smoker," I replied. Attractive toning? Maybe in the first instant to anyone who does not know why they look like that. Once you know why they are golden, they stop being so attractive and become candidates for the Jeweluster. But, are they not "naturally" toned by the same standard as the Morgan dollar left in a paper roll for 100 years?

Toronto Dollars are a topic here. Ithaca, New York's, Time Dollars are world famous. Local currencies tend to be supported by political movements. The E. F. Schumacher Society provides information about the "small is beautiful" efforts. Among them are these local currency projects: http://www.schumachersociety.org/local_currencies.html The Schumacher Society hosted this conference on local currencies: http://www.localcurrency.org I was involved in this project from Traverse City, Michigan. http://www.baybucks.org

My choices have changed over the years. When I started, I only bought from retail stores. Lansing, Michigan, had four coin shops back then, and I found one I liked. (Michigan tends to be heavier in retail outlets and clubs, even today.) I still shop at coin stores and I when I travel I visit new stores just to see what's up and say hi and I usually buy something just to be polite. I buy very little serious material at coin stores because my interests are beyond what they usually carry, though I do ask if they can show me this or that or if they have any of these or those or whatever. As I learned more and my interests broadened, I patronized mail order sellers validated by the publications they advertised in. Not all of them lived up to my expectations, but it was an educational experience, to be sure. Actively collecting ancients, I learned to trust advertisers in The Celator. I still follow the same habit. Building a collection now to support a new area of research in medievals, I ended up buying from VCOINS dealers. Several of them are not Celator advertisers, but I came to VCOINS because of those who were, so the one set validated the other for me. Along the way, I joined a local club and began going to coin shows. (Again, the Greater Detroit area is a rich marketplace for numismatics.) Seeing the same people over and over at local, regional, and national shows, I became more familiar with the sellers and their wares. I now do most of my buying at coin shows, especially the MSNS and ANA conventions. Although I am an MSNS director, my hands are tied regarding some of the problems I run into on the bourse floor. Even so, I consider MSNS a very safe venue based on trust, respect, long-term commitments, and the highest standards for building the hobby in order to build the businesses. Even more than MSNS, I have implicit faith in the process at ANA conventions. Yes, each of us assumes personal responsibility for our own transactions, and, yes, there is no Santa Claus. For all of that, I trust the ANA conventions to have the highest caliber of dealers and materials. Therefore, I tend to save my money during the year or two between ANA conventions and then to do most of my buying there. I attend the nightly auctions as well as walking the bourse floor. I spend two or more days at the show. Yes, it seems to cost more up front. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Mail order, eBay, coin stores, whatever, every mode of buying and selling comes with its own costs and burdens. For what I would spend (or risk) in other overhead, attending an ANA convention once a year or two years, is no more expensive than driving to a local coin store every Saturday morning and spending two or three hours hanging out -- and at an ANA convention, I meet 200 to 300 dealers, each of them competing for my money. I still buy at local shows, stores, via mail, VCOINS or whatever. I just do about 75% of my buying at the MSNS and ANA conventions and relegate minor purchases, exceptions, and general socializing to the other venues.

When I was an active collector, my primary passion was for Ancient Greek coins, worth about a day's wages, from the times and towns of famous philosophers. From Thales of Miletos to Hypatia of Alexandria, I pretty much hit them all, at least, all the major ones. My guide was Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. (see for instance http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/ for an online translation.) So, it was pretty neat to have a coin from Abdera, the home of Democritus (Demokritos) who came up with the idea of atoms and realize that this coin could have passed through his hands. For Romans, my interest in collecting a series was limited to the Five Good Emperors: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. I had them as denarii. Nerva was the tough one, of course, having ruled only briefly. I also have quite a few HERMES and MERCURY coins, both Greek and Roman. Online, my username has been mercury (or mercury-something) since 1985. His common attributes are the caduceus and traveler's hat (petasos). Winged sandals and winged cap complete the outfit. I have a couple of coins with just the caduceus, and oddly enough one of them is Conder token. There are more ways to collect and I have some other little runs and sets.

If Mithradites VI, then about 88 BC, give or take. You can read a whole big bunch about him because he was pretty famous in his time and just about anyone who collects ancients comes into contact with his life sooner or later. Mithradites VI was actually a "foreign" Greek who rallied the Greeks against the Rome. Rome was technically a republic, but had been acting very imperial for nearly 100 years. From about 180 BC or so, Rome got involved in the wars between the descendents of Alexander's generals, the Seleukids of Syria, the Ptolemies of Egypt, and the hometown Macedonians. Rome conquered Macedon in 168 BC. Rome sacked Corinth in 146 BC. This brought thousands of Greek slaves to Rome. "Enslaved, Greece enslaved her master," in the words of Horace. Rome became a bilingual empire. In 133 BC, the town of Pergamon in Asia Minor was willed to the Roman Senate by its last Greek king. That was significant on several grounds. For one thing, the town was founded by Philetairos, a general of Alexander, who took off with about the modern equivalent of $3 BILLION from the military treasury. We have the word "parchment" from Pergamon. By 88 BC, Rome had for no good reason crushed Rhodes, which had been a fulcrum for the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean. The point of all that is that the Greeks of Greece and Asia were ripe for revolt when Mithradates VI came along. His string of victories came to an end. Oddly enough, though, he actually survived and died in (ahem) "retirement" in his own lands.

I have coins from KYRENE and BERENIKAIA which were then in what was and is now "LIBYA." One of them actually is attributed to have a personification of Libya on the reverse (Ptolemy I obverse). Berenikaia is now pronounced "Benghazi." The time frame is 500 BC to 100 BC. Kyrene (Cyrene) was founded by Dorians from Thera. Their town prospered because of silphium, a natural contraceptive. (For more information see LIVIUS.org www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrenaica/cyrenaica.html and see also my "Money Talks" radio script archived at www.coin-newbies.com/articles/hearts.html ) Libya came under the sphere of the Ptolemies. It was a Greek town, historically, and physically close to Alexandria. One of the towns in the "pentapolis" was named BARCA, which is a Cathagenian name, but this was only an outpost for them, and they never penetrated into Libya, though there was at least one military expedition, a tangential event in Cathage's war with Syracuse. As for the "axis of evil" Libya was not originally on the list... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1971852.stm ... which fact opened them to some ridicule ... http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/axis.shtml "... forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the Axis of Occasionally Evil, while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the Axis of Not So Much Evil Really As Just Generally Disagreeable. ..." And Libya has since mended its axially evil ways. "Gaddafi deal signals end to secret nuclear weapon programme with Iran and North Korea" According to the Sunday Herald for 21 December 2003. http://www.sundayherald.com/38834 Ancient history just keeps playing over and over and over.

Never mind... When I read that it said: "New Mexican Bimetallics... " Having lived in Las Cruces and then Albuquerque, I thought that it meant New Mexico. (Ahem... going back to sleep.)

I have bought copies in the past, but I would never do so again. When I was newer in the hobby, I bought everything that struck my fancy and I accepted what was offered on the terms of the dealer. As I learned more, I felt more confident about adhering to my own standards. I have in the past written about the Gallery Mint Museum. I understand what they do and I generally support their work in restoring lost arts and making facsimiles. A facsmile is not a replica or a copy. For instance, GMM created a Buffalo Nickel in the Roman style. They created a Mercury Dime in the Roman style. They did these for the ANA Young Numismatists as a fund raiser, so the reverses say that or display symbols supporting that. So, there is no confusion as to what this object is. On the other hand, we know of instances where crooks have taken GMM replicas (copies), removed the word COPY, artificially aged the coin and attempted to pass it. We know of the failed attempt. We do not know of the successful scams. How do you differentiate an "honest" replica from a dishonest one? I know that since 1972 in the USA we have had the Hobby Protect Act and the required incuse COPY, but that technicality aside, how is any replica, not a fake? Is a 1916-D Mercury Dime with an added mintmark, just a "replica"? When I spoke at the ANA Convention in Pittsburgh on "Fakes: threat or menace?" I passed around Chinese copies of Seated Dollars. Some people could not tell the difference even after holding them. So, the old collector goes to the big bourse in the sky and his heirs sell off the collection. If you were the dealer flipping through a couple big boxes of this and that, the Whitman folders, a 100 or 1000 or so flips and 2x2s, and you saw a Seated Dollar, would you take it out or would you just tally it for what it appeared to be? Fakes are bad for business, bad for everybody, bad all the way around. So, OK, you cannot afford an 1804 Dollar, so you buy a replica. What do you have? In the movie POPEYE with Robin Williams, Popeye had a "picture" of his Dad: a frame around a rectangle of cardboard on which was written the words ME PAPPA. That is what you have with a replica. You might has well write the words 1804 DOLLAR on a circle of paper. And again, I used to buy replicas for the same reasons given here. I understand. I do not condemn the people, even though I decline the practice.

1. Historically, Mints took in gold and silver and struck coins with the metal. Since, gold and silver were money and coins were a convenient form of that, the question would come up if the Mint "ran out of money." Where did it all go? What did you do with it? 2. In Medieval Englande and much of Western Europe, Mints were private entities that bid for work, promising to give the king (or other ruler) so much money (gold, silver in coin form) in return for hte license to strike coins. 3. We have a modernist democratic-republican view that the government takes tax money from all of us, dumps it into a big pot and the legislature parcels it out for the things we all commonly need: roads, schools, etc. But that is a modernist view. Really, the government's only mandate is to maintain itself. The war is never over until the ruler is dead or captured. The rest is just accidental association, as for instance, the argument in the Magna Carta over who was going to maintain the bridges. 4. As recently as 1800-1802, the U.S. Government considered closing its Mint as a waste of money since they could not make a profit and as real republicans, the Americans were not convinced that running a Mint was a necessary and proper function of government. 5. Even today, since it costs about 8 to 12 cents to make $1 in coin form and about the same to print paper, you have to go back to square 1 and ask how it could be that they cannot make a profit? 6. Not every nation operates its own Mint, of course. Big nations do. Old nations do. Many contract the job out with the British Royal Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint being big contractors. 7. The PERTH mint is actually an independent business owned by the state of Western Australia. 8. The Royal Canadian Mint is a crown corporation. The Bank of Canada is a crown corporation. They are two entirely different entities, as are the British Royal Mint and the Bank of England. 9. In the US, the Mint is one thing and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is another. What binds them is their common customer: the Federal Reserve Bank which pays for their products with US Treasury Bonds which it buys with their products. (Don't ask. We don't undertand it either.)

I am for $1, $2 and $5 coins. When I was a kid, all wallets -- men's and women's -- had coin compartments. All of my suit coats have inner coin pockets. One pair of suit pants does, also. As styles and the value of a dollar changed over time, the coin compartments went away from billfolds that now must accommodate a stack of cards. More than just "credit" cards and ATM cards, I have auto insurance and health insurance cards, library cards, coffee club cards, membership cards ... So, if coins came back, wallets would change to handle them. The production of cents and the production of paper dollars are both political -- not economic, or even "numismatic" -- issues. Workers would lose their jobs and unions would lose members if the relative stocks of money changed. Unlike many other nations, ALL of the money of the United States is an asset of the government. (In some nations, only banknotes are real money. In Canada, the situtation is somewhat ambiguous with legal limits on the convertibility of loonies and twonies.) The useless cent is an asset on the books of the government and heaven forbid that we should actually use them to buy government services such as taxes, national park camping tickets, or whatever. As long as they stay in jars, those billions of cents are a loan from us to them. The reality is that the quarter is the smallest commercially useful coin. Nickels and dimes are sales tax tokens. Perhaps every cash register checkout I have seen in the last five years or more has a dish for cents. Many have some little sign that says something like "Need a penny? Leave a penny?" Most do not even have that sign because the custom is habitual now.

History you hold in your hand... 1829 - 1832 The Saxony court takes over the Leipziger Stadttheater as the “Königlich Sächsisches Hoftheater zu Leipzig” under the general management from Dresden with Wolf Adolf von Lüttichau at its head. The Hoftheater episode ends at the Easter Trade Fair 1832 with a considerable financial loss. From 1833 onwards Again under the private theatrical management of Friedrich Sebald Ringelhardt (1832 – 1844), Albert Lortzing works as a singer, actor and conductor at the Leipziger Stadttheater. Between 1835 and 1846, nine operas are written in Leipzig, six of which are premièred in the city, including “Die beiden Schützen” (20.2.1837), “Zar und Zimmermann” (22.12.1837) and “Der Wildschütz oder Die Stimme der Natur” (31.12.1842). http://www.oper-leipzig.de/html/obj809.html King Anton was over 70 when he inherited the throne from his brother. He ruled only until 1836.

Cute idea! Very evocative. I am surprised that no one thought of this before. Once I saw it, I said, "Of course." ... of course 250 years from now when no one knows what a jigsaw puzzle is...

I agree that the Eagle is innovative. The extra scrolls -- planets on a musical staff? -- take away from the bird, but I like the Eagle. Mozart is underdeveloped. Surely, some kind of tribute could have been designed that honors his many great works. The profiled head on a coin could be anyone, Schopenhauer, Humboldt, Pius IX, who knows? Even a new and accurate representation based on the few known portraits would have been all right. Mozart was a Freemason, by the way, and some people suggest that his Marriage of Figaro was part of the Enlightened conspiracy against church and state. Make a coin of out that!

I am pretty much with Art in post #4 and 28Plain's Gothic Florin avatar shows why. When you want to experience the details, then, yes, of course, the uncirculated coin is preferred. The higher the grade, the better. I have one Deep Cameo Proof 70 coin, a Roosevelt Dime. I am not a Roosie collector by any measure. I have two Mercury Dimes in true Uncirculated. They are both 1916-P because the hubs were "fresh" back then. You see a lot of Mercs from Word War II that are blast white or whatever, MS-67s and all that, but when you really examine the details, you realize how flat such coins are. So, yes, the more perfect the perfection the better the goodness of the ownership. That said, part of the experience of collecting is holding the coin and wondering where it has been and what it has bought. Therefore, most of the coins I own have some character from circulation. In many cases, for instance, among ancients, uncirculated examples are prohibitively rare. A nicer circulated find, Extremely Fine, is preferred because it shows more details. A coin with honest wear has character to be sure, but lacks those attributes that make such items collectible. Ancient Greek art must be seen to be appreciated. So, I accept the existence of circulation wear and try to collect the least worn example for the type. With paper money, my preferences are for uncirculated because they are available at nominal cost. Furthermore, circulated examples might be harder to find for some issues. In any case, with printing, the details are considerable. Paper is so delicate that wear degrades the object. Stock certificates, checks, drafts, etc., come as they come. That is all that can be said. With medals, there is little excuse for wear. I do not understand collectors of commemoratives who accept worn examples. Commemoratives -- even Isabella quarters -- typically exist in high grades, often only in high grades.