Who Knows About Your Hobby?

Just you guys (and gals) on the Internet. Co-workers, suppliers, and family members might know I have an interest, but I never discuss my interests or acquisitions with them. I have advised people how to dispose of collections that they have come into or received coins as gifts, but never with my own holdings. I don't want to be known as the guy in the neighborhood with a couple a dozen easily transportable coins worth more than $1K each, nor with a stockpile of easily accessible PMs. You never know which trusted friend, family member tells his or her brother-in-law who in turn tells a fishing buddy, who then decides to make an easy kill one night after a few too many beers... I might miss out on a few buying opportunities, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I've seen friendships ended over these kind of 'friendly' sales, where someone feels taken advantage of later, once they realize the true value of what they sold. Not worth throwing friends over to save a few bucks. It helps coin collectors if they are on the anti-social side.

like the author of this thread,Family members and a few friends who also collect.I don't want the word to get around to.......
(Even the neighbours don't know I collect Coins)

Probably only my wife knows everything about the collection, in fact it's rather "our" than "my". As for family and friends a lot of them know we collect but they know only about a part of things we have.

A fair number of people, and all of them are told the coins are kept in the SDB, I don't keep anything at home. And or course I don't tell people where home is either. I don't get mail at home, I have mail drops for correspondence and for shipping. No utilities in my name, phone is unlisted and paid for online so no bills.

Thats impressive haha....one of the few people that can be known as being "off the grid"

In colledge there is a course in Psycology 101, if my memory is correct. They have that in almost all colledges and one of the first things they attempt to show you is what happens when you tell anyone, anything about anything. Usually you get about 10 people in a circle and a professor whispers a short story to one of them. This in turn is supposed to be repeated from one to another until the last person has heard the story. They are whispered so low that others can not hear what is said. Finally the last person tells that story out loud and it is amazing. Changed so much it is now difficult to believe it's the same story.
The moral of this is once you tell anyone that you collect coins, they might tell someone that tells someone and eventually you have millions of dollars in coins stashed away in your home. Maybe not millions must yet but by the time some criminals hear about your great wealth, might as well be in the millions since when they rob you, that's what they'll be looking for.
Sounds rediculous to many but not to one of my neighbors. He USED to brag about his Gold Coins and at gun and knife point, lost them all. Also, ended up in the hospital since he rather exagerated his collection.
I tell as few as possible. To me it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Difficult to hide a hobby from a girl or boy friend but think about this. When, and it does happen, such a friendship ends, usually there is a lot of hard feelings. Those hard feelings could end up with one spreading stories of a massive coin collection laying around.
Of course this same thing could happen with a married couple too.

Just my family and only a few of them know. Just my cousin, becuase he collects also, my mother and my aunt and uncle.