Why Do You Collect Coins?

Hi Steelie

we have a few of the same interests besides coins .

fossils ,rocks .fly rods and reels to name a few . its nice to know I'm not alone in the dog house !

I am a 7th generation American..........So I love to relate to my history.To hold something an ancestor may have held just connects with me...
Cheers,Brewzz

My idea is collecting coins is a purely Pscological Phenomenon relating to our childhood with the security blankets and/or passifier. This starts individuals on a never ending quest to always have something solid to hang on to. As children we all have that Teddy Bear or similar idealogical item to make us feel secure. As we all get older it is only the fear of peer remarks that changes our hoarding and collecting of solid materials from childhood items to so called grown up items and coins are just that.
In my situation it is also numerous other materials of a solid nature to grasp for a sence of security.
If not the above, I really don't know at all.

I love being able to hold a coin in my hand and thinks about the things it could have seen. Whether its the 1830 Bust Half I have that could have seen the Tamany Hall Sway in NY or any of the Carson Cities I have that were alongside America's Pioneers. The hobby is not really about the money for me, but the intense history behind every single coin in my collection

I have an opinion on this. I think the very first coin collector was the first person to figure out that the government was stealing from them. When governments reduced the quantity of gold and silver and copper in a coin you got a less valuable coin. Governments have been doing this since the beginning of time and I suspect people of many centuries ago were trying to protect themselves by keeping the better coins ie. collecting while spending the newer depreciated ones.

Here in America our constitution stated that money could ONLY be gold and silver. Franklin D Roosevelt and his communist clan of bankers stole the American peoples gold in 1933. Lyndon B. Johnson stole our silver in 1964. They were still producing silver dated 1964 in 1966 because silver coins were evaporating so fast from circulation. The US government and the central bankers did not want people to see the theft for what it was, stealing REAL money and replacing it with fiat valued at significantly less. Keep this in mind. The price of gold and silver and copper ARE NOT going up. The value of the fiat paper and electronic digits being used is going down.

Why do I like to collect coins? In a nutshell it is for two reasons. First of all I despise fiat paper money and electronic digits with a passion. Coins have intrinsic value. Someone had to dig up the metal, refine it, process it, make coin blanks, then make the coins, then ship them and they get used in commerce. Banks hate them because they are heavy and take up space. Fiat paper money and checks and electrons on the other hand are made of cloth or electrons of which NOTHING much was done to make these items "valuable" other than the government says it is valuable ie. fiat money.

The federal reserve (nothing federal about it) has stolen from the people since it was created in 1913. How? It is called inflation (increasing the money supply) and it is ONLY possible when fiat money is used. Therefore coins to me are a way of preserving some of my wealth that the government and the banks are stealing from me. Inflation is an invisible tax. Additionally this can happen in the world of fiat money http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...e6940482.ece

Second when holding a coin in my hand I am holding a piece of art that has history and has intrinsic value. Like others have stated coins are a beautiful thing to have and to hold. Some of the coins in my inventory have mintages of less than 1 million. To put that in perspective there will never be any more of them made (other than via Chinese fraud which is usually easy to detect). Since there are around 360 million people in the US only 1 person in 360 can have one assuming the coins are all still in existence (not likely). If you take into account the massive melting of a lot of US gold, silver and copper coins over the years you have a lot of attrition. That means I have something that is both beautiful and rare!

By collecting I am preserving a piece of history for the next generation while at the same time protecting my wealth from fiat money confiscation through inflation AND in an emergency have something that is very desirable that can be sold very quickly or that I can use at the grocery store. Given the choice of spending a coin or starving I would spend the coin to buy food. Coins are both an investment and a savings plan for me. Coin values have ALWAYS done better than the stock and bond market (when done right) with regards to protecting wealth and saving real money. Besides, knowledge is power and the more you learn about coins the better chance you will find a "sleeper" in some dealers inventory or out of circulation. I love treasure hunting! Sincerely, John Leckrone

Fairly new to it but hooked hard, line and sinker....

1. The History - Where has this coin been? What did this coin buy 40 years ago and what can it buy today?

2. Its the hunt - Looking for that next treasure.

Happy collecting...

Hi Saruma,

We will have to agree to disagree on FDR as he acted the part of a dictator for over a decade and changed our countries constitution by replacing Supreme Court justices who would follow along with his unconstitutional new deal policies to include stealing gold from people at $20.00 per ounce then changing it's value to $35.00 once he had the gold. While on the subject gold and silver coins are a form of freedom so in a small way it is a political issue.

While it is true the constitution discusses gold and silver as the only form of money for the states this also applied to the federal government. This can be verified by some of the other coinage laws a little later. The major laws were in 1834 and 1873. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/...tandard.html
Both of these laws made gold the preferred metal. For those of us who believe in the conspiracy of bankers (the crime of 1873 started the process) we saw peoples wealth taken from them again and again. The common coin prior to our constitution was the Spanish pieces of 8 ie. silver. Gold was always the bankers metal while silver was the peoples. I think we are still seeing that trend today. Many of us believe the wizard of oz was written to expose the crime of 1873 and William Jennings Bryant's cross of gold speech covered the balance of it.

With regards to inflation in a gold and silver standard I will confess there are two that I am aware of. First in Europe, especially Spain when all of the gold from the new world showed up. Second when silver was found in large quantities out in the US West. Other than that there are countless examples of price stability for CENTURIES in countries on a gold or silver standard. When prices are stable people are able to grow their wealth through planning and investing without manipulation. On a side note I do believe that the gold and silver market are manipulated to strengthen the US dollar and keep people from investing/protecting themselves from government inflationary confiscation of wealth. And yes when fiat paper "increases" in value and silver and gold "decrease" in value you are correct. Gold and silver are antidollars. I do not believe this would be the case if the manipulation to prop up the dollar was not taking place.




Again you and I are going to have to agree to disagree. Gold and silver represent a storage of wealth. I need to make clear what I define as wealth. All commodities as well as means of production ie. land, human labor, capitol and factories represent wealth. Something had to be done to create it ie. people went to work. It is not "creating wealth" when someone mandates that a piece of cloth with numbers and pictures of dead presidents is valuable. It is even worse when they do it electronically. Who gets the benefits of this? The bankers who get to use this newly created money (created out of thin air) to purchase REAL assets ie. land, labor and means of production. In the fiat world all paper money is worthless except the value we give to it. We work for what we earn. The people who create the fiat garbage DON'T. Here is a couple examples of government theft when fiat money is used

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...e6940482.ece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflat...mar_Republic

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82500

While it is possible to do the same with gold and silver ie. make it illegal as FDR did and remove it from circulation as LBJ did at least we the people have something tangible to use in cases of absolute emergency. The high US inflation of the 1970's was caused when tricky dick took the us dollar off the gold standard completely.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...tates_dollar

The US dollar has been the worlds reserve currency since Bretton Woods because we were the last to drop the gold standard. We are now losing that position and the US dollar is declining in value on the international markets. This means all imports of foreign goods cost us more money. Oil and products from China get more expensive in this kind of environment. The US has been living on foreign credit for over a decade and we are going to pay for it in the very near future. For more of my rantings on this issue you can go to bullion direct and view my postings there. My user id is the same. I will close off for now by saying the same thing I say there. Got gold and silver? Sincerely, John Leckrone