Why Do You Like Collecting Coins?

i meen a little off the point. so keep the stories comming!

There were traces of democracy here and there throughout history, but mostly, the world was ruled by dictators and tryants (e.g. Alexander the Great of Greece rose to the top by putting others to the sword. I don't think he won an election). And let's remember that the U.S. is NOT a democracy, it is a republic.

If there was a successful constitutional republic on the face of the earth that came before the U.S., I am open to learning new things.

thre were also czech and slovak republics

Like France was a republic? Ha! Don't let dictator Napoleon know about that one!

No disrespect to the Czech and Slovak republics, but their contribution to the idea of people governing themselves is so small on the world stage that it would take an electron microscope to find it.

Gary, 70K of National Geos? My goodness, I just donated about 600 issues from the 50's on to a freind of my daughters to aid in her new teaching career as well as adding to her own collection. Where in heavens name do you store them all? They weigh tons!!!! There are only about 1300 or so American issues so you must have tons of duplicates or many different countries represented. Has your collection ever made a story in NG? Mike

Echoing longnine, WETSU! I just like to collect things, have had this hang-up since early childhood when I brought home snakes, frogs, leaves, rocks, old-looking things, and of course, coins I found on the ground. It was sort of an anal compulsive thing. By the time I turned 50, I had learned to control these urges and narrowed my focus to objects I could store in something smaller than a semi-trailer. I've also had at various points in my life a deep interest in historical objects such as Indian arrowheads (points), firearms, stamps, books, antiques, battlefield memorabilia, watches, and of course, coins. More recently, I've refined my collector fetish to just a few more portable things and of course, coins. Coins are also a means of having money without the desire to spend it.

Fred

Cause I'm a packrat and just can't help it. I've got a closet full of ball cards that just take up a lot of space. I think coins are like jewels and pearls in the fact that they'll always be worth something. In a few thousand years anything made of paper(ballcards) will practically be dust. Of course we won't be around but it's hard to get too excited about something that takes up that much space and will be totally worthless at some point in time. Coins are also works of art. Just a thought....it's easy to imagine a couple of Roman soldiers carrying a chest of gold. It just would'nt look right if Romans or a future civilization carrying a chest of ballcards, records, or anything not precious metals or jewels. Just a rambling thought.

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Originally posted by cladking

To tame them.

They get made in a nice orderly fashion year after year. Most are made by many dies and each will start by making nice coins and end up making hideous looking junk either made by worn and/ or broken dies. These coins go into circulation in a nice orderly sort of way with most being released near the mint of issue. If a die strikes a variety these coins will almost all go to the same city.

Then they get into circulation and start a crazy wild walk. They get mixed with other coins as they pass in transactions and wear dependent on the conditions that they see individually. Soon the coins can be almost anywhere and in almost any condition. Many will be lost permanently because they are lost or go to landfills.

Collecting them imposes a more natural order on at least a few of them. ;)

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Wow. That's a fantastic answer. Thanks.

I can name certain aspects, but there's something I can't put my finger on as to why I love coins and collecting them. I like some coins more than others for aesthetic reasons. For example, I like coins from times before it became customary to put historical figures (and in some cases, their houses) on the national coinage. If you want to know what Americans imagined their liberty to be at any given time, just look at the coinage.

Before 1932, with the Lincoln Cent exception, our coinage invariably showed Liberty, and specific images of Liberty at any given time, as America's most defining attribute. All the allegories of LIBERTY show, in ways busts of dead presidents can never do, the great American vision when it was, well, more visionary. The last silver dollar of regular issue, the Peace dollar (one of my favorite genre of coins) shows Liberty looking backwards, and on many specimens, especially circulated coins, she has a look almost of shock on her face as she looks back at a world war of unimaginable carnage, that's a far cry from Miss Liberty on the Walking halves in her Stars-n-Stripes lingerie walking open armed into the future. The eagles on the reverses of these coins are similarly revealing.

Coins not only represent history and the national memory, they contain it, most especially in their designs. I love CladKing's image of TAMING them, and organizing them, perhaps into a narrative which they, those discs of metal were involved in the most intimate way - through people's pockets and hands. In THE PETRIFIED FOREST a movie from 1936, the character played by Bette Davis when she was almost still a teenager gives a dollar to a man without a cent. The movie comes from the depths of the Great Depression. That was a Peace dollar. It could have been the one that's next to me here as I write.