The Seven Topics Of VAMming That Merit No Discussion

I have been away for a few days. This thread has taken a few interesting turns.

Couple of things.

Those folks that do the research and publish their work do not make any money directly from the sale of the publications. I would also add that unlike what many percieve, the motives to publish a work is not driven by profit as far as I can tell. The Top 100 book did not make money, it was published purely to attempt to spark interst in the hobby. It is easy to sit on the side lines and second quess the motives of those who provide the hobby with information. My suggestion is to take it at face value and not read too much into it.

Dealers are dealers. Hobbiests are hobbiests. A dealer can also be a hobbiest. A hobbiest can also sell VAMs. The problem comes into play when the usual few rotten apples try to make a buck at someone else's expense and take advantage of the uninformed.

But this is no different than a rotten used car salesman. There are honest and professional ones out there. All it takes is one or two to give the community a bad name.

If you have ever met the person you are referring to, and actually sat down and talked to this individual, then I would suggest you would change your mind. I am not condoning the decision to include the subject coin into the subject list you are talking about, but I doubt it was for monetary gain actually. But your opinion is shared by many.

I am not sure that it cuts only one way.

Look at the current VAM listings. I have not counted the current number of listings, because I am lazy. But let's say there are over 3000.

If you are a newcomer to Vamming, it can be mind-blowing and one could easily get lost, and subsequently leave Vamming without even getting started.

What is wrong with assembling a list of significant VAMs for a newcomer to focus on and not get bogged down into the minutia of the minor, no premium VAMs? That was the spirit that the Top 100 list was assembled in.

It seems to me that the Top 100 list did exactly what it was intended to do, spark and focus collector interest. Why would the motive be questioned?

I call it being cynical, why, because people who do have another agenda, simply put, are NOT going to tell all the real reasoning behind their motives and that is IMO, being a self serving, slippery person or way of doing business. I see your avatar and name, does this not speak volumes of your thought process, not coming down on you, just stating the obvious.

I do believe there are plenty of people who, if given the chance to watch the store, will do what comes naturally to them, be them selves, and like some who have a self serving agenda, you would be hard pressed to be lucky to find things the way they were left.

I call it the way I see it and there is a fine line between being kind and being taken for a fool. " Don't mistaken kindness for stupidity" I do not hand out trust to people, like certain other things, trust is something that MUST be earned, and I do not trust dealers of this hobby I do not know or have shown me their REAL side, the shady one........ I do not see a problem with making a book for people to read, I do see a problem with stating the book is for " the newcomers" to assist them in learning. I DO NOT see it that way, I see it as a way of dealers promoting their stock or preferred coinage to sell and that is what I call a hidden agenda. I would go out on a limb and ask, is the author a coin seller/dealer? Let me take an educated guess on that answer, more than a good chance, more than a great possibility? I do believe this topic does merit discussing.

I am not a child and have been around the B&M'S a few times, people are not all bad and not all good, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but if I become the product of a dealers scam, shame on me for not knowing better, I also feel the collectors out there are getting wiser, smarter, and using their knowledge to "play the game" and for this, I say the field is getting more and more level, by the days going by.......PS VFM, Welcome to the forum.

You are correct, I do not know this person. I am just a small fish in this big VAM ocean and you are correct I may change my mind if I ever met thgem. I am not saying they are not trying to bring attention to the hobby because their lists have definitely done that but I have to ask myself why this author would include a coin in his own collection that he knows there isn't any more out there so he is the only one who will ever have a complete set of his special list unless he decides to sell his. And he had to know once the TPG's jumped on the bandwagon and started attributing this particular VAM that it would make his coin worth pretty much whatever he wanted to sell it for. I am sure he has been offered some pretty insane money for it already. there are VAM's out there that are very rare and are more than 1 of them that the TPG's will not even consider attributing because the person who "discovered" the VAM isn't well known or connected in the community. Thgis is just my opinion and I have nothing against any of them who make these special lists of coins and my hats actually off to them for dedicating their time to study the VAM's as much as they did to be able to have enough knowledge to even write a book about it, but I just don't see where a 1 of coin should be on any special list especially when the author is the only one who owns that one specific VAM

I would venture to say, I TOTALLY dis-agree.

I also do not see where a person who is on that board, and does not deal coins for a FULL TIME JOB would come into play.
I see the people who sell any coins on that board part time or anywhere in the middle, a conflict, if you can not agree that this could have a strong impact on the hobby, I would say I would agree to TOTALLY dis-agree with you," Vams For Money"........

Certainly not here to raise emotions or blood pressure.

Back to one of Ozland's questions. "What is the future of Vamming?"

If nobody identifies and sells VAMs to the buying public, then is there a future? Or is the hobby of Vamming delegated to folks who just cherrypick and put them into collections?

Wait just a minute please, before we get back to the future of vamming, I have one quick thing to say about the authors and lists......

I definitely believe that these authors have a range of motives for their works, from the love of the hobby and a contribution to others, to vanity, to ego, to perceived status, to notoriety, to failed attempts at greed, to the mere compulsion to express themselves in print....as we do here (but just more authoritatively).

Call some of them pure, some of them something less, nobody authors out of boredom..... talking to one of these authors about their motives may be an enlightening experience, or it may not be....depends on the flow of the conversation, the attitudes and level of trust afforded.

The content of the works is what is sometimes troubling and stands as a barrier to believability..... I read a couple of them, one by the guy who does not sell, one by the guy who owns 'the coin' (but it wasn't that book), in fact, I am not sure if there even is a 'book'.....Let me do quick reviews on these two books that I read a while back.....

1878 S Long Nocks, was far less than what I expected....the pictures were not very good, the narrative was not as much as I had hoped for, but then maybe I was expecting too much for the price that I was told was paid.

8 Tail Feather Attribution Guide....far more substance, better pictures, however, quite redundant.....I felt as though there was some information that was just 'missing'..... errors or misinformation was the let down...once I find an error, I quest the validity of the remainder of the information....Price wise, it may have been a better deal, in that the overall appearance, weight and feel of the book was more substantial.

It may not sound like it from that, but I felt that both books were worth the money and the read.....both incorporated information that you are not likely to encounter elsewhere.

It is the "lists" that bother me....and I do not know if these lists are in book form or if they are just "lists".....again, motive is the question....and talking to the author may or may not reveal true intent..... I asked why 'the coin' was included on the list....I was told by the author of the list that it was put there to provide motivation to find another..... I was not at all impressed by that answer... I am not an idiot.... and I don't enjoy being treated as such......there is no motivation necessary in the search of the Holy Grail....folks have been searching for it for two thousand years without interjected motivation, without even knowing that it exists.... A second coin may or may not exist, (and I think that the possibility of that red herring becoming reality diminishes on a daily basis)..... Not even the author is going to sway my belief that this coin was added to the list for any other reason than ego.

These lists seem to have far more of a commercial flavor than most folks like... And why not? Who likes being dictated to as to what to like, what to look for, what is interesting, what is worth a premium, what is to be coveted or what to collect? Who was asked for their opinion? Was there a poll that everybody seemed to miss?

The collector really should be at least considered as a determining factor in these lists, but it seems as though the TPGs are more important to have consensual understanding with (rather than the mere collector).