A Hoard, An Accumulation, A Collection [rant]

There has to be a story attached to this "rant." What is it?

Thanks for the mention, Matthew! As my screen name indicates, I am truly having fun. Studying is what I do, having spent a quarter of a century on my education and training... unable to break that habit now. I am delighted to find such a diverse body of information to study in coin collecting. So many angles of attack! So many ways to enjoy it!

Generally I don't waste time on regrets, but it is impossible for me to not have some regret for failing to take an interest in numismatics as a child while my grandfather was alive. Oh the fun we would have had. And I would have saved some valuable coins from being sold to the local dealer for a song after his passing.

Edited to add: As per your definitions above, my grandfather's coins were an accumulation, not a hoard, not truly a collection.

With some trepidation I take minor issue with the definition of hoard. Within the field of numismatics "hoard" refers to a large amount of coins that have been buried or otherwise hidden away and then found decades, centuries,even millennia later.

Well said.... Thanks... I am not new to the collecting of stuff, only new to collecting coins.. and I have to agree with your take on this...

I agree with matthewvincent's criterion, with one key difference: I tend to apply these labels to the people, rather than to the assortments of coins themselves. And I would add a fourth label.

A "hoarder" is someone who rather compulsively gathers every single strange, odd or unusual coin they ever get their hands on. No organization, no idea about what exactly is in their "hoard", and if you picked up one coin from their hoard and asked them a question about it, they wouldn't have a clue.

An "accumulator" is similar, but there is a little more thought, a little more knowledge, and tends to focus on some areas more than others - wheat cents, for example. They may know enough about the coins of particular interest to them to answer questions about them generally, but they won't have an answer if you pick up a specific coin and ask them why that coin, in particular, is part of their accumulation.

A "collector" is usually highly goal-motivated - "completing the set" being a common goal, but not necessarily the only one. They have extensive knowledge, and probably a rather large library of books and a long list of bookmarked websites about the coins of interest to them, and if you picked up one coin from their collection, they could not only tell you the vital statistics about it (year, mint, mintage, designer etc) but probably be able to tell you when, where and for how much they acquired that particular coin. Collectors often have little or no interest in keeping "duplicates", though will actively seek "upgrades" once the collection is "complete".

Finally, there are the "numismatists". For a numismatist, knowledge is of supreme importance - in extreme cases, a numismatist doesn't even own any coins at all, but they do have extensive knowledge. Often their field of interest is extremely specialized. A particular concern of most numismatists is a scientific methodology: they do research, and are keen to see the results of their research published - in books, magazines, at the coin club, on the Internet, wherever - so that the research they do is made known to the wider collecting community.

The reason I label the people rather than the coins is that organization is a key difference between the various labels, and one person's logical organized system could well be everyone else's chaotic mess. It's entirely possible that great-grandpa's "hoard" was originally organized by him as a proper "collection", but the logic behind the organization died with him.

Finally, I would agree with austrokiwi. "Coin hoard", in Europe and in Britain in particular, most often refers to a buried cache of ancient or mediaeval coins. In England, there is a legal definition of how many coins more than 400 years old you need to have to constitute a "hoard" - I believe it's two gold or silver coins, or ten base-metal coins. Finds of "hoards" are treated differently to finds of individual coins under the law.

Sap,
Thank you for the analysis.
Especially the details about legal definitions for Great Britain and Europe.

"It's entirely possible that great-grandpa's "hoard" was originally organized by him as a proper "collection", but the logic behind the organization died with him."

Perhaps that is the saddest thing of all.