Is The Joy Of Numismatics Over?

I really enjoy going through my accumulated coins, taking them out, laying them on a tray, looking at them. It's something I haven't done nearly enough of lately.

As a collector of mostly world type coins, the uncritical sort of fellow who buys things because they look pretty or have an interesting story behind them, I guess I'm less vulnerable to the ennui that affects the date-and-mint US collector who's always searching for that one "key" in a micrometrically better state of preservation, who sees the price going up and up as pieces go into slabs, and get broken out of slabs and sent for re-slabbing at a higher grade as the TPGs compete with each other, reminiscent of the way that ratings agencies rushed to give AAA+ to mortgage-backed securities in 2007. (Most people don't even seem to know about the origin of the 70-point scale, which is not correctly used to assign grades of preservation to modern US coins, much less any other kind.)

I mean, the other day I paid $11 for a Slovakia 50 korun 1944. It's a coin with an interesting history — ugly, but interesting! And the excellent workmanship one expects from the Kremnica mint. (I must visit there someday.) It had a small green spot on the obverse which came off with the application of a Q-tip dipped in distilled water. It made me happier than any Jefferson nickel I could buy for that price would! A few weeks ago, a friend-of-a-friend gave me a handful of "old foreign money" she had rattling around. Nothing valuable by anybody's standards, but the surprisingly large octagonal Malta 25¢ piece from the 1970s is a fascinating contrast with the thick slug of the 2003 Swedish 10 Kr.

The deluge of modern collector-bait, and the low standards of design and workmanship of so many modern issues, are certainly depressing. When I'm in Europe, I find that I usually spend the commemorative €2 coins. It's the regular issue pieces from the smaller countries that I pick out to save. Some of them are beautiful as well as novel.

Mind you, the quarter folder isn't the only thing that keeps me going. I'm going on 50 years of collecting and am still working on several other folders, namely Lincolns, Jeffersons, Roosevelts and recent Washingtons. Living in MA, it's mostly modern "D" dates I'm missing. Every time I think I'm going to give up hope, a missing "D" does pop up. That's the fun of it!

Don't think that is an ugly coin.
However, the Franklin half.... well....

Naw, the reverse design is beautiful if simple (it really shows up well on the lower denominations), the obverse is undistinguished, the overall coin is excellent as one would expect from the Kremnica mint. It's the history of it, the Nazi puppet state of Slovakia (with a defrocked priest as figurehead), that's ugly. Controversy repeatedly arose in the US over anti-communists and Slovakian nationalists trying to praise the "independent Slovakia" of 1939—45.

Expanding my world coin collection is forever on my list. I feel it will be the last thing remaining after everything else has been crossed off.

Outstanding!

The real countries do it worse. France has been dumping torrents of commemoratives. Of whatever anywhere.

There is refuge in historical coins.

While appraising a collection recently (estate seller request) I found several counterfeits. How ? Weight, composition test and a good look with the loop ... they were fake Morgans that the owner had put into 2x2 and labeled them thinking they were authentic.

My emotional reaction was "too bad / so sad" ... my coin guy reaction was "HA, gotcha" ... pleased to get them out of the market.