The Hunt And Burn Out

Thanks for the replies. I think I know exactly what Bryan1315 is saying about VAMS. I got burned out on Lincoln BIEs for the same reason. After about 500 of them you pretty much have seen all the combinations.

I think these 7070 albums are on their way to becoming big winners with coin collectors! And with them maybe the return of authentication certificates isn't so far-fetched anymore.

I guess I avoid burnout by switching my focus between my hobbies. Right now it's hockey season, so that's where most of my time, money, and energy are going. I also have my garden to keep me busy, and any gardener knows that can be a full time job!

Rachel

On the opposite end of the scale from Bryan's problem, the endless progression of similar coins is exactly what appeals to me most about my current specialization. That sort of mind-numbing parade of identical pieces, requiring the viewer to find the one needle in the haystack, appeals to me. Then again, I never claimed to be particularly normal.

I stave off burnout by keeping a whole lot of unrelated balls in the air at once. At any given time, I've 10 browser tabs open covering 4 or 5 totally unrelated subjects from computers to coins to biking to just plain "I wanna read about this thing now," with a liberal sprinkling of Google Video, Flurl and YouTube for comic relief.

For those rare occasions when I'm awake, not on the clock and not at the keyboard, I generally have two or three books in progress, ranging from Science Fiction to detective mysteries to Rolling Stone.

Gene, if you hang it up after the State Quarters you might not have any reason to come in here and that just won't do my friend. What about those 7070 albums? Seems like everyone likes them.

I think my temporary burnout came from trying to do "too much too soon". Come March of next year, I'll have two years under my coin collecting belt, and I've purchased nearly a thousand coins in that time. At first, I couldn't get enough - just buy, buy, buy with little knowledge of what I was buying.
Then I decided to buy the Dansco Albums to store my collection in. A new way of collecting for me in that I used the Dansco as a guide - if it has a hole, get the coin for it, and I'm sure I don't need to expound on the thrill of putting that last coin in a full album. But, it seems that thrill is short lived too, and, after the thrill, comes a little let down - it's no longer a challenge because you've completed it, so it's on to something else, but it seemed to become redundant after awhile.
Bought some books on coin collecting, and read articles on the internet - that's an ongoing thing.
I read about the Dansco 7070 here in the forum, and thought it might be a new challenge, so that's the direction I'm going in. That doesn't mean I intend to put the rest of my collection aside, and just concentrate on this one album. I'll still be working on my other albums, but this one has given me a new direction - a new challenge.
Although I have several of the coins for this one, I'm starting to look at, and buy particular coins to fill the holes in it. As I said, it's something new I've been needing.
I do have other hobbies - the foremost of which is leathercraft. Started as a hobby, turned into a profitable business, and now, after more than 40 years, I'm back to the hobby stage again.
I think, in my situation, it's a case of doing something because you want to versus doing it because you feel you have to.
Thanks for letting me ramble - getting older, and living alone does seem to have it's drawbacks, and rambling, when given the opportunity, seems to be one of them. :)

Ralph

I have 2 young sons, a new house with an acre of yard and 2 acres of forest, a job that can eat up 60 hours a week and addiction to fishing that usurps my interest in numismatics. I don't see burnout as a potential problem until retirement (at least 30 years from now).

90% of my collecting has been Morgan dollars. I went from all years to certain years 1890-1895 then to just "O" mint Morgans. I was starting to get a little burnout as theres thousands of coins out there to consider.
I started to look at other coins and the hard to find years and that has givin me a whole new interest in coins.Plus I have a lot of other interests,fishing,snow shoeing,shooting,metal detecting and just wandering these MT mountains. Actually I have more interest than I can do in the time I have left.

I have found that collecting a variety of coins helps stop the dreaded burnout. When I first started I only grabbed American coins but now I am after Canadian,Aussie and any large silver coins I can find so I never get bored