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Posted 09/18/2020 08:50 am
Princetane, my thanks for the vocabulary expansion!
My wife's not too thrilled, however, by what I've been singing all morning:
"This is the dawning of the Age of Precariats..."
But to illustrate your point, I acquired my first Gothic Crown, a lovely toner, in 1960 in a trade with a schoolmate whose father was a mid-level diplomat from Western Europe. In return, my pal got ten gorgeous Morgan dollars that I'd been cherry-picking for several years from rolls obtained over the counter at local small-town Long Island (NY) banks.
Twenty years later, I'd added a Ph.D., moved 3,000 miles west, taken on a wife and two kids, and in a fast-moving moment of opportunity the Gothic Crown had to be converted into part of a down payment on a monster house mortgage. In retrospect, I made a choice to "need" the money, so took a beating in seller's fees on the Goth and my other British World rarities.
Collecting coins, I've learned, is often a matter of resilience.
"If everything seems to be under control, you're just not going fast enough."
--- Mario Andretti
