coppercoins
07-22-2013, 10:20 AM
This post is in response to someone saying that I am rather 'short' in some of my responses, and my retort was that I have a few very passionate areas that - when crossed - do tend to make me a rather abrasive responder.
Feel free to chime in!
I do have a few points of passion that I stand by and will stand by to my grave because they are important to a thorough understanding of coin collecting (especially collecting valuable die varieties and errors) as a whole. When I am challenged on these points, I become defensive and abrupt because I do understand them, believe they don't take a lot of effort to understand, and believe those who have had time to absorb the hobby and STILL don't understand are hard-headed and don't want to really understand. Those Points:
1. Die varieties, varieties, and errors are three entirely different things collected by entirely different subsets of collectors and specialists. Calling one the other isn't okay, the terms are NOT interchangeable, and anyone who publishes that it is okay to mix them is irresponsible.
2. Dealers as a whole across the country are woefully undereducated in die varieties, varieties, and errors, and people who come here and post the blather their dealer told them makes this point painfully obvious. Dealers need to learn the coins or be prepared to tell customers that they don't know what they are doing when it comes to the error/variety market. This entire statement does excuse the three percent of dealers who DO care and DO learn.
3. There is no such thing as an "opinion" when it comes to what we are doing. Die variety and error identification is a very specific science, and there is no room for opinion in science. It either definitely is, or definitely is NOT...no middle ground. Offer facts or specifically state that you are guessing when you are indeed guessing, but don't make the original poster guess which you are doing.
4. Touching a bit on point #3, a "forum common courtesy" public announcement: Unnecessary are the people who come into a thread and offer their often-incorrect "opinions" after someone has already posted the correct answer to the OPs question. Not only is it showing how many times someone can be incorrect over and over, but it devalues the facts stated by the seasoned collector especially to a non-collector or beginner OP. They don't know who to believe, and offering guesses and opinions on top of a correct answer is misleading. Basically - if someone has already given the correct answer - back them up with additional posts, but don't offer additional unclear, incorrect, and misleading 'information' that steer the OP away from the correct response already given.
5. Die cracks, die chips, and machine doubling may be of interest to a number of more novice collectors, but they are not covered under the blanket of items that are "generally" purchased at a premium by those who know the market because they understand WHY die varieties and certain errors have value and these don't. Collecting them is up to the collector, but dying with an unexplained collection full of machine doubling is irresponsible. Do something about it BEFORE you die if you're going to collect them. You'll be doing your heirs a BIG favor if they know ahead of time that they should just take your collection to the bank instead of wasting time and money trying to get a serious offer for your "collection".
Those, folks, are my main "pet peeves" in collecting and in numismatic specialty forums as a whole.
Feel free to chime in!
I do have a few points of passion that I stand by and will stand by to my grave because they are important to a thorough understanding of coin collecting (especially collecting valuable die varieties and errors) as a whole. When I am challenged on these points, I become defensive and abrupt because I do understand them, believe they don't take a lot of effort to understand, and believe those who have had time to absorb the hobby and STILL don't understand are hard-headed and don't want to really understand. Those Points:
1. Die varieties, varieties, and errors are three entirely different things collected by entirely different subsets of collectors and specialists. Calling one the other isn't okay, the terms are NOT interchangeable, and anyone who publishes that it is okay to mix them is irresponsible.
2. Dealers as a whole across the country are woefully undereducated in die varieties, varieties, and errors, and people who come here and post the blather their dealer told them makes this point painfully obvious. Dealers need to learn the coins or be prepared to tell customers that they don't know what they are doing when it comes to the error/variety market. This entire statement does excuse the three percent of dealers who DO care and DO learn.
3. There is no such thing as an "opinion" when it comes to what we are doing. Die variety and error identification is a very specific science, and there is no room for opinion in science. It either definitely is, or definitely is NOT...no middle ground. Offer facts or specifically state that you are guessing when you are indeed guessing, but don't make the original poster guess which you are doing.
4. Touching a bit on point #3, a "forum common courtesy" public announcement: Unnecessary are the people who come into a thread and offer their often-incorrect "opinions" after someone has already posted the correct answer to the OPs question. Not only is it showing how many times someone can be incorrect over and over, but it devalues the facts stated by the seasoned collector especially to a non-collector or beginner OP. They don't know who to believe, and offering guesses and opinions on top of a correct answer is misleading. Basically - if someone has already given the correct answer - back them up with additional posts, but don't offer additional unclear, incorrect, and misleading 'information' that steer the OP away from the correct response already given.
5. Die cracks, die chips, and machine doubling may be of interest to a number of more novice collectors, but they are not covered under the blanket of items that are "generally" purchased at a premium by those who know the market because they understand WHY die varieties and certain errors have value and these don't. Collecting them is up to the collector, but dying with an unexplained collection full of machine doubling is irresponsible. Do something about it BEFORE you die if you're going to collect them. You'll be doing your heirs a BIG favor if they know ahead of time that they should just take your collection to the bank instead of wasting time and money trying to get a serious offer for your "collection".
Those, folks, are my main "pet peeves" in collecting and in numismatic specialty forums as a whole.