Could you imagine the coin world without the internet right now?
BigE
Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭
Where do you think it would be? Registrys, CDN, E-Bay?, State Quarters, the advent of Moderns, up to date values etc.........................Do you think it is a different hobby in the last 12 years-----------------------------------------BigE
I'm glad I am a Tree
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Things are better now
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
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Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>I don't have to imagine it, I remember it
Things are better now
So true.
Had to store everything on 5" disk and no images.
I have to give credit to Ebay as well. It sure changed things.
I'd still be getting my SouthPark Coin of the Month shipment.
My posts viewed
since 8/1/6
It kinda fits in here.
<< <i>Wow, have I had a great time here. After almost 40 years of collecting I joined the old board and later came over to the new. I thought I knew as much as anyone about the hobby. Man was I wrong. I felt humbled in a hurry.
The learning never stops. The last 20 or so years have been the biggest challenge to keep up. It has been flat out daunting for some including myself. Not in any order here are some of the things that have amazed me.
When computers started showing up in average folk’s homes I thought, no big deal this is easy. Dial the number, put the handset in the cradle and off you go. Remember basis and line #s? What’s a gig? Then came collecting programs, email, HTML, HTTP, scanners, digital Cameras, posting images, burning cds, EBay, online buying and selling, Paypal and of course this forum.
Books came out right and left on coin types. Breen’s book, (could keep a person busy), Accujoke, David Bowers works and Cherrypicker’s.
The grading services and all the rules. What’s PVC and Pop reports? Grading moderns MS65-70 for all the different types. Never thought many would care that much if a coin was a 66 or a 69. Wrong again.
Fun just doesn’t describe it. It’s been a great ride with something new to learn every day and few regrets. I can’t even imagine what the young folks will see happen in our hobby.
When I start to post a complaint about our board, I think of just how good we really have it. I remember when I had no one to share the hobby with.
Now we all have a great place. This Board.
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Larry
>>
I used to go to coin shows here and there, and the local coin shops had bid boards.
Several coin shops had evening bid auction gatherings on different days of the week too.
That way you could attend more than one in a month.
Then there were the ads in coin magazines too.
Local coin clubs would have gatherings or meetings and collectors could show, share, trade or sell as well.
Cameron Kiefer
at the speed of light and are far moe accessible to everyone.
We'll still be slowed by the speed of surface mails and the physical movement
of coins, but ultimately it's not critical to have the physical coins immediately.
The best things about the net is the decrease in buy/ sell spreads caused by
eBay and the ability to "chat" coins in the rooms and forums. It allows one to
spend more time in coins.
More seriously, I agree with the general thrust that Internet has been very, very good for coins and numismatics. I know that this web site has broadened my interest in several dimensions. I truly enjoy seeing what some major collectors (TDN, for one) have to say and think. It's interesting how some dealers (Mark Feld, and others) are as helpful as can be and others (who shall remain female and nameless...
Mark
But it IS hard to imagine.
Take, for example, my whimsical pursuit of holed coins. Currently I am working on a date set of of holed Bust halves, and I am only two coins away from completing a date set of holed large cents from 1800 up (excluding the 1804). If you include the 1804 and the earlier dates, I lack only seven coins from having a complete date set of holed large cents from 1793 up.
I started collecting holeys in the fall of 2000.
Can you imagine how long assembling those date sets would've taken if I didn't have the Internet and eBay?
Even if I attended shows regularly? I only go to one or maybe two shows a year, but without eBay keyword searches I would imagine the holey date sets I've put together and the holey type set on my vest would've taken at least 20 years to assemble.
As to more mainstream collecting of UNdamaged coins, I built a complete set of three Dansco albums of Irish predecimal coinage- every date and denomination they struck in the predecimal system, from the beginning in 1928 to the end in 1969- and I collected them all in about a year and a half. And I've never set foot on that side of the pond.
It's pretty impressive.
In fact, the very thing that lured me to the Internet was a neighbor who had a scanner. When I saw I could scan pictures of coins and share them with people all over the world, and show off my detecting finds to pals in other states, I was hooked. This was before I'd ever heard of eBay or realized the commercial potential of the 'Net.
<< <i>Numismatics has thrived from the web. The average collector doesn't have daily contact with anyone who doesn't think they're nuts for gushing about a little piece of metal. We're all still nuts, but now we have the comfort of knowing we're not the only ones. >>
That comment sums it up beautifully.
<< <i>The hobby used to move so much more slowly. Now news and ideas move
at the speed of light and are far moe accessible to everyone.
We'll still be slowed by the speed of surface mails and the physical movement
of coins, but ultimately it's not critical to have the physical coins immediately.
The best things about the net is the decrease in buy/ sell spreads caused by
eBay and the ability to "chat" coins in the rooms and forums. It allows one to
spend more time in coins. >>
And those comments come from one of my oldest trading partners from the BC (Before Computer) era. I met Cladking in the Numismatic News classifieds. Our first trade came about in around 1992, when he answered an ad I had posted to swap US war nickels for British large pennies. (I was working on a date set of them then, and it was slow going, living in a blue collar North Carolina town as I did then.)
edit: As for where the coin world would be: I feel confident that the State Quarter program would be as big via magazine, TV, and yes on the street vendors!!!! Remembver the craze of people selling metal, engraved, S/S cards? Every big city I went to I ran into a street vendor selling them. That's where the State Quarter program would be---plus Parade magazine. Also, if it weren't for the internet, a lot, if not most or all (collectors) would be buying like crazy off the Coin Vault TV program. Hell, who would tell you not to!
Jerry
what a 'problem coin' is to the extent that I do now.
Out in the flats of the boondocks, I can't imagine that I'd have had contact with so many opportunities to purchase obscure
pieces of metal with impressions that no one alive today can remember. Without it, I'd have purchased things that I shudder to think
about now, knowing more in the collective than I would have been able to read or find out about in two lifetimes.
More better, I think.
The internet is kind of like a rear window defroster. Once you get one you can't live without it.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
2 years ago - a common CC Morgan in DMPL in a GSA holder went for $100. Today - it's $300+. Why? MORE people WANT them. WHY? Because they can go online and SEE them without having to travel to VEGAS or NY to see them.
It's a NO-brainer.
My Auctions
Looking for PCGS AU58 Washington's, 32-63.
<< <i>The internet is kind of like a rear window defroster. Once you get one you can't live without it. >>
I didn't know it was possible to buy a car without a rear window defroster (at here in the neortheast).
On the subject at hand, it was the Internet that rekindled my childhood collecting interests. One day while browsing Ebay, I came across a listing for - ready for this? - a pound of unsearched wheaties, and I thought it would be neat to fill some holes in my Whitman folder that has remained closed for 30+ years. It's all history from there.
K S
- Many more people now have access to the hobby no matter where they live.
- You can be active with the hobby every day instead of once or twice per year when the local show comes up. A part-time hobby can now be a full time hobby (obsession).
- You can buy with more confidence, having seen an image first.
- You can see and read about coins that you'd never get the chance to.
- You can learn from each other in venues like this
- You have access to more outlets for selling your coins
- On and on and on...
I agree that the internet is one of the primary reasons for the hobby's current popularity and rise in prices.