Official hello to Barber collectors

I would like to apologize for recently jumping in on the Barber threads, without introducing myself. My name is Don and I officially joined this forum last year but never posted much, just lurking trying to get educated on general coin issues. I am definitely a collector, not investor. I spent last year on CoinPeople as dsoles, most of the time in their wonderful political Debates section and occasionally in the US coin forum, asking/learning more than anything. Great site, Stujoe, if you are reading. We moved our residence in March, and I stopped posting there not too long thereafter. I started back into coin collecting about 3 years ago, was a childhood Lincoln cent collector from the 70s, and never finished my Whitmans.

Anyways, I started a G/aG Barber quarter set about 2 years ago in attempt to get sets of all the 20th century or thereabouts US coins in low grade, nothing fancy, just decent well worn coins at the quarterly club shows (this has since morphed into a US Type set project in VF-XF). Within a short time, I had almost finished the quarters (minus the big 3), when a local dealer known as a Barber expert of sorts, was selling off a bunch of G Halves at way low prices. About every other one had this dark peripheral tone rim around the stars, I had to have them, cannot explain it. After about 6 months, VG wasn't too much more $ and extra detail was pleasing, so I started "upgrading" (didn't know that was what is called at the time). The other US coin issues were being neglected, especially the Lincolns, and the kids started noting I was becoming a 'specialist.' I found it very difficult to finish the set in VG-- to find nice original coins, or I was getting way too picky. The local shows and coin shop were tapped dry. I became impatient I had to 'resort' to Ebay, and there some VG-Fs were showing up to fill the holes--then the G6s started to look, well, ...so you know where this going by now? ..........yep, .....tchild2 's auctions.... and another addict was officially born.

I would like to thank Tyler for his patience in answering recent questions and extra friendliness. I didn't get hooked reading magazine articles, of self fulfilling prophecies about undervalued coins, etc or posts here about Barbers. I would like to think it was the "if there's one coin I KNOW I'll never collect, it's them ugly Barbers" statement I made when getting back into collecting that doomed me.

Thanks to many others, I have learned a great deal from reading your posts and visiting your websites in recent weeks re: your Barber collections.

My other hobby is speckled trout fishing (salt-water) here on the east coast, and the similarities to mid grade Barber collecting are frightening: Beautiful to look at, Wondeful to 'own' and Appreciation by fellow chasers, are just starters. Whenever a new trout fisherman shows up near our 'secret' holes, it takes a lot patience and restraint to remember we were all once were newbies-- even if it was our parents teaching us and we 'inherited' such enchanting hobbies as angling and numismatics from the womb.

For every coin I have sniped, I 've lost at least 3 more, so don't get mad at me .. and I've paid way mroe than I ever thought for these derned things. They just have to STAY POPULAR forever now.

Don S


PS: I know there is no hyphen in salt-water, but the filter keeps reading T-W-A-T in salt-water as a forbidden word and won't let me post