"Beginners' Advice"

We frequently get beginners asking for advice on these forums. A beginner is not necessarily one who is new to numismatics but, rather, one new to the specific area. I, for example, have been collecting coins for many years but am a complete neophyte when it comes to Ancient Coins: I currently own none.

I would like to propose a series of thread with the subject line "BEGINNERS' ADVICE: xxxxxx", where xxxxxx is a specific topic. Each thread would be an appropriate forum and anyone who feels qualified should contribute. Anyone should be able to start a thread. This would make it easy to search on the topic "beginners' advice" and for people to refer new members directly to the relevant discussion.

I do not consider myself and expert in any area and would not presume to make any definitive statements. But there are a few topics I would feel confident to contribute to. I would hope that others may feel the same way. Some potential thread ideas are:

"BEGINNERS' ADVICE: How to recognize a proof"
"BEGINNERS' ADVICE: Where to start with ancients"
"BEGINNERS' ADVICE: What is a mint error?"
"BEGINNERS' ADVICE: The basics of grading"
"BEGINNERS' ADVICE: Submitting coins for grading"

These are merely ideas, and I would hope that members can come up with many more. What do you think? Is this a worthwhile educational goal for CT?

 

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Strike "beginners' advice: submitting coins for grading. They've no business doing so until they've reached an more advanced level.

 

"BEGINNERS' ADVICE:
Throw away how to retire or make millions on pocket change or what ever the book is"

 

Nonsense! I have never submitted a coin for grading. One reason I haven't is because I don't know the ins and outs of it. I would love to receive some advice from people here as to how to go about doing it. I guess I would not be receiving it from you.

 

That seems more like an opinion that a discussion topic. A more appropriate topic would be "BEGINNERS' ADVICE: it is possible to find errors in pocket change"

 

Have you ever ventured over to the NGC Collectors Society? About 15+ years ago, the forum, What You Need To Know (WYNTK), was started there. You might get some good ideas from their listings.

Chris

 

The Art and Science of Grading Coins.

I'm not biased or anything, but it should be required reading for every poster.

 

Some cointalk members translated some of these threads from the NGC forum to Cointalk. Not gonna name any names or anything...

 

.....and Jason happens to be one of the contributors to WYNTK.

FWIW, I'd like to make it understood that I'm not in favor of anyone plagiarizing the work of another. I just thought that some of you might get some ideas for topics from the NGC list.

Chris

 

Haha, yeah, that's what I meant Chris. When I posted many of my WYNTK threads on NGC, I posted them on Cointalk at the same time.

 

So, Chris has mentioned a series of threads, and I have alluded to their presence on CoinTalk. I will give you the link for "What You Need to Know About Grading"

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/what-you-need-to-know-about-grading.151742/

This thread refers to a number of other threads, each describing a facet of the grading process. I think it is essential for collectors to understand the basics of grading, and the elements it considers, before they can be successful collectors. I expanded these threads into a book-length explanation of the grading process.

edited

 

Instead of these diversions I would appreciate comments about whether you feel that it would be helpful to produce these threads for beginners in the various topics, with a specific searchable title.

 

The real problem is that beginners don't know what to search for.

If they post a question we can tell them, but they don't know what they don't know until we tell them what they should know.

 

I'm sorry for offering this suggestion. Should Jason @physics-fan3.14 and I delete our posts?

Chris

 

No. But it does help to answer the question posed in the thread.

 

Zackly! How many times have newcomers posted a coin missing some letter or number, but they don't know that it is the result of a grease-filled die. What about a railroad rim or a broadstrike or a misaligned die or an off-center strike? Most newcomers don't even know that these terms exist.

Chris

 

No! Go ahead and do your thing. I'll just keep quiet and listen.

Chris

 

Nah.

I think I just sorta misinterpreted his question.

I think rather than asking "what resources can we offer to beginners?" he was actually asking "is there any way we can mark threads as being useful to beginners?"

I think he's asking, is it possible to make threads that will show up in a general search that beginners can easily find?

My answer to that question is: if we know their question, and if we have some handy resources, we can guide them to the answer rather than leaving them to their own devices. A beginner might not actually know what they are asking until we help them (and they certainly won't know our lingo)

 

That's why WYNTK was so helpful on CS. Newcomers could go there and scroll through the subjects to see if one applied to their search. We don't have anything like that, here.

Chris

 

I know the lingo. I don't know some of the pitfalls of submitting to 3rd parties. I know enough about coins to appreciate posts made about ancients, but I have no idea where to start.

I am stating these as examples. I am not saying this thread is about me: it is not. I am proposing a simple way to direct beginners on specific topics to threads which they can read and them come back and ask questions.

Clearly it is a terrible idea and I will drop it.