An ANA giant has left us. R.I.P Ed Rochette. http://www.numismaticnews.net/buzz/unforgettable-ed-rochette-died
A well known name in numismatics, for sure. Hats off. The older generation from the "golden era of numismatics" gradually leaves us. Time for the younger ones to pick up the torch, I suppose. Such is the way of things. (At age 52, with 41 of those years spent in the hobby, I'm not quite sure where I stand. Am I the part of the "Old School" now? In many ways, yes. Others, no. I'm old enough to remember things like Brown & Dunn grading standards, for example, but not so old that I ever spent a silver coin or regularly saw them in circulation.)
Now you're making me feel VERY old. I do remember spending silver coins, because I remember when that's all there was above 5 cents. And you know what? It doesn't feel like that long ago. I am bemused it took two weeks for this news to make CoinTalk. It almost seems longer ago that I heard Ed had died, than it feels that we used silver coins.
Yeah, I guess I am almost exactly like you. While I don't remember spending silver coins, I remember collecting them rarely from circulation along with war nickels and occasional buffalos and IHCs. The old guard to me are men like David Bowers and Ed Rochette, along with David Sear for ancients. Nowadays I hear others talk about "old guard" numismatists and I remember buying from them when they set up their first tables and learned as much from their clients as clients learned from them. Time moves on, huh?
If anyone who is too young to feel the "time acceleration" we old guys talk about, but wants a little flavor of what it feels like, listen to the first few minutes of comedian Lewis Black's "The Carnegie Hall Performance". It's a Comedy Central record, copyright 2006. Most of you young guys will know how to find it online, I guess.
Yeah, I thought Dwarfism Awareness Month should be February too, for all the insensitive humor that almost writes itself, but they wanted October, so I wrote the bill up that way.
February would be perfect for Dwarf Awareness Month. Acronym: DAM, as in, "DAM you're a little fella, ain't ya!"
