Which do you spend more time looking at? Your collection or some of the breathtaking coin photos posted here on CT?
My collection. The coins on CT are great and I enjoy them. But, being near the end of my collecting career, making mine more presentable and understandable is most important. I spend a lot of time (too much maybe) preaching to my wife and kids about them.
At one time my wife referred to me as Scrooge, stacking coins up, moving them from one pile to another. Now after the initial set up and organization I spend less time with the collection, only working with it when I get new additions. I now spend a lot of time on CT learning and getting inspired to up my collecting game. The biggest thing that I've learned is "quality not quantity".
I see far more pictures here, including my own, than I see of my actual coins. The coins that I don't want to risk getting stolen live in a bank vault some distance away, so I rarely see them and the others receive visits once in a while, but not really all that often. Sometimes it's a hassle to lay out the collection and go through it, which is one reason that I'm trying to limit the size of the collection going forward. When a collection gets unmanageable some of the pleasure of having it vanishes.
I think you guys touched on my problem. I been accumulating average coins for fifty years and they have become unmanageable. Since being on CT I have come to appreciate finer examples of the coins I love. I have maybe fifteen coins that stay close at hand for me to study and enjoy. But it is almost stressful to open my safe and witness the clutter. So I probably spend more of my coin time on CT. Seems rather counter intuitive but I have learned more here in two years than I did for fifty years on my own.
Here lately Ive been looking at coins ,others have been posting.... that truth be told, arent their coins to post to begin with! GTG's where the coin isn't graded to begin with... So im less likely to reply to a thread that is discussing a coin that I know isn't owned by the op.
I enjoy my own coins, but I love this website and find it the easiest way to get in touch. I especially enjoy conversation with the older and more experienced collectors. There are Instagram coin communities, and probably plenty more but I find this easiest to use, and the best way to get in touch with many people at once. I have also found better knowledge here than anywhere else, on a variety of topics which I would have never touched on otherwise. Before I signed up here, I would come by and read the forum frequently but never felt the need to post as I was more casually collecting then. Now with the abundance of time I have had in the past couple of years I am ready and intrigued into taking the next step.
I have some nice gold coming back to me eventually. The $2.50 Indian and Liberty are at NGC, and the Type 1 Liberty $20 and type 3 $1 are headed to PCGS. Never did a lot with gold until recently, but I could stare at them all day!
To answer your question... I find myself staring at my pictures obsessively rather than the coin themselves. As I get older, and my eyesight declines, my eye's cannot appreciate the coins as much as giant, blown-up pics of them.
Mine. For years I kept my collection locked up in a large floor safe and hardly ever opened it to look at my coins. Now, living in the woods alone, I keep my entire collection spread out close to me and look at it all of the time. I've never sold a coin or currency, so I enjoy remembering when and how I got a particular item in my collection. Testing my mental capabilities daily. LOL
I agree. Folks should come out and say they don't own the coin. I spend more time looking at what others post. Wish I was retired. Have never imaged most of my collection.
