Coin Collecting BEFORE internet...

Almost 4.66 billion people were active internet users as of October 2020, encompassing 59 percent of the global population. In the developed world, almost 88 % of the population are internet users. You will probably agree with me if I tell you that our favourite hobby changed a lot with the apparition of internet. Some important dates in internet's history:

1989: AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser.
1994: Yahoo! web directory.
1995: Amazon online retailer.
1995: ebay online auction and shopping.
1996: Hotmail free web-based e-mail.
1997: Google search.
1998: PayPal Internet payment system.
2001: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
2002: CoinTalk creation.
2004: Facebook social networking site.
2005: Youtube video sharing.

Evolution before internet


1984: was it a Commodore 64 ?



1989: for our youngest members, if you don't know what a FAX is, better ask your father...
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Publicity



Can you find the difference between those 2 adds (1996 VS 1997) ?
Hint: look at the end...
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Two dealers AVANT-GARDIST... with their websites.
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Auctions

When was the first time coins were sold at an auction ? I can't tell you. But we know that the first auction solely devoted to coins took place in 1598, with printed catalogues appearing in the 17th century (the first English one dates to 1710). Catalogues illustrated with photographs began to become common in the late 1800s. Thirty years ago, there were 3 basic types of coin auction: the public auction, the mail bid sale and the buy or bid sale.

Public auction: the most common and used for centuries. They take place in public, are almost always accompanied by printed catalogues. The auctioneer usually opens the bidding of each lots with a specific percentage of the presale estimate. It can become very interesting when the rivalry between two bidders raise the prices to an excessive degree...

Mail bid sale were entirely confidential. The firm holding it produces a catalogue bearings a specific date and time of sale, but bids can only be made by post or by telephone. When the closing day and hour arrives, the auctioneer determines the winning bid foreach lot. Let's just say you really had to trust the individuals or the firms who were holding the auctions...

Buy or bid sale: these were basically bargainable fixed price list. Every coin had an estimate, or list price, which you can pay, and receive the coin immediately, or you can make a lower offer and, if it's acceptable, receive your win after the sale closing's date. Thus, buy or bid allowed buyers to choose between instant gratification and the thrill of having a counter offer accepted !

Like many of the members here on Cointalk, I wasn't collecting ancient coins before the internet era; but I know some of you were. So it would be very interesting if our senior members could share their experiences or even coins acquired before the internet. Please tell us your stories !

 

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I do not believe in the Internet, it is not real.

I have never used it. It must be a hoax.

I deliver all my posts by Horse and Buggy, and sometimes Carrier Pigeon (faster service)

I see that my CT posts ALWAYS get there in time:

 

Interesting!
Thank goodness for the internet, or else I probably would have checked out of this hobby long ago. All of my coin collecting "friends" are my internet friends, primarily from this site.

I do remember dialup internet, I will never forget AOL IM, and the iconic "you got mail"

I'm 18, but wish I was more like 48. The internet has helped our hobby. But society? debatable

 

Not sure I am a senior member but I recall the days before the Internet where I visited a local coin shop where the proprietor kept a display case of ancients. I started collecting at 10 years old. By the time I was 14 I was receiving both fixed price lists and auctions-by-mail from notables like Frank L. Kovacs, who was my mentor in collecting at the time. During the early Internet boom (1995-2000) I was in my mid to late twenties but I had stopped collecting by that time. Too busy with grad school and work to collect. Plus, I got married and had kids so that cut even further into my time. I re-started collecting in 2015 and by then the Internet had completely revolutionized how ancient coins were sold and the platforms could be considered very robust and mature, still kind of a hoax, though .

 

*Very* interesting idea for a thread.

I'll say for myself, I really don't remember collecting before the internet.

I was born in 1985. I started collecting when I was given a Redbook for Christmas '97, which really started me collecting. I remember my first Ebay purchases were in 1998. These were the very first coins I ever bought - prior to that I filled blue albums from circulation, and whatever people gave me. I started joining coin forums around 2001. So for me, the internet has pretty much always been there.

 

I dearly remember back in 1997 (?) using a Sun ultrasparc running Solaris to order a catalogue from HJB which was then surprisingly posted to me (even for free!).

 

Back in the 1980's when I started collecting, there was a brick and mortar store in my city that sold stamps, coins -- both ancient and modern -- and antiquities. I'd visit there once a month or so and look around (inventory didn't change all that quickly) and buy a coin every once in a while. Here are three early purchases from that store:







There were coin shows, the larger of which were attended by Nick of Pegasi, Stephen Huston, Tom Cederlind, William Rosenblum, Jonathan Kern, Ed Waddell and others. I'd buy coins there and get put on their mailing lists.

Here's one I bought from Pegasi at a show:



After subscribing to the Celator in the 1990's I ordered coins from printed lists in the advertisements and I got on several mailing lists. Catalogs would come every week or two. Auction catalogs were, of course, illlustrated. I bought this at Huston's mailbid sale from an illustrated catalog:



Printed price lists simply said stuff like this:

59. MOESIA INFERIOR, Marcianopolis, Elagabalus and Julia Maesa, AE 28, Dikaiosyne, AMNG 962 F/F+ ... $25.

And you'd buy it, sight unseen.

 

I started collecting in the 60's when the Internet Dial-Up Handshake was REALLY a physical handshake between two people when we agreed on a price.




I also remember embracing technology being one of 5 people within a $Billion Dollar company when we STARTED with Email... we were testing out this concept to see if it was worth having! I stated on my first day using it: "Roll this out IMMEDIATELY!" Dumped a crap-load of paper afterwards!

 

Your first coin... the Tiberius...I think I saw it before...8769 times...but I can't remember where ???

 

I remember waiting for weeks to hear if my mail bids were successful or not. In some cases auction houses only notified you if you were a winner. Bidding was a guessing game since there were no published current high bids. Although sometimes you could telephone the seller to see what the current high bid was, this was not always feasible for overseas auctions. The photography in the catalogs was often not very good and of course there was no enlargement/zoom available. At the time, we were highly dependent on the integrity of the cataloger for accurate descriptions, but sometimes what the seller might view as trivial issue would be fatal to the buyer.

The good things about pre-internet numismatics:
1. There was a coin store in just about every town.
2. There were no buyers fees at auctions
3. Coin shows were the best opportunities to find that special coin.
4. Many close one-on-one interpersonal relationships prevailed over time with the help of the postal service (Letters and photos).
5. There were no slabs

 

All I remember about early internet days, was bringing up the subject at a specific coin shop and watching all hell break lose!

 

I didn't get the Internet at home until 1997, and at work until 1999 (together with email). I started buying British coins and medals on Ebay in 1999, and have a recollection that for some period of time Sotheby's held online auctions through Amazon. Before then, I bought antiquities only in stores (Harmer Rooke, Royal Athena, Coincraft in London), and coins in stores and at coin shows in New York, at Seaby's and other coin stores when I was in London, and occasionally in mail order auctions & retail sales held by firms like Seaby, Spink, Bonham's, and Baldwin's.

I see that Sadigh was already around in 1989. Hoodwinking people for 30 years. I'm surprised that the Celator didn't know about his reputation, even back then.

 

I got my first computer in 1995. It was a Micron Pentium 133. Boy, was it fast!

I signed up for AOL that year, too........"dung....dung....zzhh!"

I lived in Cape Coral at the time and the server that AOL "borrowed" was on Ft. Myers Beach. I was always getting bumped off. It must have been because of the sand fleas.

 

First difference that I noticed was that Tammy Dolphin got fired! Damn internet!

 

I could imagine that pre internet numismatics would have a lot more differences in prices on coins, not just because of inflation and stuff but because I don't think it would be as easy to just find a price of a coin. No eBay sold listings, no online forums, just going to coin shops and coin shows and trying to complete your sets lol.

 

For US coins there were plenty of annual price catalogs published. Even for world coins, there were giant catalogs published regularly by Krause (if I remember the publisher's name correctly), plus the Seaby (later Spink) annual catalog for British coins. For ancient coins, there wasn't much except Sear, and RSC.

 

Actually we got email at work in 1992 - my first year working at a professional job, though it was a proprietary system called SYSM used only by employees and managers to communicate, fully green screen and run on an AS/400 backbone. It could not be used to contact folks outside the company. That changed in 1994 when I got my first email address, sfo1mxa@ups.com, so finally I could communicate with clients. I remember getting mindspring dial-up in 1995 and dialing in on various phone numbers to get a connection, which sounded like a fax machine connection. I never had Aol, though. When my Dad passed away and I was helping to sort through family affairs in 2019 I found that Aol, despite having offered free email for years through web-based access, was still charging him $22.95 per month for two long-defunct dial-up accounts, which I consider disgraceful.

 

You found a bricks and mortar dealer you grew to really trust

Over the years they'd sell you a bunch of moderate quality coins, not too cheap. Then in time they'd push you towards something expensive retail or at auction

Invariably good buys. Many of my best coins today, and best value, were bought through old fashioned retail dealers who were also your agent at auction

I recommend collectors still do this. Martina Dieterle, Ed Waddell, Shanna Schmidt and others. Their wise added value advice is worth far more than the half a bid increment it costs

 

Bite your tongue!

 

With work I was using email as early as 1990-91. Was using the internet by 1995, got it at home via dialup the following year. I remember using news groups, and usenet etc. Of course I collected coins before the internet, but my interests expanded dramatically after using the internet.