Coin Collecting BEFORE internet...

You and I don't always agree, but I gotta say, you're 'dead on' with that observation.....

 

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Thank you.

 

99% of the coins in my collection are because of the internet, so without those online vendors I'd have one or two coins from the shows & shops, and no ancients at all given how they're exorbitantly overpriced in LCS. On the other hand I would've saved up 1000s of dollars in the last couple of years!

 

I basically relied on my local coin store, coin shows, mail price lists and shows.

I must say life was slower then, no real instant gratification that we have these days. On the other hand, we did not have the means to access information with such ease and speed as is afforded to collectors today.

Also, I used to phone dealers to discuss individual coins. No instant email messages back then, in olden times. It did take a while for the messages to go over the string connecting the two coffee cans.....

 

I moved into Edmonton when I was 4 years old In 1972 I started collecting ancient coins when I found a denarius of Geta at a local shop. paid $10 for it
long since gone. What I discovered very quickly was that there were very few ancient coins in this city and the shows were not much better. One time my friend beat me to the only ancient coin at one of the shows ( a denarius of Nerva) and that was it. I learned to very quickly develop sources outside my city to get anything. One time I took a trip to Calgary some 300 kilometers to the south because I heard they had a dealer that had some ancient coins. He did I blew every cent I had and spent the night sleeping in a parking garage. Another source of coins was from California where I dealt with the infamous Bruce McNall (this was before he founded NFA.) He would send me little packets of coins usually denarii and I would purchase them. These coins mostly in the F to VF range are gone. Back in those days I could order a group of coins on a Monday and the coins would arrive Registered Mail on a Friday. That was back in the day when the postal system actually worked.
I was not making a lot of money, mostly working minimum wage jobs until August of 1980 when I became a post man. By then ancient coins were a bit more common locally, but for something specific I would look through various coin magazines and newspapers looking for dealers specializing in ancient coins. It was always a treat to get one of these fixed price lists. When I was on the bus heading home I would look at all the coins offered and circle those that I was interested in, and then try to contact the vendor to see if anything was still there. (usually they weren't) So then I would go through the list trying to find something I could use all the while thinking... When was the last time I bought something from this guy? If I don't will he stop sending me his lists. Also long distance calls were something like a $1 a minute so there was an incentive to try to buy ...something.... anything. This proved again to be rather hit or miss. Though I did get this guy
Pertinax Ar Denarius Rome 193 AD Obv head right laureate Rv Emperor togate standing left sacrificing over altar. 3.32 grms 18 mm Photo by W. Hansen
Along with FPLs I had bought some coins from auctions. In those days there were at least to my knowledge no phone bids so what I would have to do was phone in my bids sometimes a few hours before the auction ( as that would be when I got the auction in the mail) . I usually bid estimate and often I would employ the "shotgun" approach which would mean I would do a lot of "either or" bids. Back in those days no one cared about pedigree so most coins did not have them. In 1988 I was able to attend my first major US coin show at Long Beach California. It was so cool to be able to actually look at great numbers of coins at one time. In 1989 and in 1991 I managed to go to Europe and took in some regional shows but was able to visit some of the major coin shops in London, Munich and in Rome. Finally probably about the same time as this happened a dealer in Calgary began to offer a lot of ancient coins. So between him and the contacts I made in Europe I spent most of the 90's in abject poverty. During this period I would consider myself fortunate to purchase something like 30 to 40 coins a year.
That changed with the internet with early eBay. (which I think I became aware of sometime around 1997 and I got my first internet capable computer in 1999 ) When the on line dealers came in the price of most common ancient coins simply plummeted. The internet was so novel. I could actually buy something if I was the first to see it. So for a while I was averaging over 100 coins a year.
So in retrospect do I miss the "olden days" Not really. I wish I bought a little smarter back then but hindsight always has 20-20.

 

My "internet" growing up was our 1937 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the "Information Please" almanac I got each year for Christmas.

 

The World Almanac my father bought me annually was superior! I spent a great many hours poring over it every year.

 

I've worked in the I.T. industry for nearly 30 years - for my current company 24 years. My first computer (as a 13 year old) was a Commodore VIC-20 back in 1982... used to load programs and games using a cassette tape.
I actually sold my coveted Compaq 486 "desktop" computer in 1994 in order to fund the purchase of my wife's engagement ring. We've been married 26 years - so as painful as that was at the time (haha) it was definitely the right decision.
I've only been collecting coins for about 3 years - so can't add to the discussion around coin collecting back them but I can certainly understand how it must have been.. I purchased that Compaq 486 via catalogue. Would have been great if I purchased some I.T. stock back then, eh?? The wife should have picked someone smarter...

 

At one time I was worried that slabs would be become common for ancient coins. Thank God it never happened and never will happen. Every now and then I buy an ancient coin in a slab - my way is to use a large wrench, large pliers, close my eyes tight and twist, sort of until it cracks. Then work it until I can free the coin - what a pain. I wish there was a better way

 

My first computer was a Texas Instruments 99-4a. When TI dropped out of the computer business they gave free to the world their implementation of the Forth language so my then elementary school daughter and I learned Forth enough to write some games like 'Turtle' which was a frogger rip off and 'Mousekins' which was an adventure where mice had babies and died. Shortly after we got a 286 for which there was no free Forth but we enjoyed online 'Stumpers' where librarians like my wife posted questions they had been asked at work but could not find. Usually what one person had been asked had come up somewhere else before. That was when I got my first e-mail and chose dougsmit for my name because you could only have eight letters at that time. In February 1997, I posted the first of my web pages in free space from Geocities. Back then there was not much on the Internet about ancient coins. We waited for the arrival of paper catalogs in the mail and called 'long distance' (expensive) to reserve things we wanted. Coins shows were highlights of the year and usually happened near me about every month. Over half of my coins came from that era. I never warmed up completely to buying coins online. I doubt my hobby will survive Covid since so many 'show only' dealers are retired now. I wish I still had the TI computer so I could play those games.

 

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I have the Sept 1975 issue #1 of BYTE- small system journal . One article is ":Cassette interface your key to inexpensive bulk memory" as well as January 1977 1st issue of Kilobaud- The Computer Hobbyist Magazine, an article "Welcome to Assembly Language Processing" MY Gaud !!! could I really do that back then, Its long faded and I do not miss it at all! Jim

 

I wasn't collecting pre-internet, but a few years ago, I was fortunate enough to take over from @Valentinian some stacks of folders containing hundreds of paper clippings related to ancient coin collecting that he had saved from the 70s to 90s. For me many of them are a fascinating window into that period of time in the hobby.

From February 1976, a Roman "Coin Trends" price guide and report featuring comments by Ira Goldberg, Alex Malloy, Joel Malter and Charles Wolfe:



Circa 1980 Numismatic Fine Arts brochure touting the investability of ancient coins:


Opinion piece by Arnold Saslow decrying the evils of buyer's premium in 1983, a time when the biggest US auction houses - NFA, Superior and Stack's - apparently charged buyers in their auctions zero fees when they won a coin. (side note: if that's Saslow in the byline picture wearing Roman armour, I'd loved to have had him as my dealer)


Worldwide Treasure Bureau Price list from 1988, from where you could make purchases to fill your Twelve Caesars set, sight unseen:

 

I bought a number of antiquities from Arnold Saslow back in the day, at coin shows and at his NJ store. Which I think is still there.

 

I started using Lexis in 1977, when I was a summer associate at a firm in NYC. But there was just one terminal, in the library. I didn't have a PC in my office (at a different firm) until the late 1980s, and it wasn't even connected to the firm's main word processing system -- let alone Lexis or Westlaw -- for some years after that. Documents had to be typed or printed on special "scanner" paper in order to be able to be fed to the mainframes and go on the system. Carbons were still used for correspondence when I started out.

 

I remember those "electric" typewriters - pretty fancy at the time! Never had those.. I recall High School typing class with the earlier old clunkers. The teacher would yell out "A" - whole class clunks a loud "A" .. then "S", "D", "F", etc... and all keys in class would clunk like a symphony, as one. I was a rebel and instead of hitting "A".. I would occasionally double it up: "AA"... screwing up the musical concerto he was trying to create. It drove him mad... he was hunting constantly to find the source - this bad seed! I did this intermittently to avoid identification - but this went on all year, he was continually trying to narrow down the area/row that spawned this disrespect to his musical genius.. I lasted the semester without getting caught. After final marks were assigned, I walked out of the class for the last time and flippantly apologized for my stutter.
The glare I received was priceless! I guess you had to be there......

 

Here's an interview done with him at his store just last year. He talks about ancient coins for just a few seconds, but he sounds like an interesting guy, and it looks like an interesting store to visit.

 

My first go at collecting ancients was in the late 90's (before I had access to the internet). There was a hobby store in my hometown that had a couple of display cases full of coins - mostly american, but there were a few dozen ancients at any given time to choose from. That particular store was my connection to the hobby for several years.

 

It was a unique yet a challenging experience but more for filling, imo .

You socialised in person and building a more personal relationship . Like going out to breakfest / lunch discussing travel(s) , shop(s) , event(s) , and find(s) . Meeting up and making the time . . .

Along with meeting other people in the progress in person . Like in building a social netting work . And not having big brother profiling or data mining your like(s) and dislike(s) . . .

 

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