Aside From Coins, Do You Have Any Other Hobbies?

I have collected just about everything. I like stamps and covers paper ephemera.
I am interested in history, and things that contribute to it. Stamps give you images especially of historical significance that enhances knowledge for coins.

 

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What kind of stamps? When I was a kid I collected any. When I was in my 20s I collected Soviet era stamps, especially pre-WWII. I also kept all my pre-WWII era stamps from other countries. Haven't actively collected them for years but I still have them all.

SC

 

Coins (#1 of course!)
A small collection of handmade custom knives.
Stainless steel handguns (mostly Rugers).
Native American pottery and artifacts including arrowheads.
Crystals and gemstones.
Southwestern art.
Native American jewelry.
Photography.
Amateur astronomy.

I think that about covers it.

 

I am interested in India and their many states. The extensive India states stamps, including the revenue give extensive insight into where many scarce coins comes from. Stamps are fairly recent mostly from 1850 to the present. Many coins were hand hammered and where they were used can be a daunting research project. You have to study the shapes of the letters and numbers and mysterious "marks". The stamps portray the picture of many moghuls and politicians.

 

Wine, women, and song. In that order, then comes coins. Oh no, my wife just walked in, bye...

 

A repeating story of my life is regret for selling collectibles when I changed to another type. In each case I saved a few very special ones but regret not having saved more of the stamps. This is one I kept from the stamp days. As with coins, I forgave the faults here because of the interest but sold the higher grade items that were less complex. Most of my off cover stamps were from the time you could get your choice from old collections for 2 cents a stamp and I still have those. Most of the classics were sold (sadly).


Changing your mind as to what is collectible is not a financially rewarding thing but my heirs are as uninterested in my photos (mostly stereoviews), meteorites and my wife's bells as they are in my coins. I have no idea what will become of those as well as the coins. Today, more young people 'do' rather than collect.

ambrotype

daguerreotype (He knew his father would beat him if he moved and wasted the quarter paid for the photo. I paid more.)




This full plate tintype is my great-great-grandfather c.1877 when he died standing on a train track built across his land. Now you know where I got my good looks. My daughter at least wants this part of the photo collection.

 

While we are at old photographs, here is one showing my grand father (yes the one who found the Commodus sestertius at Verdun battle) taken when they were drafted at the very begining of WWI. He is the one standing second right with mates from his village (Calenzana - Corsica, France)



Q

 

A great photo! Here are a few uniformed photos of my own maternal grandfather, who fought on the other side in World War I, and was wounded in the Battle of Verdun at the end of February 1916, at or around Fort Douaumont.

At Cambrai, occupied Northern France, Rosh Hashanah 1915, age 20



In the military hospital, March 1916, age 21, after being wounded at Verdun.

Standing, far right:



Sitting up in bed to the left of center, with a nurse holding his left wrist:



As an unteroffizier ( = corporal), standing in center of back row with his Korporalschaft ( = 2 gruppen), Champagne, France, April 24, 1917, age 22, after 3rd battle of Champagne. Some of those soldiers look old enough to be his father.

He kept that mustache until sometime after my grandparents arrived in the USA from Berlin, via Lisbon, in June 1941.



Unfortunately, I don't know the exact circumstances of his promotion to "unteroffizier," or exactly where he was stationed after April 1917, except that at some point he served in Serbia and Bulgaria and today's Ukraine. The information I have is from the dates on the postcards on which the photos appear, from some other family documents, from research on his regiment, and from what I remember him telling me and/or my mother telling me about him. His actual service records, along with most service records for the Prussian army in World War I, was destroyed in the Allied bombing of Potsdam in early 1945. Only the separate service records for the Bavarian Army survive for the Germans in World War I.

 

Not sure this counts as a hobby but.. I’m completely obsessed with the cryptocurrency space right now.
My restless brain is always looking for a new rabbit hole to go down, and this one is fascinating if you’re interested in how the financial system works - or disruptive tech.

It’s in stark contrast to my ancient coin hobby, but somehow they both suit me

 

Awesome relic!

 

I love that @DonnaML : our grand dads fought each other in one of the most dreadful battles ever launched by human craziness, and one century later, their grand children are able to discuss coins in all sisterhood/brotherhood sipping tea and eating biscuits (well, for the last part, almost...)

Q

 

I like alternative currencies. What you want is something of real value.What makes something of real value ?

 

I collect old pictures and stamps too. This is my great grandfather. I remember him as a kind old man, but he was as tough as they come. When he was 17, he volunteered to border watch at the Swedish border when we declared independence in 1905, earning himself a 2kr 1907 with crossed guns:


After that, he went to the US, by himself. Didn’t know English, but who cares. He came back with 3 Grizzly bear fells and a jar full of rattle snake tails after having worked as a shepherd in the Mid-West. He loved America, had lots of stories.
After several trips to Montana, Dakota, etc., he bought a farm and settled. He worked on the farm until he was 99. 3 years into retirement, he died at 102.

 

Guitar, underground comics, science fiction and old movies

 

We need more like him today but that isn’t going to happen

 

Wonder why I never have any money for coins...

 

I have a number of interests, perhaps not all hobbies. Mushroom collecting, collecting political cartoons (usually digital copies from the Internet), fossils, cooking, and photography (35 mm, digital, Nikon camera). I am on the West coast of Canada and so mushrooms are prolific in the fall. Have collected arrowheads and other artifacts but I have mostly given them away (as I had over 10,000 at one point) and only have a few nice remaining specimens.

 

I see an Ehrenkreuz with crossed swords, a/k/a a Hindenburg medal. I have my grandfather's.

 

Amazing piece of family history! This sadly isn’t attributed to anyone

 

I’m originally from the Midwest but moved across the planet to follow a girl. All my family still lives and farms there, tough people that place attracts, and I don’t believe it, there is no way your great grandfather retired, farmers are farmers till the day they die.