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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 1805211, member: 57463&quot;]&quot;Coins are history you can hold in your hand.&quot;&nbsp; At least that was a famous motto from an early National Coin Week.&nbsp; The thing is, with US no one really cares about the history.&nbsp; Oh, sure, we nod to World War II and the Revolution... but do you care who was Secretary of State when an 1837 Half Dollar was struck?&nbsp; No: &quot;50 Cents&quot; versus &quot;Half Dol.&quot; is the big difference -- and the only difference.&nbsp; With ancients, the coins are all about history. </p><p><br /></p><p>And more... </p><p><br /></p><p>When I started collecting, I went in for Barber and Mercury dimes, but I knew that they were modeled on ancients, just as Washington DC was squeezed from a tube of Neo-Classical architecture.&nbsp; Then two things happened...&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>First, walking the floor at a coin convention, I realized that ancients cost no more than moderns, coin for coin, value for value.&nbsp; Then, one afternoon, I caught a re-run of Carl Sagan&#039;s <i>Cosmos</i> and the episode was &quot;Backbone of the Night&quot; about the Greeks.&nbsp; I began a collection of small Greek silvers, worth about a day&#039;s wages, from the towns and times of philosophers.&nbsp; You can&#039;t do that with US coins.&nbsp; You cannot get a Chicago 1940 for Enrico Fermi&#039;s first atomic pile, or a New Haven 1839 for the birth of Josiah Willard Gibbs. (At least not in coins... hmmmm... maybe paper....)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]294026[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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