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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3505439, member: 112&quot;]William, you&#039;re getting a fast and dirty version of an education in coins - that&#039;s what is going on here. You&#039;re finding out about bits and pieces and it&#039;s not making sense to you. But believe it or not that&#039;s completely normal.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ya see, there is just so much to learn, so very many things one simply has to know about coins before you can even hope to understand. But it&#039;s like anything else really, there&#039;s always a lot to learn about any subject. For example, I have no idea what you do for a living, but whatever it is I&#039;ll bet you it took you a long time to learn it didn&#039;t it ? Same kind of thing with coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Pretty much all of us go to school for 12 years, just to learn the very basics one needs in life. Then some go to school for 2 more, 4 more, 6 more, sometimes even 8 more years - and that&#039;s just to come in at the very bottom, the very beginning of their trade, their profession. Even after all that schooling, once they actually start on their jobs, they&#039;re still just a rookie. Same kind of thing with coins. Only with coins - there are no schools per se. If one wishes to learn about coins you have to do it on your own.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sure there are people who will help you just like all the folks around here. There&#039;s complete libraries of books you can buy, but then you have to read them, study them, get to know them backwards and forwards. And then you have to throw in hands on experience on top of all that - a lot of hands on experience. </p><p><br /></p><p>I first started collecting and study coins in 1960. Since then I&#039;ve owned thousands of them over the years, my personal numismatic library at one point was larger than that you&#039;d find in most museums and real libraries. I&#039;ve been to hundreds if not a thousand coin shows, run this forum for 16 years, participated on countless others, written many articles, helped write an award winning book, and I&#039;m still learning about coins - today ! And in all that time, coins were still nothing more than just one of my hobbies. I&#039;ve never had a &quot;job&quot; involving numismatics in my entire life !</p><p><br /></p><p>So yeah, for you to say you don&#039;t know what to make of all this - it makes perfect sense, there&#039;s simply no way you could. But all this learning, all this study, that&#039;s part of the allure, that&#039;s what makes coin collecting what it is. So don&#039;t feel daunted, don&#039;t be put off because you don&#039;t understand yet. If you put forth a bit of effort - you will. But it&#039;s not gonna happen fast, there&#039;s simply too much to learn.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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