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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;TS10, post: 1726194, member: 47611&quot;]Okay, I admit it now. I&#039;m hooked big time and my view of the world of&nbsp; coins has been forever changed. It has also changed me. Remember long&nbsp; ago when the game Tetris first made its appearance? The commercial said,&nbsp; &quot;You&#039;ll be Tetracized!&quot;, and that was no joke. After my first several&nbsp; games, I started seeing those crazy Tetris blocks in many everyday&nbsp; things I&#039;d seen before. But now it was different. Things like Tile&nbsp; walls, the tiles in the shower, even cars on the freeway would suddenly&nbsp; become Tetris blocks trying to fit in place. I thought I was going&nbsp; crazy, but my friends assured me that it was happening to them as well.&nbsp; Whew! Close one.</p><p><br /></p><p>Okay, one thing I&#039;ve recently learned about&nbsp; coins is that the more I looked, the more I saw. When I first started&nbsp; collecting coins when I was young, I&#039;d just see a coin that looked&nbsp; interesting and would toss it in that brown paper bag along with all the&nbsp; other coins my father had given us from many different countries. That&nbsp; was that. Or so I thought.</p><p><br /></p><p>Decades later I brought them all and&nbsp; began sorting them out by countries and dates. I also decided to learn a&nbsp; little more about them and because of the wonderful world of computers&nbsp; and Google, I found sites that showered me with so much information that&nbsp; it piqued my curiosity even more, and I sought to find one of those&nbsp; double die coins. So I visited my bank and got a 50.00 bag of penny&nbsp; rolls and breezed through them, looking only for the telltale double die&nbsp; design. Shouldn&#039;t be too hard, right? I thought I could do it with just&nbsp; some reading glasses to sharpen up the images. I separated the pure&nbsp; copper pennies from the rest just because they were copper. I didn&#039;t&nbsp; even look at them carefully. Then I started separating coins that had&nbsp; machine doubling. I also made categories for pennies that had zinc&nbsp; showing. But then it had to be categorized even further so I labelled&nbsp; them &#039;zinc showing&#039; and &#039;zinc doubling&#039;. Oh-oh, this was getting&nbsp; serious. I have like 20 different categories for every little thing&nbsp; different. I had to beg my parents not to throw away their pill&nbsp; containers so I could categorize more coins. The more I looked, the more&nbsp; I saw, and soon I was going through that same bag of coins again, but&nbsp; this time with a&nbsp; magnifying glass. I was so engrossed on just the&nbsp; obverse sides of the coins that I realized that I surely missed some&nbsp; interesting things on the reverse side. Oh well, there&#039;s only one thing&nbsp; to do, go through that same bag yet again. I remember the first time I&nbsp; went through the bag, I went through 5,000 pennies in several hours.&nbsp; Now, I can stare at a penny for the longest time, examining everything&nbsp; as carefully as I can. A little voice finally says, &quot;You can put this&nbsp; one down now, there&#039;s plenty more that need to be looked at you know...&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>So&nbsp; now, instead of being Tetracized, I&#039;m coinacized, and once again, I&#039;m&nbsp; seeing things in everyday things. Like this car I was following. It was a&nbsp; Mazda 3 and I&#039;d probably followed this model of car many many times&nbsp; before, but after being coinacized, all of a sudden, that 3 sure looked&nbsp; like the 3 on the end of a 1993 or 2003 coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]268518.vB[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Other&nbsp; thoughts have begun seeping into my mind, like looking at a pool where&nbsp; people make wishes and throw coins in made me wonder if there was the&nbsp; Holy Grail coin in there somewhere. Made me want to ask the caretaker if&nbsp; I could trade those coins and just throw a 20.00 bill in there (But you&nbsp; know I just gotta check it first though! Aaargh!).</p><p><br /></p><p>Or when I was&nbsp; paying the check at a local restaurant, and while the woman rang me up,&nbsp; my eyes wandered over to that bowl with the sign, &quot;Take a penny, leave a&nbsp; penny&quot;. I&#039;d seen that bowl many times before, but now I caught myself&nbsp; trying to look at those pennies quickly but thoroughly before I got my&nbsp; change back without looking too weird. I don&#039;t mind being a little&nbsp; weird, just not too weird. I ogled that bowl of pennies as if it was the&nbsp; June pinup of some girlie magazine. She saw me staring intently at the&nbsp; bowl and gave me a puzzled look, along with a hesitant, &quot;Thank&nbsp; you....come again.&quot; So, yeah, I&#039;m hooked....*sigh*.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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