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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3032418, member: 112&quot;]No it&#039;s not. To the contrary, in most forum discussions it&#039;s greatly underestimated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Look, I&#039;m not an elitist, far from it in fact. For my entire life I have done nothing but promote the hobby, and do everything I could to help people learn about coins. And that includes all areas of the hobby, moderns, classic, world coins, even bullion coins. The only area I never delve into is ancients - I know less than nothing about ancients. And I&#039;m not a variety or error guy - never have been. I know the very basics of that area but that&#039;s it. Those things have just never been of any interest to me.</p><p><br /></p><p>What I have done is spend my entire life studying coins, in depth. Assembling a numismatic library that was bigger and more comprehensive than you could find in most libraries. And yet you&#039;ll still find where I&#039;ve said it a thousand times on this forum that I am not an expert. And do ya know why ? Because I&#039;m not, and I know it - know it for a fact ! I&#039;ve spent way too much time with people who really are experts to even remotely think that I&#039;m one. Spending time, real time with them studying, is a humbling experience. But at the same time I also know that I know far more than most collectors do.</p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s maybe several dozen people on this forum who know ten times what I know about a given type of coin. And they know this because they specialize in them. I specialize in things too, have for many years. I probably know more about ducats than all but a handful of people in the world. But my knowledge of them pales beside the knowledge of that handful.</p><p><br /></p><p>I guess what I&#039;m trying to tell you baseball is that one has to know a lot, a whole lot, before one can even realize how much you don&#039;t know ! And most collectors, they just haven&#039;t got to that point yet. And most of them would be the first ones to tell you so. But I&#039;m not belittling them, I&#039;m not calling them names, I&#039;m just stating the truth.</p><p><br /></p><p>The thing that you don&#039;t like is that a lot of what I say is quite contrary to what you say. Well, you are welcome to believe whatever ya want. But don&#039;t fault me because I&#039;m trying to help people, to actually tell them the truth about things. They don&#039;t have to believe me, they can believe what they want too. All I&#039;m trying to do is to at least make them aware that there is a choice. And then they can choose on their own.</p><p><br /></p><p>Do you know why most real experts don&#039;t post on coin forums much ? I do, because I&#039;ve asked them. Over the years I&#039;ve all but begged lots of them to participate on the forum, but they won&#039;t. The single primary reason is because they don&#039;t want to try and deal with people who &quot;think&quot; they know what they are talking about - and who refuse to listen to somebody who actually does !</p><p><br /></p><p>That said, there are maybe 5 real honest to God experts who are members of this forum. One of them posts all the time. Another, pretty much a daily basis. Another just once in a while, at least from what I&#039;ve noticed. The other 2, rarely but they do once in a while.&nbsp;&nbsp; (edit - there may be more, but those are the ones I am aware of)</p><p><br /></p><p>And then there are quite a few members who are fairly knowledgeable in their areas, people you should listen to when they have something to say. I wouldn&#039;t even hazard a guess at the actual number, but it&#039;s not a real big number. And that&#039;s out of over 40,000. And as has been said, this forum is but a tiny part of the hobby. And no, I&#039;m not just using this forum as my sole source of info for what I say. I&#039;ve been a member of pretty much every coin forum there is, and a lot that don&#039;t exist any longer. And a lifetime of going to coin shows and participating, interacting, and learning there. All of that has taught me what I know.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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