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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 7722535, member: 110350&quot;]Using it as a proxy for someone who &quot;does the work,&quot; as [USER=90666]@Andrew McCabe[/USER] does, is certainly much more justifiable. Although it brings back some bad memories of being a young lawyer, when certain other young lawyers I knew insisted that in order to be a &quot;serious lawyer,&quot; one had to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, never take a vacation, and depend entirely on your spouse to raise your children in the unlikely event you&#039;ve managed to acquire one. (Until the divorce, that is.) Needless to say, I was never a serious lawyer myself by those criteria!</p><p><br /></p><p>And, of course, not all of us -- even those of us who are retired -- have the time to treat coin collecting as a full-time job, or have a large pre-existing collection they can sell off to fund current purchases. I live on a fixed income myself (Social Security) plus my relatively modest savings (which have to last me the next 20 or 30 years -- I hope!). Unfortunately, I&#039;m already approaching the limits of my coin budget for 2021, so I definitely need to cut down on my purchases for the rest of the year! </p><p><br /></p><p>My problem with time, apart from the health issues that limit the number of hours a day I can &quot;work&quot; on my collection, is that I have a second hobby -- I prefer to call it an avocation -- that takes up at least as much time, namely Jewish genealogy and family history. I&#039;ve been engaged in it since childhood, and </p><p>I am actually considered &quot;seriously&quot; knowledgeable about some limited geographic areas like Baden and Pomerania in the 17th-19th centuries. Earlier this year, a 350-page hardcover book in German about my mother and her family before, during, and after the Holocaust was published, funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg, for which I provided 90+% of the photos, letters, and other documents, which I either inherited from my mother or found in various archives. I&#039;ve spent much of the last six years working with a group of people in Germany on the book and its predecessor, a journal-sized booklet published in 2018.</p><p><br /></p><p>And once upon a time, I think I did qualify as a &quot;serious&quot; collector of British historical medals here in the USA, although only because there are so few Americans interested in the field. (I think I was Paul Bosco&#039;s best customer for a few years!) No more, though, as I sold well over half of my collection to Stack&#039;s Bowers for financial reasons.&nbsp; I kept all my books, though (including first editions of Mudie, Till, and Welch), because one never knows!</p><p><br /></p><p>TLDR: I&#039;m afraid I&#039;ll never qualify as a serious ancient coin collector, even by the time and work criterion.&nbsp; So be it -- I do what I can in the time I have. I very much admire those who can do more, like a number of our members here.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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