Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 765066, member: 57463&quot;]<b>History You Can Hold in Your Hand</b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>See Post #38 from Just Carl.</b>&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>We are talking about two different things.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>You can buy and sell and make money, if buying and selling is what you love to do.&nbsp; We all do that to some extent. We all try to maximize our outcomes.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>If you want to be a numismatic daytrader -- a coin dealer -- then welcome!&nbsp; If you are honest and upright, other dealers will help you get started because the good ones know the value in a community of rational traders.</p><p><br /></p><p>After that, though, for many people, this is something different.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back to Just Carl.&nbsp; When I was in college for the third or fourth time, I learned a lot of aerodynamics by building model rockets.&nbsp; Even if they did not crash, they still cost money to launch, and time to build, and there is not much market in pre-built rockets.&nbsp; Everyone wants to build their own.&nbsp; (There is some market in model flying aircraft...)</p><p><br /></p><p>So, too, here.&nbsp; I am not much of a collector, but when I started, I pursued ancient Greek coins, worth about a day&#039;s wages, from the towns and times of famous philosophers.&nbsp; I wanted to make sure that if the coin was from Abdera, it had a likelihood that Democritus spent it.&nbsp; Think of that.&nbsp; I had a run from Thales of Miletus to Hypatia of Alexandria.&nbsp; Along the way, I discovered many people and many ideas. </p><p><br /></p><p>You talk about the stock market.&nbsp; I have stock certificates from the great names of the previous generation: Merrill Lynch; Paine Webber; from the days before Shearson met Lehman and Kidder met Peabody.&nbsp; Some companies are gone -- US Steel -- and others have changed -- Boston Edison; Detroit Edison.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>You must know that the commercial insitutions of our global society are troubled.&nbsp; Do you know why?&nbsp; Everyone has an opinion.&nbsp; I have facts.&nbsp; Have you ever read the TERMS OF AGREEMENT on a stock certificate?&nbsp; Do you know what you really bought and what its legal status is?&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>What is money?&nbsp; I have beads and shells.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Money is an artifact of culture.&nbsp; In Jane Austen, the girls play whist for fish.&nbsp; They do not have piles of carp on the carpet.</p><p><br /></p><p>How much is all that knowledge worth?&nbsp; Worth to whom?&nbsp; And for what?&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I buy a Roman coin issued by Marcus Aurelius and I have his <i>Medititions</i> in a Greek/English edition and to me, he is Sir Alec Guiness out there on the Pannonian Frontier facing Germans in the dead of Winter, and a decade later, Sir Alec is Obi Wan Kinobi out there on Tatooine facing different stormtroopers while philosophizing.&nbsp; But you know... the next person who buys the coin might only care that the reverse celebrates Concordia.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>What they are worth to the next person is not predictable.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in