One of the posters on Coin talk was talking about the economy and the mixed feelings he had about finding coins that he felt were probably from a collection. On the one hand, he liked finding the coins, on the other he wondered if the coins were from an estate where the survivors did not know their worth. Were the coins sold for food money? Were the coins stolen? His question was, "...is collecting dog eat dog?" I think it is natural for a collector to ask these questions about where the coins came from. Provenance is a large part of collecting, where did this coin come from? Who had it? What collection was it in? What price was paid for it? To me, I can answer his question for myself, is collecting a dog eat dog proposition, does every deal have a winner and a loser. Where one person is a predator and the other the prey? I say no. To be sure there are people who may want to cast themselves into the role of predator, who think of themselves as a wolf among lambs, but that sort of thing never ends well. A hobby like coin collecting is only worthwhile if you derive some enjoyment from it, wether that enjoyment comes from making deals, hunting for coins, creating beautiful displays, researching history, just looking at the beautiful art on many coins, or totalling the percieved value of the collection. But if it becomes a dog eat dog contest it will eventually be less enjoyable for everybody involved. Even the best prize fighters if they do not retire at the right time end up on the losing end. Joe Louis was unbeatable in his day, but then he could not fight the people who took advantage of him or the IRS. Al Capone had all the angles figured but ended up according to confidants as nutty as a bedbug from syphilis infecting his brain, Mahomet took over the city where he had been expelled from saw all his enemies silenced, yet was poisoned by a woman he had captured as a slave. There are thousands of examples of the man who rose to power ending up like every other man ends up, some endings worse than others. Back in high school one of the crowd used to greet his friends with a shot to the kidneys, it was all fun for him, but then every one who had gotten that greeting from him one day decided to salute him the same way, the poor guy buckled when I greeted him at his locker one day, I apologized and thought maybe I had overdone it, but it had been about the 20th shot to the kidneys he had taken that morning. When we moved into our present house my children were still pretty young, I built a family room in the basement where they could leave their toys about and where the furniture was not going to be cried over because children were rough on it. but my children saw a large spider and they were afraid to play down there. The thing had built itself a web near a crack where it could hide itself safely when I would appear with the rolled up magazine of death. Funny how it seemed to know that I meant it no good. I do not really favor chemical warfare on the little critters so the kids would be upstairs I would send them down and they would come up because the buggy was down there. I solved the problem by catching a fly, I threw the fly into the web, the flies struggles caused the spider to rush out to the prey, where it met its fate at the wrong end of a copy of Newsweek. The same thing happens to those who are seeking prey, when you are hunting you are the most vulnerable, one of my friends added a bear to his trophies. They would hide a box of donuts under a bunch of logs, then they would check back, after a few times of doing that they knew when to strike. He had the beast posed in a ferocious set up, I kidded him he should have had the bear posed sitting on its haunches with a donut in one paw and a cuppa joe in the other. The point is to stay aware, to not be so consumed with the prey, wether it is a fly, a jelly longjohn, or a proof morgan; that you miss out that you might be the one being hunted. Live your life so if your conscience wakes up you can still sleep. Like all advice it is always easier to give it than to follow it. We really never know what we might do until we are faced with the choices, and sure as you live your life there will be times when you fail, when looking back you acted in a less than honorable, ignoble way. It is an important part of life to fail, and to learn how to handle those failures when they come and how to learn from them and if possible, improve. I know one guy, a great guy, knowledgable, but his thought is that if someone does not take the time to know what his coin is worth, and does not pay him for a proffessional appraisal it is incumbent on him to buy what he is offered for the lowest price he can get, and when selling it is a similar deal, he will be very fair with those who know what the values are, but he will get what he can if he perceives that the person does not have clue one. His knowledge was acquired with a lot of study. And he values that knowledge in others, but he is not the person for a new collector who wants to just make deals and does not want to read the book first. Another one I know, is scrupulous almost to a fault, his margins are pretty low, and I tell him when I see him that he has to be careful, especially since I would hate to see him ever go out of business. He has bought mint sets for a bit under bid, and then when he discovered that some were of the rare no s variety he contacted the person to renegotiate the deal. There are all types of people in this hobby, and that makes it interesting to say the least. But how should one act if some person who does not have a clue asks what you would give for some old dollar coins, or some old gold coins that grandpa had stashed away? I think it this way, if I can afford it I would offer them what they would get if sold at a store, if I cannot afford it I would tell them a good ballpark figure and tell them where they might get the best deal for them. If it is something I collect I will offer them more than a dealer. In some cases I would tell them how if they hold unto them they might be worth quite a bit more over time. I worked in a shop where in real rush times we would hire in temps, one time I was chatting with one at break time and he told me how he had a bunch of old comics from when he was a kid. I offered to look at them with him. I went to his house, and he brought out a couple of old boxes filled with old funny books, spiderman, xmen, fantastic four and others, some in bad shape, some in good and a few in fine or exfine, none in mint, he had actually read those books, and probably loaned them out and traded and all the other things. They had been in tight money so they had been having rummage sales and had sold a lot of them just a week before. We went thru them, I brought some mylar for some of the better ones, he asked me what i would pay for them, I really would have liked to have had some of them some were pretty big ticket items, but I gave him an old copy of a price guide, and showed him how to grade them and where to advertise them if he wanted to sell them. He actually gave me some just for my help. My grandpa used to tell me treat people nice on your way up, you might meet them on your way down. I remember thinking at the time that was pessimistic advice, I did not think that would be me that would need other peoples help, ahh the optimism of youth. So the point of this blog is to remember in your collecting and wheeling dealing to not lose sight of the fundamental basics of fairness and to not make yourself a prey by losing awareness of others. Sure you can get hurt by others taking advantage of your circs, but you will find yourself stronger by when the shoe is on the other foot and you find yourself in a place where you could take an unfair advantage of another. Which brings up the definition of fairness. And that subject will have to wait another time.
