After less than a week in that environment, I'd have to go off and live in a one-room log cabin and grow a long beard, and live off canned ravioli and wild onions. * Of course, after living with my own ravioli and wild onion flatulence inside a small cabin for a week, I'd soon have to give THAT up and come back down off the mountain again.
Okay, Doug. Whatever you say. So you can identify my personal bias, yet in certain instances have shown yourself incapable of seeing the same in your mods, even when undeniable evidence has been presented of it. Interesting. You're absolutely right, though; I do possess a personal bias. After all I am human, but the difference is that I admit it as well as make a conscious effort to try to avoid allowing it to impact my view of right/wrong, fairness, and/or to create a double standard. As for justice supposedly being blind, puh-leez. You are no less human than I or anyone else. Uh huh...I'm sorry, but you're starting to sound like a politician.
So then for "fun" I go to major coin shows like ANA shows and deal with thousands of people who think they're the smartest guy in the room.
Only when getting together with the family. It's why I try to never miss a Q. David Bowers talk. Keeps me centered.
I can imagine QDB has that effect. I've not had the pleasure to have met him or heard him speak, though I have met a few other numismatic luminaries in my brief national-show-attendance era.
What's the coolest is that he takes questions, unlike some speakers. When I give a talk, I tell the audience up front, "Do NOT wait to the end for questions. Raise your hand and we'll deal with it now." Then I did that before the seven justices of my state Supreme Court. They weren't shy at all!
I enjoyed Scott Travers' books but found him less engaging as a speaker, somehow. Maybe it was an off day for him. Not hard for me to imagine QDB keeping a room lively. I credit my "Eclectic" style partly to him. If there is a numismatic "Renaissance Man", he's got to be the one for our generation.
For me, Travers is the Mac Daddy of self-promotion. Not that there's anything wrong with that; you just have to go in expecting that and you won't be disappointed.
I think I have a PCGS slabbed Chocolate Chip Cookie too. Let me check my Photosho ... I mean the SDB and get back to you guys. Maybe they should slab that 20+yr old McDonald's hamburgers and fries from the other thread.
I've gotten into trouble for bad language, for stealing sodas out of the vending machine in the break room, and even a restraining order for surreptitiously filming lordmarcoven dancing to a Madonna CD while wearing nothing but his BVDs and that coin vest - but NONE of that was as humiliating as getting an entire post deleted by management because of Kurt's influence. If anyone needs me I'll be over at eBay.
My latest bidding abomination: I offered $25.00 for this 1923 MS 66 (as graded by NAC). I wanted it primarily for the case as an example of grading gone wrong. The seller countered with $30.00, which I declined. This is one thing that makes me upset about eBay: When I make an offer on the coin that amount is the right price - there is no counter offer. I'm not playing a game here people. My offer is what the coin should be sold for and any counter offer is like adding graffiti to the stone tables Moses brought down from the mountain. Idiots.