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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;durophat, post: 2906192, member: 91038&quot;]This might seem like it is totally out of left field, but bear with me for a moment and perhaps it might make some kind of sense.</p><p><br /></p><p>About five years ago I decided that I wanted to be able to bind books myself. The ability to produce a durable, hardcover book seemed like a fine skill to have. So I began studying the subject, and I was amazed to discover that in the last thirty to forty years there has been an explosion in the small-scale production of books, of &quot;artist books,&quot; of everything having to do with the production and almost &quot;worship,&quot; of books, of THE BOOK. To take one sub-category, I guess you&#039;d call it: the fine binding, or deluxe edition, numbering maybe 100 or 250 copies, produced by a meticulous and highly skilled craftsperson. Every piece of these books is special. Special fonts. On special paper. With special hand-marbled end-papers. Special hand sewn head bands, tooling, gilt, leather . . . expensive? Of course. What are these books about? In many of these ultra-fine binding types, the book could be <u>Moby Dick</u>,&nbsp; or <u>Timon of Athens</u> something in the Public Domain, but aside from that it doesn&#039;t really matter. Why not? Because the people who buy them don&#039;t read them.</p><p><br /></p><p>What&#039;s going on here? I think in part this reification has to do with the simple fact that even when modern people do want to read something they find it on their computer. They don&#039;t use books. If books were still considered <i>useful, </i>there&#039;d be bookstores. But where I live even the used bookstores have pretty much all closed down.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, I think that the collecting of bullion coins is driven by a similar sort of feeling. Whether it&#039;s true or not, there&#039;s a pretty pervasive belief that physical money means less and less, and might even soon be gone. And It can&#039;t be denied that, like the ultra-fine bindings, some of these bullion coins, like the silver Eagles and the Libertads and some of the others are very attractive. But like the books which aren&#039;t read, they are coins in name only.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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