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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 2177441, member: 27832&quot;]...unless, of course, you&#039;re the blissfully conscience-free dealer or pawnshop or jewelry store making that offer.</p><p><br /></p><p>It <i>is</i> sad to think of a valuable collection, gathered over decades with great care (and at great expense), going to someone who doesn&#039;t appreciate its value. But how many of us here have never been the <i>beneficiary</i> of that sort of loss?</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve got my story of the guy I found trying to dump jars of silver into the CoinStar, the holed and engraved proof Trade Dollar that found its way into a bag of junk on eBay, the ill-photographed pawnshop lot of Peace dollars that included an MS62 1921 and an AU50 1934-S, and many more. I&#039;m mostly a bargain-hunter, so maybe I have more of a karmic burden on this than most, but I&#039;m acutely aware that <i>someone</i> has probably taken a stiff loss on many of the coins I own.</p><p><br /></p><p>I joke sometimes about the &quot;numismatic circle of life&quot;, where a coin gets found in change, collected, then sold to a dealer, then cherry-picked, then inherited, then cashed in at the bank for face value. [USER=26302]@medoraman[/USER]&#039;s comment about selling collections and the backbone of the hobby is another perspective on the same idea. Most coins (with the possible exception of Zincolns) have the potential to still be around, largely unchanged, long after their current &quot;owner&quot; is dust, along with all his or her financial accomplishments and aspirations. That doesn&#039;t make them more <i>important</i> than the owner, or the owner&#039;s dreams -- just more durable.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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