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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 4037868, member: 57463&quot;]That is interesting. Grading is an important aspect, of course, but yours was the first admission that it is a distinct pleasure in its own right. Fair enough. We do have the grading challenges here.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I agree with the senitment, but has it killed the hobby for you? Have ancients been abandoned by collectors? If anything the restrictions on imports make all the other coins (and objects) that much more interesting. I have a little iron knife from 600 BCE. I have some oil lamps and toga clasps and some other antiquities. If no more are imported, mine are all the more valuable and interesting. I can display them, talk about them, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks for the reply, Hiddendragon. Allow to take those points in a different order.</p><p><br /></p><p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp; I bought most of my Chinese coins from Frank Robinson and some others from Allen G. Berman, but that was it. On the same basis as you, I just stayed away from that aspect of the hobby. Back in the 1990s, I worked with a guy who had just from working in China and when I showed him my coins, he said that he saw coins &quot;just like that&quot; being made and &quot;soaked in pig brine&quot; and sold to tourists. So, Robinson and Berman notwithstanding, I just never bought any more. But I did buy <b>books</b> about Chinese numismatics. So, in that respect, even that aspect of the hobby was not killed for me.</p><p><br /></p><p>2.&nbsp; In reply to your other point, I have to agree with Clifford Mishler that completeness is a passion for the true collector. Otherwise, it is just an accumulation. That said, though, I do not think that he meant that every collection must always be complete or it is merely a pile of random stuff. One of the elements of judging an ANA Exhibit is that it is evidence of the &quot;collector&#039;s ethic&quot; that you pursue a collection over the course of years (and miles). Anyone with enough money can buy anything. That proves nothing. Consider the accumulation&nbsp; of &quot;Colonel&quot; Edward H. R. Green. The coins are famous because he was, and he was famous only as the spoiled brat of the &quot;Witch of Wall Street.&quot;&nbsp; No one thinks of Col. Green as a collector. Now, John Jay Pittman, he was a collector. And he had only &quot;workman&#039;s wages&quot; as an employee, albeit a degreed engineer. He was just careful in what he bought over the years.</p><p><br /></p><p>For myself, my two Whitmans of Mercury Dimes will never have the 1916-D and I do not consider the 1942/1 to be necessary for completeness. But I enjoyed the hunt. The journey was the reward.</p><p><br /></p><p>The collector&#039;s passion (or collector&#039;s ethic) for completeness always confronts some limits. And I note that you did not just abandon numismatics. Rather, you focused on different aspects of the hobby. In that respect, I think that you are a true collector. You have the gene.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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