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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 1057, member: 57463&quot;]<b>A Storehouse for Intelligence</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I covered this in the other topic broadly, but let me focus a bit on the specifics, since you asked it that way...</p><p><br /></p><p>Bronowski called it &quot;the ascent of man.&quot;&nbsp; There is no single time or place that is _THE_ essential thread of human history. Yet, to me, narrowly, the best of who and what we are as a civilization today (art, science, democracy) comes from ancient Greece.&nbsp; More than simply wondering about atoms and stars and our place in the world, the Greeks established the METHODS for thinking about these questions.&nbsp; So, to me, to look at a coin from Abdera or Miletos or Akragas is to see into the spirit of the times that planted the seeds of the fruits we enjoy.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I assembled all but one of the Mercury Dimes, my satisfaction came from looking at the coins and selecting the best of them by their grade.&nbsp; The 1916-D is a no-brainer.&nbsp; All you need is money.&nbsp; If you have $300 you buy a Good.&nbsp; If you have more, you buy better.&nbsp; You get it slabbed PCGS and the problem is solved.&nbsp; There is no challenge to that.&nbsp; For me, learning to see the fine details is what made collecting Mercs interesting.</p><p><br /></p><p>I still keep an eye out for phone cards.&nbsp; With the world going cellular, these are becoming less and less common.&nbsp; I buy the ones that celebrate fiber optics.&nbsp; Others are interesting (musicians, etc.) and I buy them now and then to put on my desk or whaterver, but for the Permanent Collection, it is the phone cards that commemorate Fiber Optics that interest me most.&nbsp; I have a few and I pick up the ones I see as I find them.&nbsp; The thing about phone cards is that they monetize a SERVICE.&nbsp; Also, that service is itself a technology.&nbsp; Phone cards are how phone companies borrow money from the public and pay it back with phone calls.&nbsp; It is a change in economics as basic as the shift from cows to gold or from ingots to coins and coins to paper.&nbsp; The notion of what defines &quot;wealth&quot; becomes increasingly abstract.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of the coins -- and other forms -- I have kept, the idea is indeed to have &quot;one of everything.&quot;&nbsp; Broad categories: a copper coin, a Roman coin, a Greek coin, a phone card, a token, a scrip, and so on.&nbsp; The goal is to be able to display the broadest set with the fewest examples.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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