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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 36465, member: 57463&quot;]In the reiterating Investment topic, Longnine009 referred to &quot;mainstream&quot; collecting as opposed to &quot;topicals.&quot;&nbsp; I think that intuitively, we might all <u>think</u> that we understand what that means, but if you stop to weigh it out, it loses some definition. </p><p><br /></p><p>Coin boards (&quot;Whitman&quot; style, not websites) go back to the 1930s.&nbsp; Forty or fifty years ago, when the statistical median agers were kids, they could fill much of a Lincoln Cent or Buffalo Nickel board from pocket change and buy the few semi-keys from allowance or yardwork or paper route money, dreaming of the keys, which they might have bought before cars and girls interrupted their collecting.&nbsp; We tend to see Late 19th and Early 20th Century U.S. Type fractional and minor coins (50-cent pieces down to cents), as the &quot;mainstream.&quot;&nbsp; I am not sure that this makes sense any more -- it might not have made sense for over 20 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>First of all, this board in particular, but many others as well, have an <u>international</u> audience.&nbsp; Buffalo Nickels are not in the mainstream of collecting for people in the U.K. or Finland.&nbsp; We have a global hobby.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>In those other places, there must have been some similar &quot;mainstream&quot; in the previous generation.&nbsp; They have (to quote an Americanism) &quot;gone the way of the buffalo.&quot;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>In America, when collecting exploded and imploded about 1980, there were already many ways to assemble sets and many kinds of sets to consider.&nbsp; VAMs were invented.&nbsp; (Van Allen and Mallis, authors of the standard book on Morgan Dollar Mistakes that seem collectible.)&nbsp; Bankwrapped Rolls became a hot item.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>There is still a tendency to assemble sets by Date and Mintmark.&nbsp; Collecting by topic seemed more appropriate to stamp collectors, philately being about a generation ahead of numismatics.&nbsp; (It certainly melted down sooner in the wake of phony commemoratives.)&nbsp; However, over the last few years, I have seen more and more numismatic collectors drawn to topics.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Topic&quot; is a pretty broad term.&nbsp; It is easy to think in terms of ships, planes, insects, flowers, etc., as the subject on a coin.&nbsp; However, Roger deWardt Lane has an electronic presentation (Web and CD) called &quot;Brother Can You Spare a Dime?&quot;&nbsp; (<a href="http://www.geocities.com/dewardt/brother.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.geocities.com/dewardt/brother.html" rel="nofollow">www.geocities.com/dewardt/brother.html</a>) about &quot;dime size coins of the world.&quot;&nbsp; Even back in the 1970s, there were American collectors of crowns and half-crowns, the large dollar-size silver coins of the world.&nbsp; I read about collectors who pursue the smallest coins in the world, either by diameter or denomination.&nbsp; So, those are other &quot;topics.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>We tend to segregate coins from banknotes from medals.&nbsp; However, my interest in aviation encompasses all of them as a single topic -- and to them I add cancelled covers, postcards, etc.&nbsp; (I have a postcard cancelled both ways on the Hindenberg, for instance.)&nbsp; I wrote this up for StudentPilot.Com&nbsp; as &quot;Your Personal Aviation Museum: Collectibles as Historical Evidence.&quot;&nbsp; (<a href="http://www.studentpilot.com/articles/aviation_articles/article.php?aviation_id=121" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.studentpilot.com/articles/aviation_articles/article.php?aviation_id=121" rel="nofollow">http://www.studentpilot.com/articles/aviation_articles/article.php?aviation_id=121</a>)</p><p><br /></p><p>So, what, if anything, is the &quot;mainstream&quot; of numismatics?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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