RCC stands for rec.collecting.coins, a usenet group. You may have a newsreader, depending on your internet provider, or you can go to google.com and read it there. http://groups.google.com/groups?q=r...amp;oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search There are disadvantages to using Google for usenet though, like that you can only do so many posts (and not many) before they tell you you're at the limit. Maybe not good for you, since you post a lot! Also, it takes a while for posts to show up on google. Others here can probably be more helpful, since I don't know much about computers. Whatever you do, read the FAQ before posting, or at least lurk a while first. The people there are mostly nice, but it is an unmoderated forum and things can get rough for people who don't follow the rules! Hope that helps!
looks a little more confusing than this place but i might have to lurk for a while. looks like alot of people give stuff away there.
I'm not sure how that all started! One person gave away something for free, and others just joined in! It isn't always like that, but like I said, people there are nice, for the most part.
Geez I started with usenet before the WWW. I was into fish keeping. Well I still am, but not the fancy salt water stuff. Even before that I was following some technical groups (like TCP/IP). I guess I better check it out again!
mbbiker: using a dedicated newsreader is much better than using the google web site to read usenet groups. It is a good group but can be rough and the giving away stuff, while not unusual, is not an all the time thing. The current round of giveaways was started by someone giving a freebie and then the person that received that freebie offered a freebie and then the person who won that one offered a freebie, etc. It is up to the 6th freebie giveaway now.
On the internet, no one knows you are a dog. I get to Rec.Collecting.Coins from AOL. If you look at the email addresses of the people who post, you can see which other services make Usenet Newsgroups available. The advantages to Groups.Google are access to the archives for searching from yesterday back to day one by keywords, contents, author, title. Groups.Google also presents the threads in response sequence or in chronological order. Response sequence is displayed as a TREE. It is very handy. ... and a little slow to ship your message out to the world... and the ones you see are eight hours old... I have RCC through AOL, but I use Groups.Google, too.
"No blasters!" the barkeeper yelled as Obi Wan... ... and yes, RCC can be a little rough... I think that one reason is that no one owns it. Here, with Peter Davis in charge, there is always the implicit response that people who get out of line get cancelled. Sure, you can come back under a different name, but that game gets old and the sysop always wins. So far, on this forum, the major RCC antagonists have done little more than throw their shoulders back and look down their noses at each other. There will be no unpleasantries here. :angel:
Yes, "so far" it has been quite peaceful here. I avoid places where folks just like to jump down each other's throat at first chance - like they don't have anything better to do. 8)
RCC is no different from any other of the tens of thousands of unmoderated Usenet news groups (discussion groups). You'll find friendly useful discussion and heated debates. The nature of the Internet -- people communicating over distance typically without seeing or hearing one another -- brings out more of the debating/competitive element of communication, and has since the Internet's inception. And there's the element of reliability. You'll find wildly inaccurate information on Usenet (sometimes even from people claiming that they give much attention to detail and accuracy), and you'll find good information you can trust and take with you. The vast majority of people who access Usenet do so through a newsreader, either a dedicated on such as Forte Agent or one built into an email program such as Microsoft Outlook Express. Google Groups is useful for access messages older than a month or so and in a pinch when your ISP's news server goes down. But using it for following discussions on a day to day basis, like using any Web service for any other purpose, is much slower and clunkier than using a program that resides on your own computer.
Just one clarification...When I say it can be rough, I don't mean in a nasty way. I mean it is a very honest group. When you post something there, you are going to get honest opinions, good and bad, whether you want it or not. I like that. Most real roughness is from oldtimers to oldtimers and some of that is personal stuff that has developed over the years. I post a lot (a lot, a lot) and I have never been treated particularly roughly. I think of it like a coin club being held in a bar.
And when I said rough, I mostly meant for people who don't read the FAQ and then do something that they oughta know better than to do anyway! The vast majority of the people have been very nice to me.
Mr. Atoz, the Archivist. For me, it is the archives. To read the Rec.Collecting.Coins archives, I use Groups.Google. Click on http://www.groups.google.com and then key in the name of the group: rec.collecting.coins. You will see the most recent posts, about three to eight hours old. At the top of the new posts is the hypertext link for Advanced Groups Search Click on that. You will see a Form to fill out. You can look for All of the Words, or for Exact Phrase, or for At Least One of the Words, of for Without the Words. You can search by group, message title, or author. You can specify a date range. You can use the Google Archives as a giant Gossip Database. Suppose you see an ad for an 1883-O Morgan Dollar in MS-63. What is a good price? Are there lots of fakes out there? Are there any VAMs to look for? Any sellers to be aware of? Just enter 1883-O Morgan Dollar under Exact Phrase, set the group to rec.collecting.coins and narrow the dates, say, to the last two years for convenience.... Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1883! The place, Mr. Peabody? New Orleans. We are going to witness the striking of a silver dollar... The result? 26 Hits. 26 Messages about the 1883-O Morgan Dollar. (The archive software reframes the search into two parts: Exactly Phrase and All of the Words.) The archives of RCC are the closest thing you will find to a living history of numismatics. Even the coin newspapers are only formalized presentation of "spin" and "press releases" compared to RCC. (For the newspapers, see another thread.) The day-to-day postings on RCC are certainly amusing if not amazing, but my heart belongs to the Archives.
