Collecting experience
Reid Goldsborough
Time for a retrospective, some analysis. Read at your own risk. This
will be long (winded). Consider this post a medium-length magazine
article, though more personal and less focused. Though this includes
some dealer criticism, and some dealers may consider it anti-dealer, it
also includes some dealer praise, and I consider it, overall,
pro-dealer, pro-collector, and pro-numismatics. This may be a prelude to
something else, or not. An earlier version of this, dealing almost
entirely with ancient coins, appeared elsewhere.
During the summer of 2000 I found myself standing over a bowl of Indian
Head cents and another of Buffalo nickels. I had been invited to give a
talk about the Internet at a national marketing convention in
Scottsdale, Arizona. I wrote and still write a nationally syndicated
newspaper/magazine column about computers and the Internet, and before
this I wrote a book about the future of the Internet, which was used
among other places in some college classrooms during the 13 minutes in
which it was still up to date.
While in Scottsdale, my wife, kids, and I visited the Buffalo Museum of
America. Mesmerized, I stood over these VG and G cents and nickels, the
cents priced at $1 each, the nickels at $2 each. Like many collectors
today I collected as a kid, U.S. type coins for me while my best friend
at the time worked on Whitman sets, before like many I gave up
collecting for other things. In this little museum, almost exactly 30
years later, I couldn't take my eyes of these beat-up old coins. I
bought one Indian Head cent and one Buffalo nickel. Total outlay: $3.
What possible harm could this lead to?
At the end of that summer the ANA had its big national show in
Philadelphia, close to us. OK, I'll go. First day I bought the most
affordable nice enough coin I could find having a date beginning with
the numbers 17. I couldn't afford a 1798 large cent when I was a kid.
The next day I bought a 1908 no-motto Saint, feeling genuinely guilty
about the money I was spending.
It was all downhill from there. This Saint quickly led me to what I
regarded and still regard as the most fabulous of all U.S. coins, Bust
dollars with heraldic eagle reverses. The 1804 dollar is considered the
"king" of American coins not only because of its rarity and the
circumstances surrounding its minting but also, I'd contend, because of
the beauty of its design, and the 1798 to 1903 heraldic eagle Bust
dollars have all the beauty without the stratospheric priceyness.
I went fairly crazy with Bust dollars, creating several sets of these
fairly big-ticket items, then wound up buying and selling for profit,
playing dealer, buying what I regarded as undervalued Bust dollars at
national and local coin shows as well as through eBay and selling
entirely through eBay, doing well. My column at the time was being
published among other places in AirTran's in-flight magazine, before
AirTran switched publishers, and as payment here I received free
airfare, so I wound up going not only to the NY Int'l and Baltimore
shows by car and train but also by plane to the F.U.N. show and Chicago
Int'l each year. In retrospect I probably should have also gone to a few
Long Beach shows, but I didn't want to take advantage.
I also began going backward in time, before the onset of U.S. coinage.
The further back I looked the more interesting it seemed. All other
things being equal, old is more interesting, but all other things aren't
equal. Ancient coins, particularly ancient Greek coins, are considered
by many today, myself included, as the most beautiful of all coins,
though some modern U.S. and world coins give the Greeks a, well, run for
their money. Ancient coins also have some terribly interesting history,
with science, democracy, western philosophy, and the entire western way
of life having its origins in ancient Greece. Rome copied Greece, and
the founding fathers of the U.S. copied Rome.
So I wound up focusing mostly on ancient Greek coins, more engaging to
me in general than Roman coins. Just as Rome copied Greece with
mythology, philosophy, science, architecture, and so on, it also copied
Greek coins, only made them in general smaller, more often debased, and
less attractive artistically. Rome also made the same mistake the U.S.
has made over the past hundred years or so, in my view, by using human
portraits as primary, obverse devices rather than more imaginative and
inspirational symbolic or mythological figures.
Greek coins were fantastic. I began specializing in discrete areas --
Alexander the Great, Athenian Owls, pre-Greek Lydian electrum, etc., 21
Greek-era areas in all, as of right now. I've also elected to focus on
three Roman areas and several later areas, including English pennies
through the centuries, Pieces of Eight and other Age of Exploration
trade coins, Bust dollars, Saints, and a whacky set of holed U.S. types
coins that I'm able to acquire for under $10 each (still looking for a
holed Presidential dollar, if anybody comes across one).
I've tried going deep in each area, soaking up as many journal articles
and books as I could along with the coins, and still do. The acquisition
of knowledge for me is just as enjoyable as the acquisition of coins,
and I've spent many enjoyable hours at the libraries of the ANS and the
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, near
me. The ANA library has also been a good resource for me, as has Ted
Buttrey, the well-respected numismatist and all-around good guy from the
mother ship who has graciously put up with my disagreeableness about his
thinking on Egyptian Owls.
Fairly early on in beginning to collect again, however, I got caught up
again in what partly led me to quit coin collecting back as a teenager.
I got sucked in by the inevitable pull toward greed and deception. I
suppose this is something that everybody who collects, and even more so
everybody who deals, has to wrestle with, more or less. How honest will
you be? By honest I'm referring not only to the accuracy of the
information you knowingly communicate -- errors of commission -- but
also whether you communicate all the relevant information you know --
errors of omission.
With me, with one particular eBay sale, I withheld information when
selling a Bust dollar, not disclosing in full how I believed the
surfaces looked in hand. I had been asked by someone who turned out to
be the winning bidder if I saw anything that my fairly revealing photo
didn't reveal. The surfaces of this raw, unslabbed coin were pretty
rough, with excessive porosity for a coin of this type (I hadn't paid
much it), appearing this way more so with the coin in hand than in the
photo. I felt bad about not fully disclosing this, saying instead
something, which I don't recall exactly, that only approached full
disclosure. The buyer didn't return the piece or complain. But he left
no feedback either, positive or negative. I knew he must have known that
I didn't disclose what I knew.
Granted, this was far from the worst of numismatic sins, and I know that
many dealers inevitably do similar things as part of making a living
through dealing. You put coins in the best possible light, figuratively
and actually. Most dealers appear to adhere to the maxim that if asked,
you disclose, if not, you don't. But some, I know, don't even when
asked. In this particular case I didn't disclose either. On the other
hand, some dealers, even those at the top of the profession, don't
disclose what they should, including serious concerns from reliable
sources, at times even the most respected museum and academic people in
the world, about the authenticity of expensive and sometimes very
expensive coins.
But mostly, I believe, the majority of coin dealers do the right thing
in the majority of cases, pulling questionable coins and describing
coins accurately, though forgery-detection skills, the use of
hyperbole/exaggeration, grading accuracy, and attribution accuracy vary
widely. Still, dealers as a whole can be trusted as a reliable means of
building an enjoyable collection, as I've said many times.
The old saw in numismatics very much applies, that to better protect
yourself from fakes you should buy from reputable and knowledgeable
dealers, even if this protection is not or could ever be ironclad or
foolproof and even if having your own expertise provides additional
protection in itself. Dealers are still indispensable, today, in the age
of the Internet when collectors can easily buy and sell to one another
directly. Because they handle so many coins, the sharpest coin dealers
will be better at coin authentication than the sharpest collectors or
academics ... provided the inevitable self-interest doesn't excessively
cloud their perceptions. Dealers are also very good at making markets --
bringing sellers and buyers together.
I don't want to give too much weight to my little guilt trip over this
one incident of nondisclosure, since a number of other factors were and
are involved in my attitudes and decisions about numismatics. I respect
the profession of coin dealing as I respect the category of retailing in
general. My mother's father owned a small retail hardware store for some
60 years, and when in high school I helped out there one summer. I've
also spent a little time selling at computer swap shows, which are
similar to large coin shows in that you stand behind a table, your wares
in front of you, trying to sell to those who stop at your table.
So coin dealing turned out not to be for me. I stopped selling on my own
for profit, though since then I have offloaded coins on occasion when
cleaning out dupes, extraneous material, and coins in areas I thought I
would specialize in but never did, selling to or through dealers.
This episode of nondisclosure did, however, lead me deeper into what I
regard as the single most engaging area of numismatics, something I've
talked about a lot, I know: Truth vs. falsity. Sure, the aesthetic
beauty of coins is fantastic, their history is engaging, the challenge
of finding want-list items and landing deals is entertaining, the
sharing of acquisitions and stories about them is fun, all the rest. But
nothing, to me, tops truth vs. falsity.
This dialectic of truth and falsity plays itself out in numerous ways in
numismatics, but two in my view are primal: 1) The dispersal of new
finds of ancient coins (and artifacts) into collections, and 2)
Forgeries of all types.
The issues involving new finds of ancient coins, provenance, and
cultural patrimony aren't black-and-white. The position taken by some
who are leading this battle in numismatics is as extreme, I believe, as
the position taken by some in the archeological community, only in the
opposite direction. With the situation that has existed for many
decades, hoard and findspot information that could significantly enhance
our knowledge of ancient coins and ancient history isn't disclosed, and
false information is sometimes put out to avoid tipping off authorities
in source countries with irrational laws that treat the commonest coins
the same as the Elgin Marbles. Many ancient coins reach the market from
prior collections, sometimes very old collections, but many are recently
dug up. With the exception of some countries with rational laws such as
the UK, laws in source countries are inevitably broken as new finds
leave those countries.
From the right perspective, fakes of all coins, ancient to modern, are
fun, not something to either run away from out of fear or put your head
in the sand over in trying to ignore. All the evidence I've seen
indicates that fakes are far more of a presence in the ancient than the
modern coin market despite one ancient dealer comment I've read online
that fakes of modern coins are more prevalent. All the evidence I've
seen also indicates that the number of honest deals involving authentic
ancient coins dwarfs the number of fraudulent deals involving fakes sold
as authentic, same as, with modern coins, the number of honest deals
dwarfs the number of deals involving doctored, overgraded, or otherwise
misdescribed coins.
Fakes challenge you to learn, to probe, to question your assumptions and
those of others. They can inspire you to look very closely, with the
naked eye as well as with magnification aids such as a stereo
microscope. Forgeries make coins more intellectually engaging. They can
be interesting in what they reveal, and they can be interesting in
themselves, examples of the black art of deception. Fakes make the
authentic coins in your collection even more appealing. Finally, and
perhaps most importantly, studying counterfeits in hand, even more so
than online, can hone your counterfeit-detection skills, along with
studying authentic coins in hand and online.
I've found that some also feel this way about fakes. I've found that
others feel differently. They regard counterfeits as just junk that
should be destroyed or handed over to the authorities, never to see the
light of day again. I personally regard as intriguing the criminality
that inevitably exists in numismatics. Others feel that dark side of
numismatics is unseemly, and they want nothing to do with it. Similarly
some people like crime novels and detective TV shows, and others don't.
My thinking about counterfeit coins is the same as that of Red Book
editor and former ANA president Kenneth Bressett, who created a video
that any ANA member can borrow titled "Famous Fakes and Fakers" in which
he talks about forgeries of coins through the ages that are "true
numismatic items" and are "enjoyable to study and collect." The
legalities of owning counterfeits, as I've explored in great depth, are
unsettled. I'm not a lawyer, but the best legal opinion I've read from a
lawyer is that there's nothing in the statutory or case law in the U.S.
that makes it illegal to possess coin counterfeits provided you don't
intend to deceive others with them.
There are lots of different kinds of coin copies, and each can be an
interesting counterpart to the authentic. Whether you're looking at an
contemporaneous counterfeit, contemporaneous imitative, contemporaneous
derivative, recent forgery, recent replica, or recent coin, medal, or
token based on or paying tribute to the original coin design, each is a
variation on a theme. Not all copies, of course, are meant as deceptions.
As a little exercise in evaluating my ten years of collecting, I just
analyzed my current collection and my past activities. It was both fun
and illuminating. Try it, you'll like it. <g> Under "real" below I'm
including authentic official coins as well as unofficial legal-tender
imitatives. Under "copy" below I'm including contemporaneous and recent
counterfeits/forgeries (I use these two words synonymously) as well as
replicas, medals, tokens, commemorative coins, etc., that are based on
earlier coins. Others enjoy collecting them, but with U.S. coins I stay
away from counterfeits and instead collect replicas and medals, tokens,
and so on based on the original design, as well as, needless to say, the
originals, or "real."
My collection, as of this moment: Ancient coins: 337 real, 276 copy.
U.S. coins: 83 real, 53 copy. Modern world coins: 21 real, 9 copy.
Medieval/early modern coins: 11 real, 16 copy. Chinese coins (ancient to
modern): 11 real, 10 copy. I know others have more coins or nicer coins
-- this is a taking-stock exercise, not an exercise in vanity. I've had
fun buying from different types of sources, including but not limited to
fancy-catalog auctioneers in person, over the phone, and online; smaller
boutique-style online dealers; volume eBay dealers; large national coin
shows; small local coin shows; local coin shops; and fellow collectors.
I never went metal detecting in source countries for ancient coins or
treasure hunting for coins on sunken ships, but I fantasized about this. <g>
Also during this past decade, in terms of taking stock, I've written
five articles for the Celator magazine (one of which won a
best-of-the-year award from the Numismatic Literary Guild), five book
reviews for the Celator, and one article each for the Numismatist, the
Journal of the Classical and Medieval Numismatic Society, COINage,
Coins, and Coin World. No peer-reviewed articles and no books, yet. I
don't know, actually, if I'll try to go further in this direction.
I've also put up more or less comprehensive Web sites about a number of
different coin areas. And I've spent lots of time, at times too much
time, in various online discussion groups, asking questions, sharing
information and experiences, and debating. Lots of debating. These
groups for me have primarily included RCC, Moneta-L, FORVM,
Ancients.info, and CFDL.
Before one of them moved away, I used to enjoy meeting on a near monthly
basis for lunch with two fellow collectors after a local monthly coin
show, and I've had lots of good discussions with dealers at big coins
shows. During most of the past decade I've driven the 2-1/2 hours to and
from the Baltimore show two or three times every year with a coin dealer
buddy, a devout Roman Catholic who has wrestled for 30 years with the
ethical dilemmas involved in coin dealing and from whom I've gotten
valuable insights into the inner workings of the numismatic trade. This
dealer sells all types of coins, U.S., world, medieval, byzantine, and
ancient.
Though I find truth vs. falsity the most intriguing issue in
numismatics, I find as the most enjoyable activity what I've described
as the "glom." With the background information in your head that you've
uncovered through your research, you seize upon a coin with your eyes,
marveling at its physicality, the beauty or quirkiness of its design,
strike, and state of preservation, following the coin's lines and
curves, its raised devices and depressed fields, tilting the coin for
different perspectives on the pristine or worn surfaces, awed by the
light's aesthetic revelations of how the metal was shaped and how it has
interacted with its environment over what's often a very long time.
It can be fun impressing others with your acquisitions and being
impressed by the acquisitions of others. But I find it's even more fun
impressing myself. My three most awesome coins: 1) c. 600 BC Lydian Lion
electrum trite, Weidauer Type 15, with a charming and aesthetically
archaic roaring lion design, a coin type I had much fun building a case
for being the world's first, a piece I was so excited about winning
through a CNG printed auction that I drove the two hours from my house
to CNG to pick it up in person, 2) 2nd century BC Colchian debased gold
imitative of an Alexander the Great stater, with fantastically
abstracted iconography and impossibly raised rims, a coin I had
metallurgically analyzed (75.73 percent gold, 21.11 percent silver, 1.49
percent copper, 1.43 percent iron, 0.24 percent nickel, according to
energy dispersive spectroscopy), a piece I won through a Gorny & Mosch
auction, and 3) 1799 U.S. Draped Bust dollar, graded AU-53 by PCGS, with
"hyperoriginal" surfaces, the toning as beautiful as the image of Miss
Liberty, a coin I got an amazing deal on, buying it on eBay in an old
PCGS holder with an EF-40 grade on it from a coin dealer in Timonium,
Maryland, knowing it was undergraded, underpriced, and underappreciated.
One numismatic activity that has also been a lot of fun for me is giving
ancient coins away. I buy cleaned but unattributed late Roman bronzes
from pick bins at major coin shows for this purpose, in nice enough
condition to see clearly both obverse and reverse types. I keep one
attributed in a safety flip in my wallet at all times, and if I happen
to be discussing coins with someone, and the person doesn't yawn, I'll
reach into my wallet and give away the coin, explaining it's not
terribly expensive only terribly interesting.
I've gotten the best reactions when giving away ancient coins from kids
but also appreciation from adults. Only once, with my accountant, did
anyone refuse the gift. I'm guessing he was thinking I expected
something in return. I've given 34 of these away over the past decade,
to my handyman, bank branch manager, dentist, kids' pediatrician,
barber, optician, cleaning lady, next-door neighbor, friends and
relatives, children of friends, and friends of children. I keep my stuff
in a safe deposit box, and talk about this, so I'm not worried about
spreading the word to the wrong ears and possibly being burglarized.
Through my little taking-stock exercise, what I was most surprised to
discover, though I probably shouldn't have been, was that I had as a
part of my collection 276 ancient and modern fakes and other copies of
ancient coins. This isn't as many as the number of authentic ancient
coins I have but nonetheless represents a sizeable investment in time. I
may have still other fakes, which I currently regard as authentic. <g>
If so not many, I don't believe.
Acquiring these has been a challenge, more so with outright forgeries
than other copies. My focus again has been on ancients. The best
theoretical approach to acquiring fakes of ancient coins is the one that
has worked for me the least. You ask for them from dealers who
inevitably and inadvertently acquire them from group buys, where they
buy a collection from a collector or heir or a large group of new finds
from a middleman at or outside a show, without the time to closely
evaluate every coin, and get stuck with, say, a couple of fakes in the
group.
Such fakes typically get thrown in a bag, never to see the light of day
again. Why not put them to good use, helping with the counterfeit
education effort?
The reality is that relatively few dealers will part with fakes. If they
don't know you, they may suspect you'll turn around and try to sell them
as authentic. But mostly, I believe, dealers feel that the publication
of fakes draws attention to the counterfeit problem and has the
potential of causing at least some collectors to drop out of the hobby
or some potential collectors to stay away from it. Also, some dealers
appear to exhibit a guild mentality, wanting to retain for themselves
the specialized knowledge of forgery detection so collectors feel they
need to buy from dealers rather than from fellow collectors. In a sense,
one sense, all this is understandable.
Whatever the cause, very few counterfeits in relationship to the
universe of known counterfeits get published in print. Dealer opposition
to counterfeit publication is the main reason, I believe, that the
Bulletin on Counterfeits/Counterfeit Coin Bulletin is no longer
published, though other factors are involved too. There's demand out
there, I believe, among collectors for vetted information about
forgeries from experts, beyond the amateurishness you often see online.
There are exceptions to the above among some dealers. Regarding ancient
coins, Wayne Sayles published a small number of ancient coin forgeries
in his excellent book on the history of ancient coin counterfeiting,
Classical Deception (I'm not factoring in here the catalog of Rosa
replicas in his appendix). David Hendin has also published some really
good material on counterfeit education. Regarding U.S. coins, PCGS has
published some really good material in its book Coin Grading and
Counterfeit Detection. There are a fair number of other books out there
as well on counterfeit U.S., world, and other coins, along with articles
in coin magazines and journals.
But mostly it's non-dealers who have done the most publishing,
particularly with ancient coins, led in print by the Bulgarian scholar
Ilya Prokopov and online by collectors. To be fair, a few dealers, as
well as collectors, have put up on their Web sites some good information
on counterfeit detection, in particular the dealers who run various
online forums. The Web site ForgeryNetwork.com can also be helpful. I'm
a big proponent of the knowledge is power school. The knowledge gained
through the dissemination of information about forgeries trumps the
potential negatives.
I've obtained a few ancient coin forgeries, offered as forgeries, from
dealers. Some have been donated, and here's another big thanks for that.
Dealers who share fakes, like dealers who share information, are giving
of themselves. I'll still say, despite this being disputed by one
strangely shortsighted collector, that dealers who do this deserve both
kudos and patronage. Unfortunately, as I said, dealers who do this are
the exception. I've gotten no's or been ignored far more often than I've
gotten cooperation. My own experience is far from unique.
Though some disagree, I don't believe there's anything wrong with
dealers selling forgeries for what they are. A fair number of dealers
and auctioneers openly sell or have sold forgeries as forgeries, for
what they are, on eBay and at big coin shows, of coins of all types,
from U.S. to ancient. Typically, not always, these are lesser known
dealers. But some of the most respected fancy printed-catalog auction
houses sell coin forgeries as forgeries. These are sometimes
contemporaneous counterfeits that circulated with the authentic coins,
with U.S. Bust halves being popular. Other times they're big-name
forgeries designed to fool collectors that were made in previous
centuries -- Paduans, Paduan restrikes, Beckers, Becker restrikes, etc.
The best forgery acquisitions in my experience are trades and donations.
I've acquired a number of ancient coin forgeries in trades from fellow
collectors who either acquired them knowingly as forgeries or bought
them as authentic and got stuck with them. In some cases I've traded
replicas or other copies, in other cases lower value authentic ancient
coins. In still other cases collectors have agreed to part with
forgeries they got stuck with so I could study and publish them, helping
others avoid getting taken, for a small fee or as a donation. And here's
another big thanks for this.
I'm always open to trades. If anybody reading this has ancient coin
forgeries they can part with, I can email you a list of ancient coin
forgeries and replicas I have that aren't in areas I currently
specialize in or are dupes for me.
Here are some of the items on my ancient coins black cabinet want list
(some of these actually are replicas):
* Toronto forgery of Augustus Caius and Lucius denarius (RIC 212)
* Toronto forgery of Octavian trophy on prow denarius (cast, worn Slavey
replica)
* Christodoulou forgery of Owl and Alexander tet and stater
* Costodoulos ("British Museum Forger" or "Galvano Boys") forgery of Owl
and Alexander tet and stater
* Bulgarian School forgery of Julian II bull AE-1 (documented in two of
Prokopov's books)
* Bulgarian School forgery of Thasos satyr and nymph early classical stater
* Bulgarian School forgery of Thracian tetradrachm (barbarized Thasos
Dionysos/Herakles tetradrachm) from empire_gallery or vergina**
* Bulgarian School forgery of Istros inverted heads stater from
empire_gallery or vergina**
* Robert Ready British Museum electrotype replica of Owl and Alexander tet
* Slavey replica of Octovian trophy on prow denarius (RIC 265a)
* Slavey replica of classical Owl
* Apollonians replica of archaic Owl, classical Owl, Alexander tet,
Lysimachos tet, and Thasos satyr and nymph stater
* Rosa replica of Lysimachos Alexander-portrait tetradrachm (Sayles 89)
The legalities surrounding coin copies are also interesting. The U.S.
Hobby Protection Act specifies that coin copies made in the U.S. or
imported into the U.S. since the law's passage in 1973 should be marked
as such on the obverse or reverse. It doesn't prohibit the sale or
purchase of unmarked copies once made or imported. What's more, as I
understand it, this law has never been enforced. I'm happy to be
corrected about this, if anyone knows differently. As far as I know the
only difference the Hobby Protection Act has made is that coin magazines
stopped accepting ads for unmarked replicas.
The gift shops of some U.S. historical sites sell cast underweight
pewter replicas, with large casting pits and extremely mushy details, of
Pieces of Eight, Lion dollars, and similar coins that aren't marked with
"COPY" or a similar mark, the manufacture of which appears to be in
direct violation of the Hobby Protection Act. Chinese counterfeiters put
up large numbers of marked replicas of U.S. and world coins, and
according to my sources and my own inquiries, they'll sell to anyone who
asks the same copies without a "COPY" mark. I've seen in hand several of
these loaned to me by collectors who knowingly bought them to see what
the Chinese forgery workshops were putting out. Thanks again for this.
I've done one comprehensive study of U.S. coin counterfeits,
specifically Bust dollars. I acquired a fair number of fakes of Bust
dollars, mostly on loan from collectors and dealers. I first sent them
to a senior numismatist at ANACS for his professional opinion, then to a
university professor for metallurgical testing. I wrote an article for
Coins magazine about this and afterward put up a Web page. Many thanks
again to those who made these works of deception available to me and who
otherwise helped with this project.
I've done six comprehensive studies of ancient coin counterfeits, of
Athenian Owls, Alexander the Great tetradrachms, Apollonia Pontika
drachms, Parion hemidrachms, Cherronesos hemidrachms, and Thasos and
Thracian tetradrachms, with this material appearing both in print and on
the Web.
Though this isn't the reason I do it, I've appreciated the thanks I've
received, mostly through email, from the ... without exaggeration ...
many hundreds of people who indicated I prevented from becoming a victim
of forgery and other fraud over the past decade involving ancient as
well as U.S. coins.
So, that's ten years of collecting.
--
Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos
Bruce Remick
After overdosing on the morning newspaper analysis of the self-serving rants
of Tiger Woods and Evgeni Plushenko, I couldn't make it much beyond your
first paragraph. Is this just an exerpt from your full autobiography?
Maybe weekly installments might have worked better.
mazorj
"Reid Goldsborough" <reidgol...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3hknkb....@news.alt.net...
> This year marks exactly ten years of my beginning coin collecting
> again. Time for a retrospective, some analysis. Read at your own
> risk. This will be long (winded). Consider this post a medium-length
> magazine article, though more personal and less focused. Though this
> includes some dealer criticism, and some dealers may consider it
> anti-dealer, it also includes some dealer praise, and I consider it,
> overall, pro-dealer, pro-collector, and pro-numismatics. This may be
> a prelude to something else, or not. An earlier version of this,
> dealing almost entirely with ancient coins, appeared elsewhere.
Before the inevitable, predictable flaming begins from some quarters
("long, boring, self-indulgent, self-serving, the usual Goldsborough
crap" etc.), let me first say that I found this interesting,
informative, and well written. I gained insights in a number of
areas, including some of those numismatic dark corners that we don't
always like to talk about. Many thanks for providing that
information.
However - you knew there'd be one - at 4,900 words not counting your
intro (rather more than a "medium-length" magazine piece), if I were
your editor here, I would have cut the opening je m' accuse section
that you later had tacked on top as a kind of antescript. UseNet
rec.x.x forums are mostly short-form platforms, so the shorter the
better even for long pieces. You ought to have spun that off into a
separate essay on coin ethics and dealers' mindsets, where it could
have and should have stood on its own here and elsewhere. The coin
type that was the object of your eBay deception was only a minor
player here, making your mea culpa TMI.
Furthermore, based on some past reactions to your posts, you
undoubtedly know that having thus exposed yourself, for some
unfriendly posters you have forever left yourself open to attack as "a
self-confessed eBay scammer". If one has a confessional that they
need to get off their chest, a UseNet forum like r.c.c. is not always
the wisest place to do so.
What I found intriguing was that you are largely intrigued by, and
know a lot about fakes - and mostly ancient ones at that. Most
serious collectors are "coin detectives" of one sort or another.
Whether it's just reading up on the history of a type, tracking down
every known date and mint mark of a series, or peering through a
magnifier for mint errors, there's a little bit of Sherlock Holmes in
all of us. Forgeries isn't an area that interests me at all; but it's
a legitimate area of study, serves a purpose to help others, and as
the minters of your ancient Roman specimens used to say, "De gustibus
non est disputandum."
Let the flaming and numismatic nitpicking begin.
- mazorj, Critic at Large
Mr. Jaggers
What I really want to hear is how he feels about the Breen Encyclopedia.
Wait, I seem to remember already hearing that.
James the Provocateur
mazorj
"Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message
news:hlouk...@enews6.newsguy.com...
> mazorj wrote:
...
>> Let the flaming and numismatic nitpicking begin.
>
> What I really want to hear is how he feels about the Breen
> Encyclopedia. Wait, I seem to remember already hearing that.
>
> James the Provocateur
Speaking of "long form," that thread definitely qualified! It was,
um... encyclopedic.
- mazorj the Totalizer
Bruce Remick
> On 2/20/2010 9:38 AM, mazorj wrote:
>
>> Let the flaming and numismatic nitpicking begin.
>
> who post here most regularly, who live here, account for the nature of
> this group, which has always been the case. Usenet is a
> lowest-common-denominator phenomenon, with the loudest and most frequent
> posters controlling things, bringing things down to their level. Usenet
> has the lowest signal-to-noise ratio of any Internet communications
> medium.
I just couldn't resist <g>. You have this harsh opinion of Usenet, yet you
chose it to introduce your autobiography and views on life? <g> I've
seldom seen anyone so into himself. I'll bet you include inserts like this
in your holiday greeting cards, too. Kids in grade school must've loved you
on opening day when the teacher asked for essays on what each student did
over the summer. No one else had to get up in front of the class because
there would have been no time left. <g>
>
> My post generated, immediately, four responses that have zero content
> dealing with the subject matter of the group, which my post dealt with, or
> anything related to the content in my post, with your response accurately
> predicting this. Another example: The most popular thread here in recent
> weeks, by a huge amount, has been about the weather, with 186 messages in
> the "Snowy RCC?" thread. On target content-full posts about numismatics,
> typically, get 2 to 5 responses, with exceptions. Posts about the weather
> and politics get 186 and 79 responses. No wonder Usenet in general and
> this group in particular have been in such decline, that so many people
> have left, and that one ISP after another has discontinued their Usenet
> feeds to subscribers.
You apparently have a warped idea of what generates noise in this group.
While you were composing and editing your treatise, a lot of people
apparently enjoyed playing in "snowy RCC" and other OT threads. Then you
pop up with your presumptious "What I did all my life and my views about
almost everything <g>" monster. If you believe so many people have left
RCC, why post stuff like that here if there are so few responsible people
left to read it. <g>
>
> What to make of this? I think it's a telling commentary about human
> nature, about how, too often, things don't go optimally when people are
> entirely left to their own devices. Lord of the Flies. Usenet has and
> always has had FAQs and other attempts at guidance. But people ignore
> them. Other Internet communications technologies do a better job of
> reigning in.
Thanks so much for for your insightful analysis. <g>
>
> This short analysis, naturally, will just lead to more of what you
> previously predicted, flaming and nitpicking, with one utterly predictable
> response being that I'm whining and another utterly predictable one being,
> don't let the door hit your derriere on the way out.You know, creative
> stuff. <g> Somebody thinking they're being terribly clever will no doubt
> just ape these very words. If one person leaves a substantive response,
> dealing with the subject matter that I just addressed, I believe I just
> might fall off my chair. If one person discusses anything related to
> numismatics as a result of my opening post in this thread, I believe I
> just may have a coronary. Or not.
Funny, I didn't see anything in your post here that has anything to do with
talking about coins. It was all about you again-- your views of RCC, the
people who frequent it, and those who mock or disagree with you. Maybe
you're actually coming around.
<g>
Mr. Jaggers
> On 2/20/2010 9:38 AM, mazorj wrote:
>
>
> others who post here most regularly, who live here, account for the
> nature of this group, which has always been the case. Usenet is a
> lowest-common-denominator phenomenon, with the loudest and most
> frequent posters controlling things, bringing things down to their
> level. Usenet has the lowest signal-to-noise ratio of any Internet
> communications medium.
Yep, we're just a nest of vipers, lurking for the next victim who dares test
the waters with his big toe. Kind of like one Mr. Goldsborough occasionally
does, as he so aptly demonstrated some months ago when I, in my naivet�,
dared to make an on-topic post about a numismatic publication. Medice, cura
te ipsum.
> My post generated, immediately, four responses that have zero content
> dealing with the subject matter of the group, which my post dealt
> with, or anything related to the content in my post, with your response
> accurately predicting this. Another example: The most popular thread
> here in recent weeks, by a huge amount, has been about the weather,
> with 186 messages in the "Snowy RCC?" thread. On target content-full
> posts about numismatics, typically, get 2 to 5 responses, with
> exceptions. Posts about the weather and politics get 186 and 79 responses.
> No
> wonder Usenet in general and this group in particular have been in
> such decline, that so many people have left, and that one ISP after
> another
> has discontinued their Usenet feeds to subscribers.
Well, search back through the archives and check posting history, and you
will find that OPs about coins attract extremely little traffic. Those of
us who sit around with nothing else to do but cry alone by our keyboards
have to then default to talking about the weather, politics, or religion.
The fact that you have counted 186 posts that you consider off-topic in the
Snowy RCC thread betrays your own secret interest in such things and have
actually read each and every one of them to present as evidence for your
proposition. BTW, I note that you haven't deigned to take part in any of
the recent coin discussions, for example, the very recent one about the
slabbed Ugly Head on eBay. Why is that?
> What to make of this? I think it's a telling commentary about human
> nature, about how, too often, things don't go optimally when people
> are entirely left to their own devices. Lord of the Flies. Usenet has
> and always has had FAQs and other attempts at guidance. But people
> ignore them. Other Internet communications technologies do a better
> job of reigning in.
For the record, that should be "reining in." Oops, wrong group. Let's see,
that would be alt.english.usage. My bad. But try doing that over there and
see how long you survive. Those guys will tear you one over a misplaced
quotation mark or improper use of the pluperfect subjunctive. Welcome to
Usenet.
> This short analysis, naturally, will just lead to more of what you
> previously predicted, flaming and nitpicking, with one utterly
> predictable response being that I'm whining and another utterly
> predictable one being, don't let the door hit your derriere on the way
> out.You know, creative stuff. <g> Somebody thinking they're being
> terribly clever will no doubt just ape these very words. If one person
> leaves a substantive response, dealing with the subject matter that I
> just addressed, I believe I just might fall off my chair. If one
> person discusses anything related to numismatics as a result of my
> opening post in this thread, I believe I just may have a coronary. Or
> not.
You say you want to talk coins, so let's talk coins, and I'll take a cue
from your essay. I hope you are able to take advantage of the best health
system in the world, though, because here comes Heart Attack City.
Let's talk "Colonial" coppers for a moment, specifically those that were
unauthorized by whatever authorizing party was authorized to authorize them.
To keep this simple, let's limit the discussion to Maris 54-k, the "Serpent
Head" New Jersey copper, the obverse having been inspired by the legitimate
Maris number 46 die, and struck over lighterweight, already-manufactured
coins, but still circulated at the then-current and higher rate of exchange
for Jersey coppers. Is it a counterfeit? You betcha! Is it collectible?
You betcha! It's a Redbook variety, for crying out loud, and there is no
mention there of its dubious origin. I daresay that people who collect
these things couldn't care less that their treasure represents the Devil's
handiwork.
Oh heck, while I'm at it, why not broach the subject of Machin's Mills,
which was responsible for all sorts of bogo products in the 1780s, whether
counterfeit British ha'pennies, Vermont mules, or Connecticut monstrosities
disguised as legitimate coins? Thanks in part to Thomas Machin's
ministrations, a copper panic was precipitated, which cast a pall over
almost all the circulating coppers at the end of the 1780s and early 1790s.
How many subsequent on-topic rejoinder posts shall I now expect? Ten?
Five? Two? Oh, all right, just one will be fine. Lay on, RCC.
James
Clyde Crashcup
> You say you want to talk coins, so let's talk coins, and I'll take a cue from
> your essay. I hope you are able to take advantage of the best health system
> in the world, though, because here comes Heart Attack City.
When Reid says he wants to talk about coins, what he really wants to do is give
another long-winded, self-serving, bombastic opinion of RCC and the world in
general, the upshot of it generally being that he, and only he, has any
numismatic knowledge and integrity and no one else should be allowed to post
unless it is in complete agreement with him and his high estimation of himself.
Whew!
Poor widdle Reid, so much knowledge to share and nobody wants to listen to
you...
oly
RF!!!!!! My man!!!!!! The man!!!!!! Wondered about your whereabouts
from time to time.
oly
Bruce Remick
"Clyde Crashcup" <cl...@crashcup.xxx> wrote in message
news:hlpc9b$3at$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Mommy! Mommy! Bruce's throwing stones at the sand castle I spent all
this time on! Tell him to stop!
I could just picture Reid monitoring the activities at his coin club meeting
and scolding groups of members who he catches discussing things other than
coins.
It's a shame that someone with obvious coin knowledge never perfected how to
share it with others in a way that they will want to hear more..
som...@some.domain
>On 2/20/2010 9:38 AM, mazorj wrote:
>
>
>others who post here most regularly, who live here, account for the
>nature of this group, which has always been the case. Usenet is a
>lowest-common-denominator phenomenon, with the loudest and most frequent
>posters controlling things, bringing things down to their level. Usenet
>has the lowest signal-to-noise ratio of any Internet communications medium.
>
>dealing with the subject matter of the group, which my post dealt with,
>or anything related to the content in my post, with your response
>accurately predicting this. Another example: The most popular thread
>here in recent weeks, by a huge amount, has been about the weather, with
>186 messages in the "Snowy RCC?" thread. On target content-full posts
>about numismatics, typically, get 2 to 5 responses, with exceptions.
>Posts about the weather and politics get 186 and 79 responses. No wonder
>Usenet in general and this group in particular have been in such
>decline, that so many people have left, and that one ISP after another
>has discontinued their Usenet feeds to subscribers.
>
>nature, about how, too often, things don't go optimally when people are
>entirely left to their own devices. Lord of the Flies. Usenet has and
>always has had FAQs and other attempts at guidance. But people ignore
>them. Other Internet communications technologies do a better job of
>reigning in.
>
>previously predicted, flaming and nitpicking, with one utterly
>predictable response being that I'm whining and another utterly
>predictable one being, don't let the door hit your derriere on the way
>out.You know, creative stuff. <g> Somebody thinking they're being
>terribly clever will no doubt just ape these very words. If one person
>leaves a substantive response, dealing with the subject matter that I
>just addressed, I believe I just might fall off my chair. If one person
>discusses anything related to numismatics as a result of my opening post
>in this thread, I believe I just may have a coronary. Or not.
>
you can neutralize them by ignoring them.
i like your comments, the read was worth the 5 minutes. i remember the bogus
bust half i sold, advertised as a fake. it went to a guy who loves them and
will probably love it while he's alive.
most people have a floating scale of honesty. temptation+assets=honesty.
there are always a few who steal just because they can.
Reid Goldsborough
> i like your comments, the read was worth the 5 minutes. i remember the bogus
> bust half i sold, advertised as a fake. it went to a guy who loves them and
> will probably love it while he's alive.
Bogus Bust halves are one of the most interesting series of bogos. A new
book on collecting them just came out, but you can't collect everything.
I've focused on Bust dollars, but unlike them Bust halves were used much
more as money. And as far as I've been able to discover, no
contemporaneous counterfeits of Bust dollars were ever produced, or very
few anyway, unlike the situation with Bust halves.
I just came across something on this, actually, at the ANS library about
two weeks ago, in a monograph published in 1845, yep, 1845, titled
"Monograph of the Silver Dollar, Good and Bad," by J.L. Riddell, M.D.
Despite the title the author also discussed in detail half dollars,
including contemporaneous fakes. But he said this about dollars: "No
counterfeits of the United States Dollar, [sic] have come to my
observation. Coins seem to be counterfeited just in proportion to the
rudeness of their workmanship, and their abundances in general
circulation. The dollar has never constituted an important part of the
general pecuniary circulation; and the workmanship being comparatively
good, it has, I imagine, very seldom been spuriously made."
Mr. Jaggers
> On 2/20/2010 1:36 PM, Mr. Jaggers wrote:
>
>> Yep, we're just a nest of vipers
>
>
>> lurking for the next victim who dares test
>> the waters with his big toe. Kind of like one Mr. Goldsborough
>> occasionally does, as he so aptly demonstrated some months ago when
>> I, in my naivet�, dared to make an on-topic post about a numismatic
>> publication. Medice, cura te ipsum.
>
> audacity to post something critical of a book you spoke so lovingly
> about rebinding. Books are not just paper, ink, and glue. They're
> primarily words and ideas and facts, or attempts at facts. The latter,
> again, is what I was focused on in discussing Breen's encyclopedia.
> Now when I post about anything more often than not you feel compelled
> to related this back to Breen.
How do you expect anyone to engage you in any kind of meaningful dialog when
you come out guns ablaze at anything that doesn't suit you? I would love to
respond to your lengthy treatise, but I know exactly what would happen.
Your reputation precedes you, bigtime. You do reruns, I do reruns.
>> The fact that you have counted 186 posts that you consider off-topic
>> in the
>
> I didn't count 186 posts! Google Groups does the counting, and all I
> did was check it.
That's fine, but if all you checked was the quantity, you can't possibly
have any idea of their content, yet you come on here making generalizations
as if you had.
>> Let's talk "Colonial" coppers for a moment, specifically those that
>> were
>
> Let's talk? I'd like to, but I know next to nothing about "Colonial"
> coppers. Can't collect, and know about, every coin type. You know
> that, right?
I most certainly do, but I did purposely bring up the topic of counterfeits,
which is one of your known fortes. Silly me, I thought that you might wish
to engage me in an area of your expertise.
> These coins sound interesting though. I can see why you're interested
> in them.
They are very interesting, and I'm in my numismatic infancy where this
material is concerned. I'd love to hear commentary from you or any other
RCC folks who have an interest in the field. Unfortunately, as you are so
very well aware, the topic is arcane, and not likely to be popular here.
That's not a criticism, that's an observation based on several years of
participation in this group.
James
Mr. Jaggers
That's not RF, that's Leonardo posting as RF posting as Clyde Crashcup.
James the Inventor
som...@some.domain
thanks. i wish i could read the whole thing.
even as late as my childhood, halves circulated. i remembered having a walker
when i was 8, that's why i collected them later.
bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.
Bruce Remick
> On 2/20/2010 12:45 PM, Bruce Remick wrote:
>
>> I just couldn't resist<g>. You have this harsh opinion of Usenet, yet
>> you
>> chose it to introduce your autobiography and views on life?<g>
>
> the first response to my post, which you also felt the need to point out
> you didn't read. This is the kind of behavior so common to Usenet that
> puts a damper over everything. You say I'm so into myself because I post a
> long message, described clearly as a long message, detailing my
> experiences buying and selling coins over the past decade. It wasn't an
> autobiography, not even close. Yet you feel compelled to respond to it
> saying you didn't read it and otherwise being picayune and snide. Nowhere
> else but Usenet, nearly nowhere else, would somebody like you feel
> compelled to comment on things they don't read!
No joke intended. The <g> is meant strictly in parody of your prolific use
of it in your posts.
Seeing who the author is was enough. You're not interested in getting
people to talk about coins. You're interested in having people listen to
YOU talk about coins.
Seldom have you ever initiated a thread here where your second post doesn't
contain some kind of insult, complaint, analysis of others' perceived
shortcomings, etc. Ever wonder why your posts seem to breed this kind of
reaction?
So sorry if I've put a damper over everything on Usenet. Anything you post
here is fair game for my comment, whether I choose to read it or not.
(Actually I DID start to scan through it to see if there would be anything
new or of interest. I passed a dozen paragraphs and the tracking bar still
showed about 80% of a page left so I gave up and sped to the end. If you
were trying attract a newbie to respond, so far it looks like your overkill
worked against you. Otherwise, any regulars who actually read your posts
probably already know all they care to about your activities and interests.
Jeff R.
"Bruce Remick" <rem...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:fo%fn.4975$bx3....@newsfe13.iad...
> Seeing who the author is was enough. You're not interested in getting
> people to talk about coins. You're interested in having people listen to
> YOU talk about coins.
This was accurate when I first posted it in 2003.
http://mendosus.com/glomthis.html
Unchanged, it retains its accuracy in 2010.
(The little crying figure is Reid, in case some folk don't recognise him)
:-)
--
Jeff R.
tony cooper
<lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote:
>For the record, that should be "reining in." Oops, wrong group. Let's see,
>that would be alt.english.usage. My bad. But try doing that over there and
>see how long you survive. Those guys will tear you one over a misplaced
>quotation mark or improper use of the pluperfect subjunctive. Welcome to
>Usenet.
That really isn't so. The newsgroups alt.english.usage and
alt.usage.english are my primary newsgroups. I read, and post in,
other newsgroups, but those are the two that interest me the most.
One of the most remarkable things about those two newsgroups is the
high level of politeness. Flame wars are rare. If you wander into
a.u.e., and find some rude remarks being exchanged, check the headers
and you will find that the post is cross-posted to the sci.lang group
(primarily linguists), and the rude exchange involves a sci.langer.
Should you write "reign" for "rein" in a.u.e., someone might reply
with "Oy!". That's a.u.e.-speak for "You've made an error". More
likely, the reply will contain a pun or some good-humored wordplay at
your expense.
Reid would not fare well in a.u.e., though. Not because he mistreats
pluperfect subjunctives, but because a) he'd bore the living daylights
out of the regulars in the group, and, b) he thinks shifting goalposts
is the required response to having an error pointed out.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Mr. Jaggers
In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short time,
at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my analysis of the
proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the subject of a query post. I
did it as a relative newbie, from the point of a classically trained Latin
scholar, and that was all it took. "But behold, there be they who, having a
specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth
essay it, nor can abide it in them long." - Mark Twain
James
tony cooper
<lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote:
>In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short time,
>at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my analysis of the
>proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the subject of a query post. I
>did it as a relative newbie, from the point of a classically trained Latin
>scholar, and that was all it took.
To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
style choice.
>"But behold, there be they who, having a
>specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth
>essay it, nor can abide it in them long." - Mark Twain
part...@yahoo.com
wrote:
[snip]
Look out, I have some actual numismatic content in my response. Just
going to respond to a small part of your post, Reid.
> So I wound up focusing mostly on ancient Greek coins, more engaging to
> me in general than Roman coins. Just as Rome copied Greece with
> mythology, philosophy, science, architecture, and so on, it also copied
> Greek coins, only made them in general smaller, more often debased, and
> less attractive artistically.
Well, that's your viewpoint, of course, but I personally tend to favor
the Romans for my own collection. True, the Greeks had some of the
most truly spectacular coins ever- I'm thinking especially of
Syracusan dekadrachms and some other Sicilian coins- but those coins
are priced pretty stratospherically. The more affordable Greek coins
(let's say that "affordable" for purposes of this discussion is under
$2-3 K per coin) are not so much more knock-your-socks-off than
similarly priced Roman coins, especially the early Empire. Smaller is
also not entirely true- the Romans issued mid- and large-sized bronzes
a lot more regularly than most Greek city-states. (Okay, the
Ptolemaic bronzes are pretty damn huge, but I'm talking about the
general case. How many sestertius-sized bronzes of Athens, or
Alexander, or the Seleukids, etc. do you see compared to Roman, well,
sestertii?) The Romans, as a group, are a more coherent social-
historic grouping than the "Greeks", at least as they are defined
numismatically, and I find that backbone helpful in organizing a
collection. The "Greek" series is so huge and varied that anyone
undertaking it ends up with a group of several much smaller, better-
defined collections (as you yourself have ended up in your
collecting). Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just want
to present an alternate viewpoint.
As you know, I have made the Parthian series the biggest focus of my
coin collecting, in terms of number, depth of collection, and
percentage of collecting budget spent. I don't think that really
contradicts what I said about "Greek" coins, since I don't consider
the Parthians Greek. "Greek" in catalogues of ancient coins sometimes
means little more than "not obviously Roman". The early Parthian
coins do have good Hellenistic inscriptions, and sometimes Hellenistic
portraits, but that changes over time. I challenge anyone to identify
a uniquely Hellenistic attribute, or read a single word of Greek, on
this late Parthian coin:
http://www.parthia.com/coins/pdc_7235.jpg
And if you still think I contradict myself, well, very well, I
contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. :)
>Rome also made the same mistake the U.S.
> has made over the past hundred years or so, in my view, by using human
> portraits as primary, obverse devices rather than more imaginative and
> inspirational symbolic or mythological figures.
True, the Romans emphasized portraiture more than the classical Greeks
(besides the late Hellenistic monarchs) but I think this is an
important reflection of the nature of their respective societies. The
Roman emperors were the truly central figures of their culture (or at
least they tried their best to be), and the coinage reflects this.
Early Imperial portraiture is quite attractive. (Though I have to
agree in seeing little merit to, say, Constantinian and later coin
portraits where you have to read the inscriptions to have the faintest
clue who is being portrayed. Even most of the Parthians can be
distinguished by portrait!) As for US coin portraits, I agree that,
as a republic, we should not be putting actual portraits on our
coins. Although at least we don't portray the current ruler, only
previous deceased leaders, who are not directly associated with the
current administration. Maybe they share somewhat the same function
as the portraits of deities and heroes on classical Greek coins-
paragons of particular virtues, rather than a reminder of governmental
power like Roman Imperial portraits? Anyway, thanks for posting this
rather long article, I enjoyed it even though I don't have time to
reply to every part of it.
-Robert A. DeRose, Jr.
Mr. Jaggers
> On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:45:22 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
> <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote:
>
>> In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short
>> time, at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my
>> analysis of the proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the
>> subject of a query post. I did it as a relative newbie, from the
>> point of a classically trained Latin scholar, and that was all it
>> took.
>
> To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
> period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
> violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
> consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
> style choice.
I've had a lot of surprises after reading the latest edition of the Chicago
Manual of Style, which I received as a Christmas gift. A lot of the rules I
learned in school have changed, it seems. For example, we were taught that
one should always capitalize President when referring to the POTUS.
Apparently that is as pass� as "23 skiddoo". Or is it "skiddoo."?
"Skiddoo?." Oh, I give up.
James the Indecisive
Mr. Jaggers
> On 2/20/2010 7:45 PM, som...@some.domain wrote:
>
>> thanks. i wish i could read the whole thing.
>> even as late as my childhood, halves circulated. i remembered having
>> a walker when i was 8, that's why i collected them later.
>> bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.
>
> Refreshing! Really. In stark contracts to the Bruce Remicks here. He
> says he "parodying" me. Funny. He's just being disruptive, and dully,
> with every post of his here, and many past posts, no different from
> countless others on Usenet, here as elsewhere, past and present, doing
> it because they can. One other dodo said the same thing, a few years
> ago, after creating a handle that consisted of my name and just
> disrupting thread after thead. That was high art in his mind too,
> that's how he defended himself after I figured out who he was.
Will the real Bruce Remick please stand.
James "To Tell the Truth" the Dull and Disruptive Dodo
Clyde Crashcup
"tony cooper" <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:9n71o5dsev81tdsb2...@4ax.com...
> To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
> period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
> violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
> consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
> style choice.
It's that type of beeding-heart, feel-good liberalism that is destroying the
written language. <g>
Bruce Remick
"Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message
news:hlq84...@enews1.newsguy.com...
Be glad you didn't have to write according to the US Govt style manual.
Talk about contrast in grammar, spelling, and punctuation we were taught in
school. Plus some of the "style" usually would change according to the
administration in power.
Clyde Crashcup
> On 2/20/2010 7:45 PM, som...@some.domain wrote:
>
>> even as late as my childhood, halves circulated. i remembered having a walker
>> when i was 8, that's why i collected them later.
>> bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.
>
> Really. In stark contracts to the Bruce Remicks here. He says he "parodying"
> me. Funny. He's just being disruptive, and dully, with every post of his here,
> and many past posts, no different from countless others on Usenet, here as
> elsewhere, past and present, doing it because they can. One other dodo said
> the same thing, a few years ago, after creating a handle that consisted of my
> name and just disrupting thread after thead. That was high art in his mind
> too, that's how he defended himself after I figured out who he was.
>
> what you said above about coins. I also remember seeing Walkers too as a kid.
> But what got me interested in coin collecting was getting from my grandfather
> his collection of Morgan and Peace dollars, about 30, as I recall. For some
> reason that I don't remember I went the type collecting route after this,
> buying no silver dollars, while as I mentioned my best friend at the time
> filled Whitman folders with more recent coins. We would take the bus to a
> local coin shop in the burbs, then started taking the train into the city,
> buying at shops and even a few auctions. We were 13 and 14 years old, those
> years anyway. I remember eating at King of Pizza in the city each time,
> sausage pizza, sprinkling lots of oregano on it. One time we both slept past
> our stop on the way home.
>
> I remember early into my type collecting showing off to a dealer a coin I had
> bought -- don't remember from whom. The dealer asked if he could try
> something. I said sure. He bent it over the edge of his counter, with it
> easily bending. It was a lead-alloy counterfeit of a Barber coin, a half if I
> recall correctly, maybe a quarter. I wish I kept it. <g>
Ahhhhhhhh shaddup, you festering gob of conceit.
Mr. Jaggers
Heh. I'm thinking plenty, but dare not go there.
James the Coy
Reid Goldsborough
> Look out, I have some actual numismatic content in my response.
Another? Wow. Maybe Usenet is changing before my very eyes....
> Well, that's your viewpoint, of course, but I personally tend to favor
> the Romans for my own collection.
Yep, my viewpoint. All this is subjective, what we collect, what we find
interesting.
> True, the Greeks had some of the
> most truly spectacular coins ever- I'm thinking especially of
> Syracusan dekadrachms
Now, I think Syracusan deks coins are overrated, far from history's most
spectacular coins, as some have opined. That's a contrarian viewpoint
but not just for the sake of being contrarian. The expression on
Arethusa's face is dour, and the quadriga side (the obverse,
technically) is too busy, to my eyes.
> Smaller is
> also not entirely true- the Romans issued mid- and large-sized bronzes
> a lot more regularly than most Greek city-states. (Okay, the
> Ptolemaic bronzes are pretty damn huge, but I'm talking about the
> general case. How many sestertius-sized bronzes of Athens, or
> Alexander, or the Seleukids, etc. do you see compared to Roman, well,
> sestertii?)
The Koinon of Maceonia bronzes were quite large as well, granted, Greek
coins minted under Roman rule, Roman Provincial/Greek Imperial. But as a
generality, Roman coinage was smaller and more debased than Greek
coinage, gold and silver in particular. Good point about the impressive
size of the Roman sesterius, far smaller than the largest Ptolemaic
bronzes (one of my areas) but larger than most other Greek bronzes, as
you point out.
> The Romans, as a group, are a more coherent social-
> historic grouping than the "Greeks", at least as they are defined
> numismatically, and I find that backbone helpful in organizing a
> collection. The "Greek" series is so huge and varied that anyone
> undertaking it ends up with a group of several much smaller, better-
> defined collections (as you yourself have ended up in your
> collecting). Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just want
> to present an alternate viewpoint.
Perfectly valid viewpoint. But I think if you compare apples to apples,
you have to group together Roman Imperial coins with Roman Provincial
coins in comparing them with Greek coins. There's then a lot more
variability, less coherence, still not exactly like Greek-era coins
though because with the Greeks there were far more political divisions.
> As you know, I have made the Parthian series the biggest focus of my
> coin collecting, in terms of number, depth of collection, and
> percentage of collecting budget spent. I don't think that really
> contradicts what I said about "Greek" coins, since I don't consider
> the Parthians Greek. "Greek" in catalogues of ancient coins sometimes
> means little more than "not obviously Roman".
I agree completely. The Parthians were a distinct people, not Greek at
all, influenced by the Greeks, for a time ruled by the Greeks, but much
more in the Persian/Iranian camp than the Greek camp. But you know the
Parthians far better than me, your site being the Internet's top site on
this coinage, and fairly spectacular.
> And if you still think I contradict myself, well, very well, I
> contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. :)
Some poet or other said that, I think. <g>
Bruce Remick
"Clyde Crashcup" <cl...@crashcup.xxx> wrote in message
Nobody listens to him anymore at the local coin club so he posts his
treasured coin recollections here for all to marvel at, even though RCC has
become a festering wasteland ripe with Bruce Remicks and a dodo. He's
already completed his own obituary and has established a special savings
account so his heirs can afford the multi-page spread.
tony cooper
Or "whom", for that matter.
tony cooper
No, our written language is being destroyed by the text message. The
opposable thumb - which once set Man apart from the lesser animals -
has now become a typing instrument that is incapable of proper
capitalization or spelling.
Clyde Crashcup
> On 2/20/2010 11:18 PM, Bruce Remick wrote:
>
>> Nobody listens to him anymore at the local coin club so he posts his
>> treasured coin recollections here for all to marvel at, even though RCC has
>
That hardly comes as a surprise to RCC regulars, moron. <g>
We all just naturally assumed your arrogance, abrasiveness and egomania got you
booted out of any club that was foolish enough to let you in in the first place!
<g>
Have a nice day. <g>
Clyde Crashcup
Then off with their thumbs, I say.
som...@some.domain
>But let me try to get no more distracted than I already have by focusing
>on what you said above about coins. I also remember seeing Walkers too
>as a kid. But what got me interested in coin collecting was getting from
>my grandfather his collection of Morgan and Peace dollars, about 30, as
>I recall. For some reason that I don't remember I went the type
>collecting route after this, buying no silver dollars, while as I
>mentioned my best friend at the time filled Whitman folders with more
>recent coins. We would take the bus to a local coin shop in the burbs,
>then started taking the train into the city, buying at shops and even a
>few auctions. We were 13 and 14 years old, those years anyway. I
>remember eating at King of Pizza in the city each time, sausage pizza,
>sprinkling lots of oregano on it. One time we both slept past our stop
>on the way home.
>
>I remember early into my type collecting showing off to a dealer a coin
>I had bought -- don't remember from whom. The dealer asked if he could
>try something. I said sure. He bent it over the edge of his counter,
>with it easily bending. It was a lead-alloy counterfeit of a Barber
>coin, a half if I recall correctly, maybe a quarter. I wish I kept it. <g>
>
best, though i did keep the keys from the other 2. meaning just the 21's and
obverse mint mark. and the 38 d's.
i think i mentioned long ago that i like large cents. i used to get lower
grades for money that makes me cry now. why didn't i....whatever. those
clunky old bits are fun. when i started, i didn't know i collected by variety.
i just bought stuff that looked different from stuff i had. i'm glad. i don't
have any grear rarities, but i do have some great coins. even some nice rb and
b uncs.
i've gotten a few fake coppers, but always mixed in with lots. a couple stick
to electric magnets or rare earth ones. they're fun to look at and have their
own little book.
i'll never have some of the really rare ones, but neither will many
collector's. and do i really need 21 1855's? well, there are both major
variety's and one has a die crack i can watch grow through looking at them.
Bruce Remick
> On 2/20/2010 11:18 PM, Bruce Remick wrote:
>
>> treasured coin recollections here for all to marvel at, even though RCC
>> has
>
> three or four, and the two times I went there didn't appear to be anyone
> younger than 70 except a coin dealer leading the proceedings, and it was
> all U.S. coins, mostly Barbers and Morgans, so it wasn't for me. Still,
> something else you can harangue about. I'm elitist! Or maybe there's
> something else you can attack that you haven't already in this thread or
> others.
No. I think I've about covered it all. And what do you have against
people 70 or older? Would you have stayed on if the club members were all
youngsters so you could gather them as a captive audience with mouths agape
to listen to your adventures of how you started collecting coins?
You are so easy to "attack", and your flowery replies are so predictable. I
have nothing at all against your knowledge of coins and numismatics. I'm
sure it far exceeds mine. It's just your presentation that seems to leave
you vulnerable. But then that's your call.
Bruce Remick
Evolution? Except what you describe is happening almost overnight-- much
more faster than one would expect in normal evolution. Perhaps next, people
will stop using pennies. Or else will use their thumbs to count them out.
Reid Goldsborough
> i had to get all the walkers. 3 times....then i grew up, kept one set of the
> best, though i did keep the keys from the other 2. meaning just the 21's and
> obverse mint mark. and the 38 d's.
Walkers are a very cool series. Big coins, silver, extremely attractive,
among the three most beautifully designed of all U.S. coins, I'd say,
and unlike the others much more affordable. If you had posted this when
I was a kid I probably would have tried something similar. <g>
I sold off all of my collection as a teenager when I stopped collecting.
Wish I hadn't. I feel especially bad about selling my grandfather's
silver dollars. My mother was mildly piqued at my doing that but only
mildly. I wish today I had kept at least one. I got little for all of
it. Took it to the local coin shop where I had bought a lot of stuff
previously. All he did was talk everything down. I knew what he was
doing but didn't want to spend the time shopping the coins around so I
just took the money and ran. Dumb kid.
Mr. Jaggers
> On 2/21/2010 12:28 AM, som...@some.domain wrote:
>
>> i had to get all the walkers. 3 times....then i grew up, kept one
>> set of the best, though i did keep the keys from the other 2.
>> meaning just the 21's and obverse mint mark. and the 38 d's.
>
> Walkers are a very cool series. Big coins, silver, extremely
> attractive, among the three most beautifully designed of all U.S.
> coins, I'd say, and unlike the others much more affordable. If you
> had posted this when I was a kid I probably would have tried
> something similar. <g>
> I sold off all of my collection as a teenager when I stopped
> collecting. Wish I hadn't. I feel especially bad about selling my
> grandfather's silver dollars. My mother was mildly piqued at my doing
> that but only mildly. I wish today I had kept at least one. I got
> little for all of it. Took it to the local coin shop where I had
> bought a lot of stuff previously. All he did was talk everything
> down. I knew what he was doing but didn't want to spend the time
> shopping the coins around so I just took the money and ran. Dumb kid.
Like you, I sold my collection when I was eighteen, in my case to raise
money for college. I kept only two pieces from that collection, a 1787
British shilling and a Maria Teresa restrike thaler. Those were enough
"seed" to gnaw at me until a couple of decades later when I started all over
again.
I like to think that I made *most* of my collecting errors as a kid, but
reality dictates otherwise.
James the Only Somewhat Reconstructed
Clyde Crashcup
> This year marks exactly ten years of my beginning coin collecting again.
...<massive snippage>...
Tell me, Goldie, are you as boring and long-winded in person?
I'd hate to be stuck next to you on a x-country or international flight!
As that noted wit Mr. Bugs Bunny oft opined "What a maroon!"
som...@some.domain
>On 2/21/2010 12:28 AM, som...@some.domain wrote:
>
>> i had to get all the walkers. 3 times....then i grew up, kept one set of the
>> best, though i did keep the keys from the other 2. meaning just the 21's and
>> obverse mint mark. and the 38 d's.
>
>Walkers are a very cool series. Big coins, silver, extremely attractive,
>among the three most beautifully designed of all U.S. coins, I'd say,
>and unlike the others much more affordable. If you had posted this when
>I was a kid I probably would have tried something similar. <g>
>
>I sold off all of my collection as a teenager when I stopped collecting.
>Wish I hadn't. I feel especially bad about selling my grandfather's
>silver dollars. My mother was mildly piqued at my doing that but only
>mildly. I wish today I had kept at least one. I got little for all of
>it. Took it to the local coin shop where I had bought a lot of stuff
>previously. All he did was talk everything down. I knew what he was
>doing but didn't want to spend the time shopping the coins around so I
>just took the money and ran. Dumb kid.
>
folks and sibs. it was the only way i would have gotten 8 seated dollars.
still love the walkers.
som...@some.domain
Nick Knight
>bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.
But that's what makes them so fun!
Nick
- "378 down, plenty left to find"
(and that's not counting the bogo collection :)
Nick Knight
at 10:29 PM, "Clyde Crashcup" <cl...@crashcup.xxx> babbled:
>Ahhhhhhhh shaddup, you festering gob of conceit.
Perfect. Another one for the bit bucket.
<plonk>
Nick
Nick Knight
>>"Skiddoo?." Oh, I give up.
>>
>Or "whom", for that matter.
Well, I guess this is better than the Latin tangent of awhile back. Yeah, I
guess.
Nick
mazorj
> <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote:
>
>>at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my analysis of the
>>proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the subject of a query post. I
>>did it as a relative newbie, from the point of a classically trained Latin
>>scholar, and that was all it took.
>
> period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
> violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
> consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
> style choice.
Having had the old AP style manual drummed into me, I would put the period
inside the close quote because the entire sentence consists of the Twain
quote. If the sentence ends with just a word or phrase inside quotes, I put
the period outside the "close quote". As you imply, a competent writer can
stay inside the prescriptive mode or be one of those who contribute to the
body of descriptive grammar usage rules that over time may even become
prescriptive. After you've learned all the prescriptive rules so that (note
comma inside the quotes, another AP style holdover) "you know better,"
there's nothing wrong with forging a few of your own usages as long as they
aren't too extreme and you have a reasonable explanation of what you're
doing and why.
>>"But behold, there be they who, having a
>>specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth
>>essay it, nor can abide it in them long." - Mark Twain
mazorj
"Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message
news:hlq84...@enews1.newsguy.com...
>
> James the Indecisive
Is this just when it's a stand-alone noun, or when it's used in a title,
e.g., "President Bill Clinton"?
Having cut my stylistic teeth on the AP Style Manual, I lower-case the noun
but UC the title. I still stumble over the antiquated formalistic
capitalizations that you find in business and legal writing. "The
Corporation observes all Regulations under under the Act as promulgated by
your Agency."
Thankfully, I never had to wrestle with the CMS. Too many of its nit-picky
rules appear to be intended for formal academic and legal requirements or to
please overweening prescriptive grammar kops, and not for everyday use. I
had one nice very old lady as a copy editor who meekly tried to impose CMS
on my scribblings. I politely but firmly ignored most of her suggestions.
- mazorj
"whom ain't got no use for silly speling or grammer rules. or the caps key
EXCEPT ON USENET!!!!!!"
Reid Goldsborough
> Like you, I sold my collection when I was eighteen, in my case to raise
> money for college. I kept only two pieces from that collection, a 1787
> British shilling and a Maria Teresa restrike thaler.
Ever go back to Maria? I find these interesting, and they're one of my
areas, though I haven't yet gotten a chance to read or read through the
2005 book A Silver Legend - The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler by
Clara Semple. On my to-do list. I have read maybe a half dozen journal
articles, and have, let's see, an original 1765 Maria Theresa thaler,
1765, from Hall, Tyrol, KM 746, a 19th century restrike, made in Vienna,
Leypold T4, Hafner 49, and a recent Austrian restrike, KM T1. Miniset. <g>
Clyde Crashcup
> On 2/21/2010 10:56 AM, Mr. Jaggers wrote:
>
>> Like you, I sold my collection when I was eighteen, in my case to raise
>> money for college. I kept only two pieces from that collection, a 1787
>> British shilling and a Maria Teresa restrike thaler.
>
> Ever go back to Maria? I find these interesting, and they're one of my areas,
> though I haven't yet gotten a chance to read or read through the 2005 book A
> Silver Legend - The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler by Clara Semple. On my
> to-do list. I have read maybe a half dozen journal articles, and have, let's
> see, an original 1765 Maria Theresa thaler, 1765, from Hall, Tyrol, KM 746, a
> 19th century restrike, made in Vienna, Leypold T4, Hafner 49, and a recent
> Austrian restrike, KM T1. Miniset. <g>
Why the need for the <g>?
You didn't say anything even remotely humorous.
Or is just you being your typical fatuous ass?
Clyde Crashcup
> Sometimes you get sucked in, and drawn down, to their depth, into the sewer,
> or I do anyway.
Goldie, old top, the sewer would be a step UP for you.
Have a nice day.
som...@some.domain
exactly. too bad both have gotten pricey.
you still have theat page on the bogs?
som...@some.domain
(ok, i swiped that from john brunner.)
Mr. Jaggers
Qu'est-ce que Gustave a dit?
Jacques
Mr. Jaggers
> "Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message
> news:hlq84...@enews1.newsguy.com...
>> tony cooper wrote:
>>> On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:45:22 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
>>> <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a
>>>> short time, at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for
>>>> my analysis of the proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the
>>>> subject of a query post. I did it as a relative newbie, from the
>>>> point of a classically trained Latin scholar, and that was all it
>>>> took.
>>>
>>> To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
>>> period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
>>> violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
>>> consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded
>>> as a style choice.
>>
>> I've had a lot of surprises after reading the latest edition of the
>> Chicago Manual of Style, which I received as a Christmas gift. A
>> lot of the rules I learned in school have changed, it seems. For
>> example, we were taught that one should always capitalize President
>> skiddoo". Or is it "skiddoo."? "Skiddoo?." Oh, I give up.
>>
>> James the Indecisive
>
> Is this just when it's a stand-alone noun, or when it's used in a
> title, e.g., "President Bill Clinton"?
>
> Having cut my stylistic teeth on the AP Style Manual, I lower-case
> the noun but UC the title. I still stumble over the antiquated
> formalistic capitalizations that you find in business and legal
> writing. "The Corporation observes all Regulations under under the
> Act as promulgated by your Agency."
>
> Thankfully, I never had to wrestle with the CMS. Too many of its
> nit-picky rules appear to be intended for formal academic and legal
> requirements or to please overweening prescriptive grammar kops, and
> not for everyday use. I had one nice very old lady as a copy editor
> who meekly tried to impose CMS on my scribblings. I politely but
> firmly ignored most of her suggestions.
> - mazorj
> "whom ain't got no use for silly speling or grammer rules. or the
> caps key EXCEPT ON USENET!!!!!!"
Well, damn!
James the Profane
Mr. Jaggers
> On 2/21/2010 10:56 AM, Mr. Jaggers wrote:
>
>> Like you, I sold my collection when I was eighteen, in my case to
>> raise money for college. I kept only two pieces from that
>> collection, a 1787 British shilling and a Maria Teresa restrike
>> thaler.
>
> Ever go back to Maria? I find these interesting, and they're one of my
> areas, though I haven't yet gotten a chance to read or read through
> the 2005 book A Silver Legend - The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler
> by Clara Semple. On my to-do list. I have read maybe a half dozen
> journal articles, and have, let's see, an original 1765 Maria Theresa
> thaler, 1765, from Hall, Tyrol, KM 746, a 19th century restrike, made
> in Vienna, Leypold T4, Hafner 49, and a recent Austrian restrike, KM
> T1. Miniset. <g>
Not sure what you mean by "going back" to Maria, but the coin I kept from
that old collection was/is toned a beautiful light bluish around the
periphery on both sides (I had it and the shilling stored in a Sucrets
tin!), just a hint on the interior, and I take it out and cartwheel it in
the light every time I visit. I also managed to acquire an original, I
think it's Craig 50, that has very nice toning as well.
I assume you know of the websites that deal with the MTT.
James
Clyde Crashcup
"Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message
> I assume you know of the websites that deal with the MTT.
If he didn't, he'd never admit it.
See this web site for insight into Goldie's issues:
Right Man Syndrome by Andrew T. AustinAn Exploration of Right Man Syndrome By
Andrew T. Austin, author, trainer, therapist.
http://www.rightmansyndrome.com/
Bruce Remick
> engage those who flame and bait, but briefly before ignoring it, mostly
> ignoring it. Right now Bruce Remick seems to be the lead flamebaiter, but
> others have served this role in the past, responding as he has done
> recently to every post or most posts with flame junk, just being
> disruptive, trying to sabotage threads, then as he's doing now trying to
> explain it away by saying they're engaging in some kind of high art.
One of your favorite tactics is to rag on your critics in your responses to
others, not to the critic, especially after the initial flame has been
extinguished. You obviously consider all comments that in any way demeans
what you say as "flamebaiting". You know you would never call me a moron
or challenge me to my face, so you're quite safe at your keyboard. No need
to whine to Nick the Plonker about me. Why not address your comments to me.
I'm right here. I was content to move on here until you just had to sneak
in your dig on me in a response to Nick, which by the way had nothing
whatsoever to do with coins.
I see you've found a few friends now so enjoy yourself. I won't butt in,
unless of course you decide to mention me again in a post to someone else
and I happen to notice it.
>
> Sometimes you get sucked in, and drawn down, to their depth, into the
> sewer, or I do anyway. Others have been attacked in a similarly obsessive
> way here over the years, Ira, Frank, Fred, and so on. As I said I believe
> it's the flame junk combined with the excessive off-topic chat about the
> weather and such that's the chief reason Usenet is in such decline. Still,
> you pick out the nuggets, and there are some, still making it worthwhile
> to check things out once in a while. And as others have pointed out, there
> are differences among different newsgroups, but as far as I have seen, and
> as reported by others as well, this is the general trend.
You must have quite a reach if you have concluded that all Usenet is in
such a decline and that you know why. Haven't you noticed that the most
prolific and active threads in RCC seem to be the OT ones or ones that you
initiate? People just enjoying themselves. With such a severe decline here
in RCC, I have to wonder who you thought would be left to care about your
million word treatise on how you started collecting coins.
Why is it that you seem to be the only one who feels stymied here by
"flames"?
Clyde Crashcup
> While in Scottsdale, my wife, kids, and I visited the Buffalo Museum of
> America.
Does anyone doubt that Reid is probably henpecked to the point of emasculation
and that his wife wears the pants in their relationship?
It would explain why he has to come here to huff and puff about what a genius he
is.
Nick Knight
>>>bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.
>>
>>But that's what makes them so fun!
>>
>>Nick
>> - "378 down, plenty left to find"
>>
>>(and that's not counting the bogo collection :)
>exactly. too bad both have gotten pricey.
>you still have theat page on the bogs?
It hasn't been updated in quite some time, although it IS on my "to do"
list:
http://www.mr2ice.com/coins/bogos/bogolist.html
Nick
som...@some.domain
profit but no honor in his own land.
som...@some.domain
som...@some.domain
that's ok. it's still fun. there is too little goddam fun in the world.
Relayer
wrote:
> This year marks exactly ten years of my beginning coin collecting again.
> will be long (winded). Consider this post a medium-length magazine
> article, though more personal and less focused. Though this includes
> some dealer criticism, and some dealers may consider it anti-dealer, it
> also includes some dealer praise, and I consider it, overall,
> pro-dealer, pro-collector, and pro-numismatics. This may be a prelude to
> something else, or not. An earlier version of this, dealing almost
> entirely with ancient coins, appeared elsewhere.
>
> During the summer of 2000 I found myself standing over a bowl of Indian
> Head cents and another of Buffalo nickels. I had been invited to give a
> talk about the Internet at a national marketing convention in
> Scottsdale, Arizona. I wrote and still write a nationally syndicated
> newspaper/magazine column about computers and the Internet, and before
> this I wrote a book about the future of the Internet, which was used
> among other places in some college classrooms during the 13 minutes in
> which it was still up to date.
>
> While in Scottsdale, my wife, kids, and I visited the Buffalo Museum of
> cents priced at $1 each, the nickels at $2 each. Like many collectors
> today I collected as a kid, U.S. type coins for me while my best friend
> at the time worked on Whitman sets, before like many I gave up
> collecting for other things. In this little museum, almost exactly 30
> years later, I couldn't take my eyes of these beat-up old coins. I
> bought one Indian Head cent and one Buffalo nickel. Total outlay: $3.
> What possible harm could this lead to?
>
> At the end of that summer the ANA had its big national show in
> Philadelphia, close to us. OK, I'll go. First day I bought the most
> affordable nice enough coin I could find having a date beginning with
> the numbers 17. I couldn't afford a 1798 large cent when I was a kid.
> The next day I bought a 1908 no-motto Saint, feeling genuinely guilty
> about the money I was spending.
>
> It was all downhill from there. This Saint quickly led me to what I
> regarded and still regard as the most fabulous of all U.S. coins, Bust
> dollars with heraldic eagle reverses. The 1804 dollar is considered the
> "king" of American coins not only because of its rarity and the
> circumstances surrounding its minting but also, I'd contend, because of
> the beauty of its design, and the 1798 to 1903 heraldic eagle Bust
> dollars have all the beauty without the stratospheric priceyness.
>
> I went fairly crazy with Bust dollars, creating several sets of these
> fairly big-ticket items, then wound up buying and selling for profit,
> playing dealer, buying what I regarded as undervalued Bust dollars at
> national and local coin shows as well as through eBay and selling
> entirely through eBay, doing well. My column at the time was being
> published among other places in AirTran's in-flight magazine, before
> AirTran switched publishers, and as payment here I received free
> airfare, so I wound up going not only to the NY Int'l and Baltimore
> shows by car and train but also by plane to the F.U.N. show and Chicago
> Int'l each year. In retrospect I probably should have also gone to a few
> Long Beach shows, but I didn't want to take advantage.
>
> I also began going backward in time, before the onset of U.S. coinage.
> The further back I looked the more interesting it seemed. All other
> things being equal, old is more interesting, but all other things aren't
> equal. Ancient coins, particularly ancient Greek coins, are considered
> by many today, myself included, as the most beautiful of all coins,
> though some modern U.S. and world coins give the Greeks a, well, run for
> their money. Ancient coins also have some terribly interesting history,
> with science, democracy, western philosophy, and the entire western way
> of life having its origins in ancient Greece. Rome copied Greece, and
> the founding fathers of the U.S. copied Rome.
>
> So I wound up focusing mostly on ancient Greek coins, more engaging to
> me in general than Roman coins. Just as Rome copied Greece with
> mythology, philosophy, science, architecture, and so on, it also copied
> Greek coins, only made them in general smaller, more often debased, and
> less attractive artistically. Rome also made the same mistake the U.S.
> has made over the past hundred years or so, in my view, by using human
> portraits as primary, obverse devices rather than more imaginative and
> inspirational symbolic or mythological figures.
>
> Greek coins were fantastic. I began specializing in discrete areas --
> Alexander the Great, Athenian Owls, pre-Greek Lydian electrum, etc., 21
> Greek-era areas in all, as of right now. I've also elected to focus on
> three Roman areas and several later areas, including English pennies
> through the centuries, Pieces of Eight and other Age of Exploration
> trade coins, Bust dollars, Saints, and a whacky set of holed U.S. types
> coins that I'm able to acquire for under $10 each (still looking for a
> holed Presidential dollar, if anybody comes across one).
>
> I've tried going deep in each area, soaking up as many journal articles
> and books as I could along with the coins, and still do. The acquisition
> of knowledge for me is just as enjoyable as the acquisition of coins,
> and I've spent many enjoyable hours at the libraries of the ANS and the
> University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, near
> me. The ANA library has also been a good resource for me, as has Ted
> Buttrey, the well-respected numismatist and all-around good guy from the
> mother ship who has graciously put up with my disagreeableness about his
> thinking on Egyptian Owls.
>
> Fairly early on in beginning to collect again, however, I got caught up
> again in what partly led me to quit coin collecting back as a teenager.
> I got sucked in by the inevitable pull toward greed and deception. I
> suppose this is something that everybody who collects, and even more so
> everybody who deals, has to wrestle with, more or less. How honest will
> you be? By honest I'm referring not only to the accuracy of the
> information you knowingly communicate -- errors of commission -- but
> also whether you communicate all the relevant information you know --
> errors of omission.
>
> With me, with one particular eBay sale, I withheld information when
> selling a Bust dollar, not disclosing in full how I believed the
> surfaces looked in hand. I had been asked by someone who turned out to
> be the winning bidder if I saw anything that my fairly revealing photo
> didn't reveal. The surfaces of this raw, unslabbed coin were pretty
> rough, with excessive porosity for a coin of this type (I hadn't paid
> much it), appearing this way more so with the coin in hand than in the
> photo. I felt bad about not fully disclosing this, saying instead
> something, which I don't recall exactly, that only approached full
> disclosure. The buyer didn't return the piece or complain. But he left
> no feedback either, positive or negative. I knew he must have known that
> I didn't disclose what I knew.
>
> Granted, this was far from the worst of numismatic sins, and I know that
> many dealers inevitably do similar things as part of making a living
> through dealing. You put coins in the best possible light, figuratively
> and actually. Most dealers appear to adhere to the maxim that if asked,
> you disclose, if not, you don't. But some, I know, don't even when
> asked. In this particular case I didn't disclose either. On the other
> hand, some dealers, even those at the top of the profession, don't
> disclose what they should, including serious concerns from reliable
> sources, at times even the most respected museum and academic people in
> the world, about the authenticity of expensive and sometimes very
> expensive coins.
>
> But mostly, I believe, the majority of coin dealers do the right thing
> in the majority of cases, pulling questionable coins and describing
> coins accurately, though forgery-detection skills, the use of
> hyperbole/exaggeration, grading accuracy, and attribution accuracy vary
> widely. Still, dealers as a whole can be trusted as a reliable means of
> building an enjoyable collection, as I've said many times.
>
> The old saw in numismatics very much applies, that to better protect
> yourself from fakes you should buy from reputable and knowledgeable
> dealers, even if this protection is not or could ever be ironclad or
> foolproof and even if having your own expertise provides additional
> protection in itself. Dealers are still indispensable, today, in the age
> of the Internet when collectors can easily buy and sell to one another
> directly. Because they handle so many coins, the sharpest coin dealers
> will be better at coin authentication than the sharpest collectors or
> academics ... provided the inevitable self-interest doesn't excessively
> cloud their perceptions. Dealers are also very good at making markets --
> bringing sellers and buyers together.
>
> I don't want to give too much weight to my little guilt trip over this
> one incident of nondisclosure, since a number of other factors were and
> are involved in my attitudes and decisions about numismatics. I respect
> the profession of coin dealing as I respect the category of retailing in
> general. My mother's father owned a small retail hardware store for some
> 60 years, and when in high school I helped out there one summer. I've
> also spent a little time selling at computer swap shows, which are
> similar to large coin shows in that you stand behind a table, your wares
> in front of you, trying to sell to those who stop at your table.
>
> So coin dealing turned out not to be for me. I stopped selling on my own
> for profit, though since then I have offloaded coins on occasion when
> cleaning out dupes, extraneous material, and coins in areas I thought I
> would specialize in but never did, selling to or through dealers.
>
> This episode of ...
>
> read more �
If I bid and win on a coin off of Ebay and if it dosen't remarkably
look like the photo, I return it and I don't bid on "no return" unless
the coin is graded and one of the big three and slabbed. I learned
this after getting coins where lighting or photoshop were used to
enhance the appearance. If I am not sure, I question the seller, just
to have a record of the inquiry.
Reid Goldsborough
> If I bid and win on a coin off of Ebay and if it dosen't remarkably
> look like the photo, I return it and I don't bid on "no return" unless
> the coin is graded and one of the big three and slabbed. I learned
> this after getting coins where lighting or photoshop were used to
> enhance the appearance. If I am not sure, I question the seller, just
> to have a record of the inquiry.
This happens a lot, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, it seems.
Many dealers blast a darkly patinated bronze coin with high-intensity
light, or bump up the lightness and contrast in an image editing
program, so bidders can better see the coin's details. Of course, when
you actually have the coin in hand, the details can only been seen if
you do the same things -- under ordinary light the details are obscured.
My view is that if this is done, it should be disclosed when selling the
coin, something like, "Coin image was lightened to make details better
identifiable." But this doesn't seem to be the norm.
There are lots of other ways that coin images can be photoshopped to
improve them, even more blatantly deceptive. And there are lots of ways
that Photoshop and similar programs can be used to more closely make a
coin on screen look the way it looks in hand.
Anka
>
> read more �
Reid, you old windbag.
~Anka
Anka
> "Bruce Remick" <rem...@cox.net> wrote in message
>
> news:fo%fn.4975$bx3....@newsfe13.iad...
>
> > Seeing who the author is was enough. �You're not interested in getting
> > people to talk about coins. �You're interested in having people listen to
> > YOU talk about coins.
>
> This was accurate when I first posted it in 2003.http://mendosus.com/glomthis.html
>
> Unchanged, it retains its accuracy in 2010.
>
> (The little crying figure is Reid, in case some folk don't recognise him)
>
> :-)
>
> --
> Jeff
Jeff!
Still funny as hell...I mean...as ever.
~Anka
ANONYMOUS
news:2e021786-1b60-47be...@t42g2000vbt.googlegroups.com...
>Reid, you old windbag.
He's not THAT old...
Bruce Remick
> On 2/22/2010 7:52 PM, Anka wrote:
>
>> Reid, you old windbag.
>
> At least you didn't call it an autobiography. But I understand well how
> this 5,000-word post, which I pointed out would be long in the first
> paragraph and which I accurately described as long as a medium-length
> magazine article, would be too long for you, this Bruce Remick, and your
> ilk.
>
> After all, as part the Twitter generation, born after around 1990 or so,
> you no doubt find that anything longer than 140 characters, about 23
> words, give or take, does in fact seem like a book. So apologies for
> taxing your attention span. That's probably why you broke netiquette to
> quote the entire 5,000 words only to leave a four-word response rather
> than top posting or quoting just the first couple of lines to establish
> context, and why Remick criticized its length rather than offering a
> single thought about any of its content, which included my own experiences
> but went beyond them as well, with commentary about the various pleasures
> of numismatics, forgery and other deception in numismatics, buying
> sources, coin gift giving, ancient vs. modern coins, and ancient Greek vs.
> ancient Roman coins, to name six of the issues I covered. With much of
> this, I've made similar commentary here over the past decade, but there's
> new material as well, and there are lots of people here who haven't been
> here for ten years. Yes, it was a long post. At least no one shouted,
> "You're wasting bandwidth!" Ten years ago, when bandwidth was orders of
> magnitude less extensive, that might have been a valid criticism.
>
> The length of text disseminated over the Internet's various media and the
> various ways to deal with it is actually an interesting issue, something
> I've looked at in some detail. Not that this would be interesting to you,
> but I may be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. I'd be happy to clue you
> in -- just ask.
Sorry to see you're still criticizing me in your posts to others instead of
directing your comments directly to me. True to form. I guess it's hard to
change without therapy. Cowardice from the safety and anonymity of the home
keyboard. So I thought I'd reply, as I mentioned earlier, as long as you
choose to keep invoking my name.
If you had simply posted a couple brief paragraphs with a specific
discussion proposal, you might have gotten a better result. Instead you
drop a 5,000 word bomb on the group under the apparent assumption that
RCC'ers have long been waiting to hear you talk about at great length
yourself, your views, and your experiences. And with your usual pomposity
and in your ego-caressing style. Tired stuff anyone who has been here for a
couple of years has heard before. How characteristically presumptuous of
you.
Then, when someone actually does engage you, your first reaction from your
throne is to pronounce their view or experience as acceptable to you in your
usual condescending way. You always seem to enjoy taking several rambling
paragraphs to belabor the obvious, like you did here in response to a simple
four-word insult.
<g>
ANONYMOUS
Reid is a pompous, self-important blowhard - anyone who ever read one of his
posts knows that.
But the man is such an unintentional hoot that he bears reading, not being
kill-filed.
Not that I could bring myself to read the 1st post in this thread - that was
just Reid's not-so-little cockadoodle that he wanted to gas off in his
inimitable bombastic style.
Rather it is in his responses to his post(s) that he becomes fatuously humorous,
attacking anyone that has the temerity to not agree with everything he writes.
He's a "right man" by every definition.
Plus you just have to believe his wife henpecks him to the point where his only
release is to come to the Usenet to pontificate and blow off about what a big
man he is.
Peter
wrote:
> But I understand well how
> this ... would be too long for you, this Bruce Remick, and your
> ilk.
>
> After all, as part the Twitter generation, born after around 1990 or so,
> you no doubt find that anything longer than 140 characters, about 23
> words, give or take, does in fact seem like a book. So apologies for
> taxing your attention span.
I think you owe Mr. Remick an apology and probably Anka as well.
I know the Mr. Remick is even older than I am. You can safely assume
that he, being a retired US civil servant is able to read and
understand lengthy and complex tomes (well, at least in English). You
might also conclude as much from his careful and cogent replies to
your posts.
I recall that Anka claims a similar background and is probably
similarly adept, but I have seen fewer examples of her prose.
Peter
wrote:
> On 2/23/2010 12:24 PM, Bruce Remick wrote:
>
> > If you had simply posted a couple brief paragraphs with a specific
> > discussion proposal, you might have gotten a better result.
>
> Usenet newsgroups? Maybe total newbies who don't yet know what the group
> is all about. Otherwise, you just start the discussion. "May I have the
> group's permission to start a discussion. I propose posting a long
> message dealing with my ten years of collecting and commenting on
> various issues related to numismatics. Here are the issues I propose to
> discuss ... The post will be 4,975 words, as long as a medium-length
> magazine article. Is this OK with the group?" Idiot. You're just arguing
> stupidly.
>
> Some people, as they did, elected to participate in the discussion I
> started with my long post. Some didn't. You on the other hand elected to
> try to sabotage the thread by criticizing my starting it then
> idiotically trying to ridicule with the lie you made up that "nobody
> listens to him at the local coin club" and all the rest. You say I'm a
> "coward" because I'm at my keyboard calling you stupid for engaging in
> behavior like this. If you did the same stupidity in person,
> interrupting a conversation, trying to ridicule by making up lies, and
> so on, I'd also call you stupid. It's not like I'm not trying to take
> over the conversation here or preventing others from talking (like
> you're doing) or anything else that sometimes people do in person. Just
> starting one thread. If we were to meet by accident at a coin show, I'd
> say to your face that you acted stupidly here.
>
> > Instead you drop a 5,000 word bomb
>
> bomb." You can read it. Or not. There's zero harm in the post, unlike
> "dropping a bomb." It's not like I'm emailing someone with a dial-up
> connection a 10 MB attachment. My post took up all of 30 KB. People are
> harmed when bombs are dropped on them. Nobody is hurt when somebody
> leaves an on-topic post in a Usenet newsgroup. Idiot.
>
> And the sad thing is that Usenet is increasingly populated by idiots
> like you. Look at some of those who post under false names or no names
> here. It's worse than it's ever been. Some of these people genuinely
> appear to be mentally disturbed. The way you're acting here, you're not
> far behind. One person in the past here did as you did, only he did it
> habitually, tossing out one lie after another, making up false
> accusations out of whole cloth, with no bearing on reality, totally
> obsessed. You can be similarly sociopathological ... just do more of the
> same.
>
> --
>
> Consumer:http://rg.ancients.info/guide
> Connoisseur:http://rg.ancients.info/glom
> Counterfeit:http://rg.ancients.info/bogos
Once again, I believe you owe Mr. Remick and apology.
After your recent post, I have to wonder if you have omitted some
important medication ...
Anka
wrote:
> On 2/22/2010 7:52 PM, Anka wrote:
>
> > Reid, you old windbag.
>
> this 5,000-word post, which I pointed out would be long in the first
> magazine article, would be too long for you, this Bruce Remick, and your
> ilk.
>
> After all, as part the Twitter generation, born after around 1990 or so,
> you no doubt find that anything longer than 140 characters, about 23
> words, give or take, does in fact seem like a book. So apologies for
> quote the entire 5,000 words only to leave a four-word response rather
> than top posting or quoting just the first couple of lines to establish
> context, and why Remick criticized its length rather than offering a
> single thought about any of its content, which included my own
> experiences but went beyond them as well, with commentary about the
> various pleasures of numismatics, forgery and other deception in
> numismatics, buying sources, coin gift giving, ancient vs. modern coins,
> and ancient Greek vs. ancient Roman coins, to name six of the issues I
> covered. With much of this, I've made similar commentary here over the
> past decade, but there's new material as well, and there are lots of
> people here who haven't been here for ten years. Yes, it was a long
> post. At least no one shouted, "You're wasting bandwidth!" Ten years
> have been a valid criticism.
>
> The length of text disseminated over the Internet's various media and
> the various ways to deal with it is actually an interesting issue,
> something I've looked at in some detail. Not that this would be
> interesting to you, but I may be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. I'd
> be happy to clue you in -- just ask.
>
>
> Consumer:http://rg.ancients.info/guide
> Connoisseur:http://rg.ancients.info/glom
> Counterfeit:http://rg.ancients.info/bogos
Wow. You've got a 100 word sentence in that paragraph. Try and
diagram that!
~Anka
Anka
wrote:
> On 2/23/2010 12:24 PM, Bruce Remick wrote:
>
> > discussion proposal, you might have gotten a better result.
>
> Usenet newsgroups? Maybe total newbies who don't yet know what the group
> is all about. Otherwise, you just start the discussion. "May I have the
> group's permission to start a discussion. I propose posting a long
> message dealing with my ten years of collecting and commenting on
> various issues related to numismatics. Here are the issues I propose to
> discuss ... The post will be 4,975 words, as long as a medium-length
> magazine article. Is this OK with the group?" Idiot. You're just arguing
> stupidly.
>
> Some people, as they did, elected to participate in the discussion I
> started with my long post. Some didn't. You on the other hand elected to
> try to sabotage the thread by criticizing my starting it then
> idiotically trying to ridicule with the lie you made up that "nobody
> listens to him at the local coin club" and all the rest. You say I'm a
> "coward" because I'm at my keyboard calling you stupid for engaging in
> behavior like this. If you did the same stupidity in person,
> interrupting a conversation, trying to ridicule by making up lies, and
> so on, I'd also call you stupid. It's not like I'm not trying to take
> over the conversation here or preventing others from talking (like
> you're doing) or anything else that sometimes people do in person. Just
> starting one thread. If we were to meet by accident at a coin show, I'd
> say to your face that you acted stupidly here.
>
>
> bomb." You can read it. Or not. There's zero harm in the post, unlike
> "dropping a bomb." It's not like I'm emailing someone with a dial-up
> connection a 10 MB attachment. My post took up all of 30 KB. People are
> harmed when bombs are dropped on them. Nobody is hurt when somebody
> leaves an on-topic post in a Usenet newsgroup. Idiot.
>
> And the sad thing is that Usenet is increasingly populated by idiots
> like you. Look at some of those who post under false names or no names
> here. It's worse than it's ever been. Some of these people genuinely
> appear to be mentally disturbed. The way you're acting here, you're not
> far behind. One person in the past here did as you did, only he did it
> habitually, tossing out one lie after another, making up false
> accusations out of whole cloth, with no bearing on reality, totally
> obsessed. You can be similarly sociopathological ... just do more of the
> same.
>
>
> Consumer:http://rg.ancients.info/guide
> Connoisseur:http://rg.ancients.info/glom
> Counterfeit:http://rg.ancients.info/bogos
Don't hold back, Reid! Let 'er rip!
~Anka
Anka
wrote:
> That's probably why you broke netiquette to
> quote the entire 5,000 words only to leave a four-word response rather
> than top posting or quoting just the first couple of lines to establish
> context....>
I did nothing different. This was an anomaly perpetrated by Google.
If you don't believe me, check out my umpteen other replies to longer
posts, all of which were condensed into a link.
So there.
~Anka
Anka
Thanks so much for your support, Peter, but I'm just having a little
fun here yanking Reid's chain. Retirement can be so boring. ;-)
Anka
US Civil Servant (retired)
Bruce Remick
> On 2/23/2010 12:24 PM, Bruce Remick wrote:
>
>> discussion proposal, you might have gotten a better result.
>
> Usenet newsgroups? Maybe total newbies who don't yet know what the group
> is all about. Otherwise, you just start the discussion. "May I have the
> group's permission to start a discussion. I propose posting a long message
> dealing with my ten years of collecting and commenting on various issues
> related to numismatics. Here are the issues I propose to discuss ... The
Idiot??? Sounds like I hit a nerve. And FOUR paragraphs to respond to my
two sentences? You just don't listen, do you.
I didn't realize you were THAT naive. Topics usually are initiated by
posting an idea, question, observation, etc. This is typically done within
a single paragraph covering a single topic or issue. It is easily
understood whether the OP is soliciting comments, an answer, or discussion.
What you hoped to evoke, other than some grief and maybe a fan club, with
your 5000-word autobiography is beyond me. Especially considering your
history of playing with others in this group. Naive is not a strong enough
word here. You are totally missing the attitudes of many out there who may
be biting there lip while remaining more diplomatic, disinterested, and
reluctant to posts the comments than me. I suspect many aren't even
following this thread....all because of me, eh? How you choose to
participate in RCC is none of my business, but your posts here will always
remain fair game. Sorry if this falls into your beloved category of
"flamebaiting". I never intended to make you cry. <g>
>
> Some people, as they did, elected to participate in the discussion I
> started with my long post. Some didn't. You on the other hand elected to
> try to sabotage the thread by criticizing my starting it then idiotically
> trying to ridicule with the lie you made up that "nobody listens to him at
> the local coin club" and all the rest. You say I'm a "coward" because I'm
> at my keyboard calling you stupid for engaging in behavior like this. If
> you did the same stupidity in person, interrupting a conversation, trying
> to ridicule by making up lies, and so on, I'd also call you stupid. It's
> not like I'm not trying to take over the conversation here or preventing
> others from talking (like you're doing) or anything else that sometimes
> people do in person. Just starting one thread. If we were to meet by
> accident at a coin show, I'd say to your face that you acted stupidly
> here.
What conversation have I "interrupted"? I made up a lie? Are you serious?
Do you really feel everyone is out ot get you? If you criticized me in a
thread I started, I would ignore your post (oh, probably not) and
concentrate on anyone else who might have replied. I certainly wouldn't cry
to the group that you had ruined my post.
I guess you failed to notice that the couple people who did give you some
substantive input did so AFTER I "elected to sabotage this thread". What
dramatics! I guess I didn't do a very good job at it. Do you actually
believe I have intimidated others from posting here? Do you think maybe I
comitted a crime?
If you're convinced you would indeed call me stupid to my face for
criticizing you, you really do have a case of "home keyboard security".
And if you would also call me an idiot, you probably bring an attorney and
two witnesses with you whenever you go out in public. Big man on RCC, eh?
>
>> Instead you drop a 5,000 word bomb
>
> More stupidity. How is a post that's entirely on topic "dropping a bomb."
> You can read it. Or not. There's zero harm in the post, unlike "dropping a
> bomb." It's not like I'm emailing someone with a dial-up connection a 10
> MB attachment. My post took up all of 30 KB. People are harmed when bombs
> are dropped on them. Nobody is hurt when somebody leaves an on-topic post
> in a Usenet newsgroup. Idiot.
Your naivity is showing again. Taking my use of "bomb" semi-literally. You
definitely do need to get out among people more and read things other than
what you've written. You have been cloistered in your little coin room so
long that you never learned how to react to criticism-- or not.
>
> And the sad thing is that Usenet is increasingly populated by idiots like
> you. Look at some of those who post under false names or no names here.
> It's worse than it's ever been. Some of these people genuinely appear to
> be mentally disturbed. The way you're acting here, you're not far behind.
> One person in the past here did as you did, only he did it habitually,
> tossing out one lie after another, making up false accusations out of
> whole cloth, with no bearing on reality, totally obsessed. You can be
> similarly sociopathological ... just do more of the same.
I'm surprised that I have so ruined this group by criticizing you and your
original post. Only an idiot would be critical of you. When you ever get
through here though, why not count up the total number of posts in this
thread and compare the number to the "Snowy RCC" thread you badmouthed.
I'll bet yours gave some of the lurkers here some better laughs over an
otherwise quiet snowy winter, but not for the reason you might have wanted.
I'm only too glad to have maybe played a part in maintaining your
popularity.
<g>
Bruce Remick
"Peter" <w2...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b6edfe1-0f0c-41b9...@t11g2000vbc.googlegroups.com...
========
Thanks also for the nice comments. But I do believe Reid may have been
referring to the "Reid, you old windbag." poster as being of the Twitter
generation (2-year-olds?). But you never know. I'll admit that I'm still a
little confused by his words "...too long for you, this Bruce Remick, and
your ilk." I think I get the drift, but I guess I'm just not well read
enough to interpret this. Must be a typo. Or Shakespeare.
ANONYMOUS
> And the sad thing is that Usenet is increasingly populated by idiots like you.
> Look at some of those who post under false names or no names here. It's worse
> than it's ever been. Some of these people genuinely appear to be mentally
> disturbed. The way you're acting here, you're not far behind. One person in
> the past here did as you did, only he did it habitually, tossing out one lie
> after another, making up false accusations out of whole cloth, with no bearing
> on reality, totally obsessed. You can be similarly sociopathological ... just
> do more of the same.
Pot, Kettle, Black
Peter
>
> - Show quoted text -
Normally, I'm not at all bored, but once in a while I find time to
have a look at RCC.
Peter
USN civil servant (retired)
International (NATO) civil servant (retired)
Nick Knight
at 06:34 PM, "ANONYMOUS" <anon...@anonymous.anonymous> said:
>Pot, Kettle, Black
Very anonymously said. Duh. Now, let's see if I can find something in your
headers to use as a diagnostic kill.
<plonk>
Nick
mazorj
"Nick Knight" <bhnc...@mr2ice.com> wrote in message
news:4b84720c$1$avpx$mr2...@news.east.cox.net...
If you keep this up, Nick, the only posts you're going to see are your
own - unless you get carried away and plonk yourself, too. ;-)
Just relax, skim, and skip. You'll enjoy the random serendipitous
finds to be had on UseNet, and you'll live longer in the process.
- mazorj
"Please pass me the Valium and two of those Prilosec tablets."
Anka
> "Nick Knight" <bhnc_1...@mr2ice.com> wrote in message
>
> news:4b84720c$1$avpx$mr2...@news.east.cox.net...
>
> > In <NBZgn.11773$Ab2.4...@newsfe23.iad>, on 02/23/2010
> > � at 06:34 PM, "ANONYMOUS" <anonym...@anonymous.anonymous> said:
>
> >>Pot, Kettle, Black
>
> > Very anonymously said. �Duh. �Now, let's see if I can find something
> > in your
> > headers to use as a diagnostic kill.
>
> > <plonk>
>
> > Nick
>
> If you keep this up, Nick, the only posts you're going to see are your
> own - unless you get carried away and plonk yourself, too. �;-)
>
> Just relax, skim, and skip. �You'll enjoy the random serendipitous
> finds to be had on UseNet, and you'll live longer in the process.
>
> - mazorj
> "Please pass me the Valium and two of those Prilosec tablets."
This is funny.
~Anka
Anka
>
> - Show quoted text -
Peter, I was being fuhseeshus. Tell me more. USN. Navy?
~Anka
ANONYMOUS
"mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:hm1srh$1oo$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> "Nick Knight" <bhnc...@mr2ice.com> wrote in message
> news:4b84720c$1$avpx$mr2...@news.east.cox.net...
>> In <NBZgn.11773$Ab2....@newsfe23.iad>, on 02/23/2010
>> at 06:34 PM, "ANONYMOUS" <anon...@anonymous.anonymous> said:
>>
>>>Pot, Kettle, Black
>>
>> Very anonymously said. Duh. Now, let's see if I can find something in your
>> headers to use as a diagnostic kill.
>>
>> <plonk>
>>
>> Nick
>
> If you keep this up, Nick, the only posts you're going to see are your own -
> unless you get carried away and plonk yourself, too. ;-)
>
> Just relax, skim, and skip. You'll enjoy the random serendipitous finds to be
> had on UseNet, and you'll live longer in the process.
The way Nick uses his plonk reminds me of the now-gone, Dave Hinz, who finally
plonked himself out of existence.
Nick is probably on a slew of kill files himself - he periodically goes on mine.
Does anyone believe Nick Knight is really his name?
Nick Knight
>If you keep this up, Nick, the only posts you're going to see are your own
>- unless you get carried away and plonk yourself, too. ;-)
>Just relax, skim, and skip.
I've been reading a long, long time. And I find automatically removing
worthless drivel much more enjoyable than having to skim through it.
I only killfile those with a long history of wasting my time. In fact,
"relax" is the end result. So far, apparently, I haven't come even close to
the point where I'm reading only my own posts <grin>, which tells me that my
technique is working. Plenty left to read.
I do have a ton of users permanently killed. Some of them may no longer
post here ... I can't say, but either way I made a decision not to waste any
more time on them, and the results are good. Very recently I noticed that 2
extremelly verbose posters tended to feed off each other, taking
coin-related topics off into the weeds very quickly, and perpetuating the
discussions seemingly forever. I was a little reluctant to remove their
posts from my sight, but I have to tell you, I'm enjoying this group much
more, and posting negative comments much less. Well, recent couple of days
excepted.
To be honest, I only made it through a limited part of Reid's post. I guess
I do "skim and skip" on occassion :). However, from seeing replies and
follow-up to that first post, I see much irony in quotes of the two
verbosterously off-topic posters I've recently removed, complaining about
the length of Reid's on-topic text. If only they could be taught to skim
and skip! (and to do so quietly, and to be a little less full of themselves
if not). Certainly my world is a better place with some of the skipping
done automatically.
Specifically, I've always been particularly annoyed at posters hiding behind
anonymity. Who cares what a nameless, faceless chicken thinks? Certainly
not me.
Nick
Peter
>
> - Show quoted text -
Not in uniform, merely a civilian, here: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/
Reid Goldsborough
> Wow. You've got a 100 word sentence in that paragraph. Try and
> diagram that!
Hemingway and Falkner outdid this all the time. But you knew that.
som...@some.domain
som...@some.domain
>On 2/23/2010 5:32 PM, Anka wrote:
>
>> Wow. You've got a 100 word sentence in that paragraph. Try and
>> diagram that!
>
>Hemingway and Falkner outdid this all the time. But you knew that.
>
something about belly button lint, the council of nicea or maybe his laundry,
i forget. or was it about the popes dogma running away in avignon?
mazorj
"Anka" <ank...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:cd189841-b036-475e...@e1g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
Mair-zee bo-coops.
mazorj
On Feb 23, 8:17 pm, Anka <ank...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Feb 23, 7:05 pm, Peter <w2...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 23, 5:46 pm, Anka <ank...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 23, 3:46 pm, Peter <w2...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Peter
> > USN civil servant (retired)
> > International (NATO) civil servant (retired)
>
>
> ~Anka
>
I'm guessing your pre-1992 stint wasn't Suitland, but one of the waterside
venues south of the Navy Yard? Probably the first one?
- mazorj, former Hydrographer's 'Assistant'