Coin Collectors are Bullies
Mar...@lara.pathlink.com
collectors are bullies and asked also if I evaluate stamp collectors the same
way.
The easy answer is that philatelics (stamp collecting) is not as active a m
arket
as numismatics (coin collecting). Stamps have lower values both objectivel
y and
in the public mind. If you know Ayn Rand's essay from the Minkus Review, you
understand the motivations not only for stamp collecting, but also for coin
collecting, or for any hobby, really, any pasttime that exercises passive
enjoyment of a rational pursuit based on previously acquired knowledge.
I do not know many stamp collectors, per se, though I do have maybe a hundred
stamps myself, and know other people who do. For me and for them, this is an
adjunct to numismatics. Collecting, in the words of Clifford Mishler of Kr
ause,
is "a gene you do not inherit." Something makes some people collectors while
other people do not "get it" at all.
Also, these are GENERALIZATIONS about a large group of people (numismatists,
philatelists) and generalizations fail at the individual level. I am a
collector and I have good self esteem and am not a bully. I am not alone.
Lots
of rational people come and go in these hobbies.
However, in the main, among those who are passionate about coin collecting,
those who spend thousands of dollars a year on the hobby, who travel to shows
and conventions, who read books and magazines, numismatics is about WINNING at
any cost.
Truth is irrelevant. Coins from the bottom of the ocean are given secret
treatments and then certified MINT STATE. A dealer advertised a Trade Dollar
with a chop mark as "uncirculated" -- the ad came caught the eye of a collector
who wrote a letter to the editor that was printed in the newspaper that carried
the ad, but it was a happy little joke. No one was outraged. We expect this.
Since the truth is subjectively determined, the way to get more for your
material is to convince someone else that the object has qualities that it
objectively lacks. You talk them into disbelieving the evidence of their
senses. Psychic energy is the key to wealth in numismatics.
This is all a social context for the interractions of people in numismatics.
For me to "prove" that numismatists are bullies, all I would need to do is take
you to a bourse floor and let you watch the haggling.
This observation was brought to me by another numismatic writer. They were
trying to tell me about someone we both know and in describing this person with
average features, they mentioned more and more character traits. "Sound like a
schoolyard bully," I said and we both laughed. But it is true.
Please understand: I do not think this is "wrong" or "immoral." Personally, I
enjoy the process sometimes. I like to think of the bourse floor as a prac
ticum
for the bookwork. Either you know your coins or you do not and it all comes
down to the buy and the sell. But it is a far cry from, say, the sale of
superior motor oil to racecar teams, or the sale of chips to computer maker
s, or
even the nass sale of soda pop that brings you friends. Numismatics is a s
ocial
milieu in which the weak get eaten by the strong.
Who is "weak" and who is "strong" depends on complex personal factors.
Generally speaking, the most successful collectors and dealers I have met are
people who display obvious symptoms of low self esteem: slouching for instance.
Lying about anything and everything from the weather to the published price
of a
coin is typical. (I have seen a dealer pick up a price sheet and "quote" to a
customer a different price than the one published. Tough luck. It is the
buyer's business to know.) These are the behaviors of people who lack self
esteem. They substitute the ownership of things that impress other people for
actually feeling good about who they are. Never having built or invented or
created anything, they succeed in the eyes of others by overpowering others.
They depend on others in every way. They are not self sufficient.
To see these greedy grasping conniving scam artists as Randian heroes is to
mistake Hillary Clinton for a "selfish" woman.
But there are a lot of truly rational people of good self esteem who happen to
collect coins, stamps, autographs, or whatever. My collection (when I was
active) was focused the lives of Greek Philosophers and was inspired by Carl
Sagans COSMOS essay, "Backbone of the Night." It gives me a feeling of sec
urity
and pride and heck friendship to hold a small silver coin from Miletus 550 BC
and think that Thales might have counted it in his profits from cornering the
olive presses for a season. This little coin might have paid a rower on a
galley or a citizen armored for a day, not likely in defense of his own home,
but hired out with his pals as mercenaries in an adventure. So, there are
a lot
of motives to collect stuff.
When I buy a bronze token from the 1780s that says "Less Taxes; more Trade" or
"Good Copper Preferable to Paper" or celebrates a lawyer who got his client
cleared of a charge of treason, -- or an envelope carried on the first airmail
between Cleveland and Louisville -- I never pay more than I want to and I d
o not
care what the seller paid for it. I satisfy myself with my collection, as Ayn
Rand did, and millions of others do with theirs. That does not change the fact
that a dealer gets a thrill from fleecing me and that the thrill and the
fleecing are their motives.
And let us remember, that all collectors are dealers. If you want to see a
bunch of lying con artists, watch collectors trying to pass off material on
hapless dealers.
Numismatics is a lot of fun. In this over regulated socialized world, ther
e are
few opportunities to bathe in greed. However, I repeat that this is not the
rational greed of reward based on achievement in which someone buys something
that will make them in turn more productive. Most of this is irrational, range
of the moment, pragmatist, zero-sum gaming carried out by bullies and their
predefined victims.