My apologies to Yogi Berra but I came to that fork last Sunday and I took it.

Over the last couple of months I had begun to explore what it might take to improve the small group of dollars I had in my registry type set (since dismantled). These were the remnants of a US proof type set I had assembled years ago and then auctioned off during the 90?s. Retired for nearly 9 years, I concede that I?ve lost some of my competitive spirit. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by how much a few carefully chosen acquisitions might move my type set up in the rankings. A nice proof trade dollar here, a high relief Peace dollar there and it looked like I'd be within a few easily obtainable coins of fourth! My screensaver had even become one of the nicer trade dollars in the upcoming Heritage auction. But, frankly, my heart wasn?t in it. Then, Sunday morning, in the midst of the final stage of the Tour de France and the final round of the British Open, a message appeared on the World Coin board. A superb group of British Conder tokens, assembled by a collector I knew only as Cosmicdebris and viewable on his website, was to be sold, intact if possible. Bummer! I had been on that website dozens of times mooning over those delightful token designs in beautiful condition. How difficult might it be to obtain ANY of these splendid pieces if the collection was sold intact to another collector or to a dealer? (The Boulton and Watt estates immediately came to mind with many gorgeous British coins and tokens "spoken for" long before I even knew they existed.) Yikes! Then something of an epiphany-I swallow hard and go for the whole collection! This was a departure for me because I?ve always enjoyed putting sets together piece by piece. My own group of Conders, focusing on condition rather than rarity, was coming along with many nice examples, but here was an opportunity to obtain a large number of terrific pieces in one fell swoop (and keep myself busy with research and photography for months to come). It wasn?t really ?sight unseen? given the nice website images, but I was relying more on the obvious overall quality of the collection than that of any one piece. Nevertheless, with an entire collection, I had to put aside one of the reasons I got interested in Conders in the first place - their relatively low cost. Mercifully, the deal was done quickly and I anxiously await the shipment that will propel me down this fork in the road! AB27_67_1