Paul: I appreciate your respect for the opinions of those of us who criticized your earlier post. But you still raise a collecting issue that gets me a little worked up.

It?s summed up in your opinion that the low grade coins in your Whitman albums ?mean nothing.? I?m sure you intend that sincerely, and no doubt many others share your view. But to me, it's a slap in the face to numismatics.

Like many here, I have a substantial investment in my coin collection, most of it in NGC and PCGS slabs. But I also still have the folder and album collections of Indian head pennies, buffalo nickels and mercury dimes my dad started me on almost 50 years ago. I?ve also had his albums of Barber quarters and Morgan and Peace dollars since he passed. Over the years, I?ve filled some holes and upgraded others with purchases, but most of the slots in those collections still hold the lower grade coins we plucked out of circulation.

Those sets weren?t worth much 50 years ago, and they?re not worth much more now. All the same, the coins in those albums mean as much to me as the most expensive certified coins in my collection because: (1) they?re tangible artifacts of the time and place of their minting, and every of every other time and place they witnessed until we retired them from circulation; (2) they?re signposts for the stages of my own life, each of which has coins I found or acquired at the time associated with it in my memory. In particular, these coins hold warm associations of all the hours I spent with my dad sharing a hobby he loved; and (3) they are a legacy of earlier modes of our distinguished past time. Coin collecting has long played a noble role in recording and recalling history, and though the slab may be here to stay, filling folders and albums with coins found in one?s pocket change held the interest of our parents? and grandparents? generations long enough for them to keep alive the hobby we know today.

I?m not knocking the pursuit of high grade certified coins. I spend too much time and money doing it myself to pretend it?s not fun and I hope worthwhile. Neither am I saying you need to find some deeper appreciation for cheap, low grade coins or outdated collecting habits. But I do think you might enjoy the hobby even more than you already do if you could understand why for many of us the value of all those ?worthless? coins is that they embody things you can only find in a long, ambling journey, not its destination, and certainly not the finish line of a sprint.

Finally, several of us have responded to you here (I?ve now done it twice) because this is where you made your original comment and request. But really, this whole dialog, starting with your first post, belongs on the discussion boards.