"To talk of many things:

...of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--of cabbages--and kings--and to pay a price much too high for coins and other things.

All literary parodies aside, the time has come for me to take one of my rare splurges to buy I coin I feel is a key for my collection. There are very few of these so called key coins in my collecting dreams. I can admire and enjoy all coins without actually owning them. But I have come to the realization that the coin on which I have my sights set is one I would like to have in my set. I will not divulge at what or where I am looking to acquire said coin because having my soul so deeply steeped in baseball tradition as well as coin collecting, I am by nature superstitious! I would not want to jinx myself and forego this particular coin at the best possible price or worse yet not at all!

My budget should most definitely be shot with this purchase but then again I could always get very lucky. Please keep in mind that I am not talking about a $1,000 coin, in fact it will not even reach $200 but it still will be a significant amount of my available funds that I normally would not spend. However, after a year of bottom fishing and averaging a mere $0.27 on the dollar of FMV for the coins in my registry sets I have earned this splurge for myself. Also, taking the lead from anther journal entry I read recently I calculated the cost point of my registry set to be less than $0.09 per point. Honest, I don?t have a drop of Scottish blood in my body. (Not implying that to have Scottish heritage is a bad thing for it is not.) As I wrestled with the decision of whether or not to purchase this particular coin, I realized just what type of collector I am. I truly love the act of collecting itself. Should I ever win the Power Ball Lottery, I don?t think my collecting habits would change either. I spend hours pouring over auction sites, going to the local coin shows, and on occasion drop in on the local dealers. Simply paying the going price to have something I am collecting, coins, baseball cards, or anything else that catches my fancy holds no appeal for me. I can quite literally walk around a coin show for hours lost in the beauty that the coins hold and walk out not having spent a cent because the prices were just too high.

The dictionary defines collecting as verb meaning ?To bring together in a group; gather; assemble.? A verb means activity. Once having collected said objects the action then ceases. In my mind it?s about the action. I find myself asking, ?Self?, I ask, ?Why should collecting the common coins be any less fun than collecting the rare coins?? I could simply go out and pay for all the readily available common coins and devote my search the rare coins. But where would the thrill be in the interim until I find that rare coin. There is also a rush when you find a common coin at a price well below market value. It?s like I found something everyone else overlooked. Having said all of this I am not implying that my collecting habits should be universally adopted by everyone or for that matter by anyone. In fact, just the opposite, each collector should find their own peace in the hobby.

If you have read this far, you probably realize just how much I have much wrestled with (or better yet tormented) myself in deciding to make the attempt to add this one coin to my collection. This has been a personal journey. I also realize that there exists the very real possibility that I will not acquire the coin as well. But alas, such is the nature of the beast. And should I not get the coin there will be a sense of disappointment, I am reassured however that there is always another day. Perhaps another great line is appropriate for my mind set, ?Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.?

I will end this entry with a quick note on another recent acquisition. I added a PF70UC Silver Oklahoma quarter to my collection. For some reason when this quarter arrived and I examined it, I was caught by the reverse design. I find it quite elegant in its own right. While many of the state quarters? reverse designs seem to be forced, the Oklahoma quarter has a sense of balance to it. So in closing I have included a photo of a somewhat common coin that is spectacular all by itself.

Dennis