Or why in every human endeavour, there are widely varied goals.

Let me generalize here. Virtually everyone on this Board is a Coin Collector and appreciates both the aesthetics and history of the coins they choose to ocllect. I understand that a few of us might be pure investors just looking for a profit but most of us has some Numismatist in us.

So after reading a large number of threads over the past couple of years, I believe that we members can be placed into two main collector categories. For simplicity sake, I will call us either outward focused or inward focused collectors. I do recognize that most of us have traits of the other type of collector no matter what our dominent type. So very few of us are pure OF or IF in nature.

Outward focused collectors are very competitive and are habitually concerned about sudden point adjustments, their overall ranking, and official recognition opportunities (awards, *1 rankings, etc.). OFs are also concerned about any perceived unfairness in the rankings or awards system. At their most extreme, they will prattle endlessly about why they should have won something that someone else won. They are Martyrs to the cause of righteousness.

Inward focused collectors are the librarians of our hobby with a love for higly detailed knowledge of their particular collecting interest. IFs can very skillfully describe all the subtle nuances of a coin within their collection to include highly technical knowledge of die states, die pairings, branch mint tendencies, and mint mark positions. IFs are the Nerds of the collecting world and they revel in VAM types, etc. At their most extreme, IFs will hijack a perfectly innocent thread and turn it into a heated battle over some irrelevent, but erroneous, comment made during the course of the main discussion. They are Pit Bulls.

Both types of collector are needed to make our hobby dynamic because both types of collector take some traits from the other to make their own experience better.

I think of myself as a lazy outward focused collector with a desire to be more inward focused even though I dislike details.

Who are You?

Later,

Malcolm

AKA BEAWCHAN (my new avatar)

To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.