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Hello Everyone. SCHOOLI HATE ITI promise that I will find some way to start posting again during the summer. "Did a timer get reset? Because two Georgia sports teams can win a year. (sorry bama)"
Hola.The great CoinFodder here. Recently school has given me the bug...
Hey Everybody! This is everything numismatic that is going through my head right now. So, without further ado...1) What is with the US Mint's packing?Have y'all gotten your hands on the new Type 2 Silver Eagles Yet? Well, point aside, the coin is pretty, let us tell you that. However, the packing IS THE DEFINITION OF CHEAP. No more nice little container that contains the felt-lined box. Now, the packing is what they use for the commemorative half dollars- open, felt lined little piece of JUNK, and a cardboard cover. Disappointing. 2) Why does the US Mint make us wait 5 months for a coin?I have asked myself this many times as I wait for our coins to arrive via Snail Mail. The US Mint is very fond of placing out little coins for early (yes, very early) preorder, then making the numismatic faithful wait months. Groan. Stop this cruel practice, and only set your coins to order when you can dish them out right away. 3) Olympics!With the Tokyo Olympics going on right now, I decided to set the overpriced- fat cat Olympics to scale for the lay person (forgive me, but after hours on the couch watching China beat everybody in Ping Pong, this was one of the few things I was thinking about. As on June 2021, the price was set at 26 Billion. Wow! Now imagine each dollar as a penny, which is about 1.52 mm thick, and weighs about 2.5 grams. Now please dig out those calculators. The final height of the stupid pile of penny we hoarded: 24,556.59 Miles, towering over every building in Tokyo, including the SkyTree and Tower, combined. That should place an Olympic-sized dent into the ground. Now, for the weight- at 2.5 grams, and 26 billion of those little suckers, should weigh about 65,000 Metric Tons. Dropped on someone's head would surely be fatal, and punch a nice hole through the Earth. You know what else weighs 65,000 tons? Over 9,000 Elephants. So, Tokyo is spending the equivalent of over 9,000 Elephants, and with no spectators helping to off-set some of those elephants, we can imagine that can get pretty heavy!Thanks Everyone!
Hey everyone. 7:30 AM on the East Coast, from the usual place, I remembered that a year ago, I wrote my first blog on coins, and all things coins. It was about the Mega Red Book of Coins, and I got some stuff from y'all, including a Mike who thought I had blocked him (still, I say, no I did not). Well, me or you guys couldn't of seen what happened next. A series of blogs, running through the United States, that actually reaches the half-way point (well, 22 out 50 is close). A long set of articles of me throwing pot-shots at the mint director. And most importantly, I found a footing in this great hobby. This needs to be thanked. First, Mike (B), who gave me the encouragement to keep writing these. John (longstrider), Charlie (sly), and Mokie for occasional bombs in the message section. Fellow YN Preston (numismaster) for bombing me in the message box, 7:00 PM at night, telling me to answer something, which helped me learn more about the hobby. Overall, though, this section is dedicated to three people; you, my family for dealing with this, and God himself. Only he knows the true reason I do this. I have changed my avatar, but you will still see the smiling face of Patton on it. It says "Coinfodder: One Year of Blogs". I can't stress it enough, this is because of you. On a side note, note the Godfather Reference in my last post.
Ah yes, Thanksgiving. Time when we give thanks for our blessings, eat a FEAST in honor of them, plus or minus creating a shopping list for the shopping bonanza ahead. Today, we look at the origins of Thanksgiving and what made it happen. One day, a ship originally headed for Virginia, on November 19th, 1620, landed at Plymouth Rock in present-day Massachusetts. These people (now known as the pilgrims) were escaping religious persecution in their homeland of England, having bounced back- and- forth from Holland and England. After landing at Plymouth Rock (which I have actually seen; not that impressive), they set up camp. The winter was brutal that year. Normally sound people decided to settle in Massachusetts, causing the death of many in the winter. Disease was rampant through the colony. Living sucked. To escape religious shaming to get to cold and freezing temperatures didn't seem like a good idea at the time. The next spring, a Wampanoag named Squanto came along the struggling town and saw the condition. They had allowed them to settle there in the first day due to the fact that they felt that the English would protect the city from rival nations. What appalled them was the farming techniques used by the European's. The techniques that worked in England and Europe didn't work on Cape Cod. The tribe taught the Pilgrim's methods of farming that was better than the European method. One of my favorite methods was using dead fish as fertilizer for plants. Odd, but, it worked really well, and the pilgrims thrived. As a show of thanks the following November, the settlers had a feast to celebrate the harvest. The Wampanoag came over with 90 Indians to see what the ruckus was. Turned out it was a feast, and the settlers had no way to accommodate for them. So, the tribe went hunting, and after that, was three days of celebration. The Thanksgiving traditions we know today came from the declaration from President Abe Lincoln in 1863, feeling it would unite the nation, which was dealing with a heavy war. What are your favorite Thanksgiving memories? What is your favorite food from the feast? Tell us below. Happy Thanksgiving, fodder.
Well today, I ran into HSN trying to pedal me a coin on YouTube. So, I threw a brick at the computer and broke it. OK, I am exaggerating, but sometimes I do really want to.Like some of us, people around the world stick on TV until 1:00 in the Morning. Maybe they just checked the nightly news, maybe they just watched the Braves lose a 3-1 lead over the Dodgers in the NLCS (/:-( WHY!), or they just home after a party and want to burn time until the morning watching TV. Whatever the case, there is a chance that you may run into a Coin Infomercial, a massively annoying ad telling you to buy a coin. Listening closely, you see that the wording of the script is purposely crafted to make you slobber over this coin.Let us do an example.Mike Browning Colt was sitting on his couch one day after watching the Falcons not know how to return an onside kick. He flipped to Fox Business channel right after the game ended. As the stock market is closed on Sunday, the channel broadcast ads instead. On of these ads featured Chuck Woolery advertising gold (no kidding- this is a real ad) at using buzzwords galore to make you attracted to gold. The next ad in the loop told this retired individual that if the economy struggled, the value of gold would go up, and selling it would help steady the guy's economic problem. Colt broke down and picked up the phone, buying a set of 2016 AGE's, for the cost of $6000.What is wrong with this?He fell for the infomercial. Now, we are going to break down the trap one by one.1)- The infomercial targeted him. I said earlier that Colt was an elderly man. The infomercial targeted elderly retirees like him, with no easy source of income. They target the financial vulnerability of the elderly retiree, and told him to buy something that would stabilize his retirement income. Because of this, the company took the desperation of the elderly, and translated them into higher prices. 2)- His lack of Knowledge- As the biggest pitfall, many people pull the trigger and buy the coins before they do their research. This is the biggest pitfall of Colt. He should of done his research before he picked up the phone and bought his set of AGE's. This is a huge pitfall because if he did his research, he could of gotten the set for cheaper at another place. The company saw this and targeted him with the buzzwords and the higher price. Now that he has realized he has been scammed, he would be mad, and probably turn his back on the hobby,3)- Bait and Switch- Our friend Colt didn't fall into this, but some others did. What companies will do when you call them up is tell you that you should buy historical pieces instead. The theorize to you that the historical coins will gain in value faster than the bullion coins would, which is what most people sign up for. The company then sells those coins at ridiculous markups, which takes a long time to recover from and actually make a real profit. Now, some companies, such as the "King of Cameo" and his court, will try to trap you using a combo of buzzwords and knowledge, while also using career accolades to create the myth that this is a reputable seller. This is an even harder trap to avoid. On places like HSN, the folks there sound stupid, acting like they know something when they really don't. But people like the "King of Cameo" will swindle you and trick the unknowing customer into believing they are shopping from a reputable dealer. While they are rather trustworthy, the "reputable" look fools people into buying overpriced goods they think are at a bargain.So what do ya'll think? See ya'll later!
Well folks, as you see at the stores, there is a National "Coin Shortage" going on at the moment. To most, this was caused by the guy who ate a bat in China and spread "the virus" to the United States and beyond. While I think this is partially true, I think there is another underlying reason behind the shortage. My culprits are...1...Folks staying at home due to the VirusThis is sort of a tie in to Virus point in the intro, but as we are probably were, we were holed at home. Some states were lucky and came out of lock down quicker. However, we saw many things happen that don't happen, like people picking up new hobbies (I began writing in here in March right before Coronachan hit), to women shaving their whole heads. Based on that thinking, people may of found out about the 50 State Quarter's Series and The America the Beautiful someway or another. Those newbies who find out search pocket change, and keep the ones they need for their folders, causing less and less quarters to reenter circulation. (By the way, I hope these newbies join the ANA.) 2... The Credit Card Industry.Here is were I hit my first hoax. I think a reason for the ongoing coin shortage is that the credit card industry concocted it. My idea for this theory- they told everyone about the coin shortage to hook people on credit cards. Which leads me to......3...The Government Faked it.It is know by both Democrats and Republicans that the sons of J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA in Langley like to spy on you. To get even deeper into the private search and shopping habits of people (the CIA knows what coins we buy) they told everyone there was a coin shortage. Then, they hope that you would hook onto a credit card. Which would allow the FBI to track you.Got anymore nutty theories? This is not really a numismatic post, but it involves coins and is a goopy, fun forum. See you later!
Hey Folks.During COVID-19, quarantines and other jolly stuff is forcing places to close. Restaurants, Small Businesses, and the ilk. But what about coin stores? Most of these don't fall under the "essential" business label, and are forced to shut down.So want do we do?Help them, of course! Donate meals to them. Some of these folks only get money from the store they own, and because of that, may have trouble providing food to them and there families.Help them when their store opens back up. Make a big purchase to keep them afloat.Thanks,YN and Boy ScoutUser 77959