plehbah said:
I have to say, Dan, that I do not really understand the need to portray the hobby as "paying for itself" or "beating the recession" or as a way to make money at all.
Nor do I. But unfortunately, any hobby whose main focus is on locating money automatically spotlights its lucrativeness, or lack thereof, to our non-detecting friends.
I understand the concept of the podcast is the finding of older coins with numismatic premium to enhance the return of the time spent detecting, but if you made a pile on one side of my very worn Barber dimes, and a pile on the other side of my premium condition Barber dimes that would bring 50 bucks, the pile of worn dimes would be as high as Howard Hughes on Mt. Fuji, and the pile with the premium dimes would be as high as a crouton lying on its' side.
Yes. And though worn Barber dimes have little cash value, they are quite impressive to our non-collecting friends who have never even seen one, let alone one in good condition.
I will have to disagree about this hobby being a profitable one. Anybody that wants extra money would be much better off by getting a second job paying minimum wage. Statistically, this is a lousy way to get rich. While all of us have made an excellent find or two, we have also spent hundreds of days scouring stupid old fields and lots.
If your goal is to make solid, steady money, get the part-time job.
If your goal is to increase the value of your finds, hit the beaches - finding gold rings and other jewelry is a lot more profitable than finding coins.
If your goal is to increase the quality of your coin finds, do the research and hunt the old places.
If your goal is to dig lots of coins and have fun, hit the local parks and schoolyards.
So many choices in this fantastic hobby!
The only people that benefit from portraying this hobby as "profitable" are the manufacturers and major distributors. The rest of us want to tell the truth, and attract the kind of person that gets a strange kick from unearthing the junk of our forefathers- romantics in other words.
I do have a friend (Kenny Links, Champaign IL) who generally turns a pretty profit on his vacations by hitting beaches. He and his wife both regularly come home with valuable rings. He even found a 1914D penny at a local park!
But yes, most of us are hopeless romantics, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
And really, let's be serious....... at least 80% of the vehicles parked in the parking lot at the local monthly club meeting are decrepit old vans that barely run and still have ugly old '70s paint jobs.
It looks different than the parking lot of the country club, if you know what I mean.
I
do know what you mean, and I'm a lot more comfortable with the old-van crowd than the country club crowd.
Other than that, great podcast. You have a radio voice.
Thanks! I was in the biz from 1967 until 2007, when I retired. (I was a radio broadcasting instructor at Parkland College here in Champaign, and when I retired I missed being behind the microphone. Hence the podcasts!)
---Dan Hughes
