I know I’m yelling at the clouds here, but I am ever so sick and tired of this. It seems like every single “hobby” out there is just a haven for people trying to make a buck and this one is more so than any other, it seems.

What the hell ever happened to just collecting things for the joy of collecting things? That’s all I want to do!

So, not too long ago, my father-in-law died and I wound up with his coin collection. I used to collect coins when I was a kid, I have no clue what happened to any of it, and my wife and I did, for a short time, back in the early 2000s. The reason we walked away from it back then was because it was all about money, more than just what was being collected. You couldn’t just have a conversation without “Silver? Slabbing? How much is it all worth?!?!?”

I just don’t care.

Now there is some of that in stamp collecting, just to a much, much, much lesser degree. There are plenty of people, a majority, I’d say, who are just out there to have fun. That’s all I want to do. I want to have fun. I am not investing in my stamps, I am collecting because at heart, that’s what I do. I collect things. I enjoy the acquisition of stuff, placed into an orderly collection. That’s my entire interest.

I even noticed this when I collected Funko Pops. These stupid hunks of plastic, people were always whispering “what’s it going to be worth?” Who cares? Buy it because you enjoy it, not because you think you’re going to make a bundle!

Anyhow, getting back to coins, I’ve spent the last couple of weekends going through thousands upon thousands of coins, primarily U.S. coins and that’s rekindled an interest in me. It’s not worth a ton, probably a couple of thousand dollars, but I’ve been going through with a magnifying glass, figuring out what I have and entering it into an online database. That’s the fun that I have, seeing what I’ve got. I also entered a lot of what we’d collected back in the early 2000s and most of that’s entered. I have thousands and thousands of coins and I’m not remotely done and I certainly haven’t gotten into the weeds on any of it, looking for varieties and errors and all of that. There have been a few interesting things I’ve come across that could be worth a fair bit, but I don’t care. I just want to collect.

That’s really hard to do when it comes to numismatics.

First off, I thought stamp collecting was hard to do but this is ridiculous. There are a couple of reasonably populated forums for stamp collecting but for coins, I haven’t found a one. There are a bunch that purport to be for talking about coins but they get virtually no traffic. Most of them haven’t had a post in months. Yes, months. Therefore, I went to Reddit and joined a couple of groups and virtually every post is “how much is this worth?”

Sure, there’s plenty of that in stamp collecting too, people who inherited or found stamps and they just want to make a buck. I get it, people are stupid, but it’s an obsession when it comes to coins.

I get it though. It’s money, You are literally collecting money and some of it is, or was, made of precious metals. I’ve got a fair bit of silver but I don’t care about that. I just want to collect. I don’t want to be bothered with the details. I want to have fun.

So I went through some of the albums that he had and while some were complete, some were just missing a couple of things. Seriously, one was missing a 1974-P Lincoln Memorial penny. It’s worth nothing. I went looking, just to fill in the hole and the only coins I could find, at least before I gave up, were slabbed. I mean, this is a coin worth 8 cents in any grade but uncirculated and that’s worth .29! They are not rare, there were 4.2 billion of them issued! Yet nope, you can’t find anyone selling one not encased in plastic for a couple of bucks. It must have cost more than that to have it graded!

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Honestly, where is the Hipstamp of the coin world? Where are the places where just regular old collectors sell excess coins? I’ve got tons of them, thousands in fact, not that I’m going to sell, but there has to be somewhere like that, but apparently not, at least not that I’ve turned up. Everyplace is a precious metal dealer hawking expensive slabbed coins on the side. I just give up.

This really seems to be something that’s relatively recent. Maybe I just didn’t notice, but growing up, nobody was trying to make a mint on coins. I know I had a lot more experience with stamp dealers, but they were happy to help everyone. Today, if you’re not shelling out thousands of dollars, they don’t want to talk to you. I don’t care about that. I just want to have fun. I’ve got plenty of stuff that’s worth plenty of money but I didn’t get it to invest. I got it because I wanted it.

Even on the stamp side this is becoming a problem. It’s hard to have a decent conversation with anyone but a rank beginner without “you have to have everything certified” coming up. Put it all in a safe. Spend a hundred thousand dollars a year on stamps or else. You have to be constantly making deals if you want to be taken seriously and while I could spend a lot of money, that’s not where I derive my enjoyment. I just want to have fun collecting little pieces of paper and now, maybe, little metal circles. I don’t care what it’s worth. I’m never going to sell any of it. When I’m dead, if someone wants to sell it off and make a mint, feel free. If they want to light it all on fire, that’s fine with me too. I’m not here anymore. I’m no longer having fun.

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with people today but I want nothing to do with it. I just want to get back to having a good time. Why is that so blasted hard?