WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

When I was ten years old
I remember thinking how cool it would be
When we were going on an eight-hour drive
If I could just watch TV

And I'd have given anything
To have my own Pac-Man game at home
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade
Now I've got it on my phone

I guess I'm officially an old man. Somebody's old man, anyway. My kids are growing up in a world very different from the one of my childhood. My five year old has her own Nintendo DS (in pink) to play video games whenever she wants. I had to get a ride to the bowling alley to pump quarters into a Pong machine, strangely fascinated by the possibilities, while already sensing the demise of pinball. Our family van is equipped with a DVD player and fold-down screen for entertainment.

But it's not only technology that's changed. Our gradeschool teachers led us through air raid drills and nearly every public building had a fallout shelter stocked with supplies. My father lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall, and my kids are growing up in a world without an Iron Curtain. Traveling through Maryland as a kid on vacation I saw a "Whites Only" sign above a public drinking fountain. My kids saw Barack Obama elected President.

Numismatics is an equally different world. When I started collecting, a slab was what the coroner laid a stiff on, you could still find silver coins in circulation, and the most expensive coin was in the $100,000 range. Now coins trade hands at that level regularly, and hundreds of coins sell for millions. Only a handful of fringe collectors cared about paper money, tokens and medals, and now some items that could be had for under $1,000 then can be in the $50-$100,000 range now.

Welcome to the Future. -Editor