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COLLECTING AND GRADING, TODAY AND TOMORROWDavid Schwager submitted these thoughts in response to recent articles and topics on the current collecting landscape. -Editor
Thank you for mentioning one of my CoinWeek articles (Coin Grading Service Special Labels in the Postmodern Era) in the last E-Sylum. I have to give credit for the term "postmodern era" to my editor, Charles Morgan, who mentioned it when he assigned the article to me. See also the Charles Morgan / Hubert Walker piece "For Coins this is a Postmodern Era (or R.I.P. the Modern Era 1932 - 1982)." You described the middle part of the article as a capsule history of an aspect of the grading industry, and that was my goal, with the help of generous sources at ANACS, NGC, and PCGS. The full story of coin grading, however, has not been told. Michael Schmidt, better known as Conder101 on web forums, wrote the impressive Third Party Grading / Certification Services and Slab / Certificate Varieties in 2003, but the book is out of print and 14 more years of history have passed since its publication. (The book is nearly impossible to find, but the ANA library has a copy. I would love to buy one.) I hesitate to mention that someone should write a book on the history of coin certification for fear that readers will suggest that I become that someone. Cataloging 700+ varieties of sample slabs was enough work without trying to learn about every holder and label every made. Let me also echo some of Dave Harper's points on recruiting middle-aged collectors rather than children. I wrote a CoinWeek piece on this subject "Your Kids Don't Want Your Coins but I Know Someone Who Might." The 50 year old engineer or executive is a better prospect to become a member of our brotherhood than the pre-teen, but finding and nurturing this potential collector is more difficult than attracting children. Recruiting this prospect takes not broadcasting or selling, but gentle one-on-one effort, with the understanding that most will politely decline to take up a new hobby. The article concludes, "Before going to this effort to promote our hobby to either children or adults, consider that numismatics may not actually need an active recruiting program. In the same way that there will always be sports fans and always be film buffs and always be painters, there will always be coin collectors. Everyone eats, walks, and uses a car, so hobbies such as baking, hiking, and classic cars will not go away. Everyone uses money, so owning remarkable coins and currency will always have an appeal." Thanks. I was not familiar with the Michael Schmidt book Third Party Grading. An earlier and very useful book on the topic was published back in 1977: Grading Coins: A
Collection of Readings by Richard Bagg and James J. Jelinski.
I'm optimistic about the future of our hobby. Grading services and the rise of registry sets have created a world vastly different from the one I grew up collecting in. Tomorrow's world may be even more different, with the further use of computer and communication technology. But human interest remains at its heart. The artworks and artifacts we collect have a special appeal to our inquisitive and acquisitive human nature. Life goes on. -Editor To read the complete CoinWeek articles, see: To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:  Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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