HOW TO RECONNECT WITH YOUR COLLECTION

How to Reconnect with Your Collection at Home

Nummis Nova missed three monthly dinners in a row, something that never happened before. Thwarted table talk topics are building up, needing an outlet. Here is a virtual numismatic dinner talk I would have sprung on those that used to sit nearby as we would await appetizers and salad. Given plenty of at home time these days, now is a great opportunity to reconnect with your stay-at-home hobbies, to rediscover what is in your collection.

I've been collecting coins for over half a century and never had time to look through them as I have just done, with the Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo's method of downsizing in mind. Marie Kondo wrote about tidying up to transform your life. I envision a coin collection half the size it presently occupies. Would you believe just a 10% reduction? That would spark joy for me, I think. It is hard to get rid of good coins.

After a lifetime of acquiring, deaccessioning is a foreign concept altogether. Where to start? Marie Kondo was once a school librarian who truly loved to organize books on shelves. She had a crisis the day they decided to get rid of some books, willy-nilly, messing up her careful shelving patterns. It wasn't until she had a vision about the downsizing process itself, of deciding what books to keep, not about deciding what to trash, that she saw a new pattern for "right-sizing" a collection. Marie Kondo advises not to look at what to throw out, but to focus category-by-category and one-by-one on things to keep.

Prioritize any way you like. Start with all things in a single category. Gather all together and look over the small mountain of flips, 2X2s, sets, rolls, books, cabinets, fruit jars, and any other container holding coins, from spare change to slabbed proofs. Can you visualize how tall, wide, and deep a pile of gelt they make? Does it make your heart flutter, throb, and palpitate to see such a pile? Does it spark joy like Scrooge McDuck? Probably not. Then get started looking at each item in the pile, one-by-one, and decide which items have an honored place in your collection. What is the first thing you would grab for the keeper pile? Those selected must both 'spark joy' as you clutch it in your hand and have an honored place in your ideal future collection. Move those high priority items to their place of keeping. Take your time. You are assembling a more refined collection, not getting rid of anything. Tired of all the choosing and stashing? Has the remaining pile diminished very much?

Whatever is left in the pile at the end has no honored place of keeping, fails to spark joy, and dilutes your fine collection of keepers. Those leftover, unloved specimens obviously need to be boxed up and discarded. Marie advises you to hold them one-by-one and silently thank them for their service in gracing your collection, and then let them go.

Coins in the "can't stay-must go" pile likely take thought on how to best monetize them, spend them, or donate them. Consider giving wheat cents to young numismatists, home schoolers, and boy scouts needing to earn their coin collecting badges, to ensure a bright future for the hobby. Service industry folks used to appreciate excess bicentennial clad half dollars and circulated two-dollar bills. What about miscellaneous foreign coins deemed unimportant to your downsized, and much improved coin collection holding only the best, joy-sparking gems.

What am I ready to discard? How about every Susan B. Anthony Dollar acquired in change? How about every modern clad mint set, and some silver proof sets acquired from yard sales and even those I bought direct from the US Mint in the 1980s and 1990s. The point is if I ever want one back, it is easy to find them again at every numismatic sales venue. Why am I caring for them and storing them for decades as though they are precious? When seeing my whole collection at once these contribute much bulk, and very few sparks of joy. Add to them every Lincoln cent I ever stashed away from change. I found several gallons of them in the past fifty years filtering them out of circulation like a bottom-dwelling mollusk, staring in the 1970s as I tried to fill the ubiquitous Blue Whitman Folders. Now they occupy milk jugs too heavy to lift. I find small cents too mean to look through for dates and errors. Kid stuff. I could spend my hobby time doing better. Add to them that box of copper cents (and a few coffee cans) stashed away in the 1980s when copper cents began to exceed their face value. I still don't want them melted, but now commerce has stopped taking change all across the nation due to health concerns. Really, it is time to lift these boat anchors and give 'em the old heave-ho over-the-side to lighten the load on my collection. Let me add state quarters and America-the-Beautiful quarters by the roll, saved from circulation at the premier of each. Can I add Mint wrapped rolls of gold dollars, and even stacks of clad Ike dollars, again neat when they were new, but now why save 25 examples when less than one would make me happy?

I'm on the fence about excess 90% silver found roll-searching back in the 60s when every roll had some. I pulled one of each year and mint to save. The remainder seems a bit damp at sparking joy, nor do they have an honored place of keeping. Duplicates? I never knew how many duplicates of everything from half cents to half dollars I put away. With time at home I compared duplicates and dropped inferior pieces in the 'to-go' box. Wholesale release of much of my Canadian coins, and many miscellaneous foreign coins also need to drop in the outgoing chute, not having any theme, rhyme or reason, other than they got stuck in my bottom-feeding filter along with wheat cents.

Now for the big surprises. Coins that I used to collect, series that are complete (or as near complete as I intend to make them), and those I can never complete seem to have lost that spark of joy. Owning them is not as much fun as finding hole fillers in my travels. The thrill of the hunt and all that, but no such trophy of completion floats my boat as it once did. What to do with incomplete sets of circulated Barber dimes and quarters?

Counterfeits, copies, and modern fantasy pieces may be uninteresting individually, each a disappointment that it is not real. Put them together in a draw sting bag as a "Black Cabinet" and they find a new use as conversation starters with folks not normally interested in looking at old coins. Might these be keepers?

As I went through my collection a few series I looked forward to, finally seeing them in one spot. They topped my keeper list such as Bust Half Dollars and better, older foreign coins having an exciting history. I like them still. Every time I look them over, I imagine who used them and how they came to be in my collection. One surprise was in totaling all my counterfeits in a pile. They each by themselves would be unchosen, but taken together, rekindled some interest as conversation starters. The best discriminator of 'sparking joy' is whether I want to spend time enough to update my inventory or if I couldn't be bothered to devote any more time to preserving and organizing them. If I drop them in the discard box so much less work. That helps push those sitting on the fence into the discard chute.

Joy is sparking here, looking at what little I decided to keep. Marie Kondo's method works even for items inherited or obtained from friends long ago, that have emotional connection, but not numismatic interest. Keep a keepsake for the memories, but no need to store a shoebox of indifferent coins from the same well-remembered source. Thank them for their service in recalling your friend or ancestor to mind and send them on. Let them spark joy with new owners, perhaps with a bit of the story of what they meant to you and how you acquired them.

Side benefits of this exercise included 'reholdering' all my coins in safe flips, correction of errors in coin/holder match-ups, putting all the keepers in sequential order (that really points out duplications), variety checks, and removing all real and suspected PVC plastic flips. I treated some coins that turned green with a light acetone bath - that worked wonders, especially on silver coins.

It has been a worthwhile exercise all-in-all that I never would have had time to do except for following the Governor's stay-at-home orders. Now I have stock to sell or trade when in-person coin shows resume. I have donations for future kids and youth numismatic events. I have new collecting priorities, and I have a new appreciation for those best coins in an honored keeping place. Know the difference between 'joy sparkers' and sludge, junk, and bottom-feeder debris, from a lifetime of numismatic filtering. You can make the hobby new again if you renew and refine your collection by the Marie Kondo method. Tidying up - who knew it would feel so good?

As virtual bread, butter, and imaginary salad plates appear I would make one last push for those across the Nummis Nova table to try this joy sparking method and let me know how it goes for them next month, at the next virtual dinner. We know full well that only a select few folks have the in-check, collector-bug constitution to go through with it, not that the rest are necessarily 'Scrooge McDucks,' but I suspect they remain unmotivated at the thought of spring cleaning, or perhaps they find their 'sparks' in other pursuits while cooped up at home.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web