Confession (?!)

Yeah, I know you don't see 'personal' things here on Numista very often, but there's something that I lied about to you guys, and I've been feeling really uncomfortable about that all this time, so....
should I tell?

Quote: BrittaniaYeah, I know you don't see 'personal' things here on Numista very often, but there's something that I lied about to you guys, and I've been feeling really uncomfortable about that all this time, so....
should I tell?

I think that it is quite pathetic to see that numista has fallen so low.

Quote: coinsnnotesUKI think that it is quite pathetic to see that numista has fallen so low.

 Numista?  That is absurd.

  Yes Brittania, whats up?

I would rather you just come out with it than leave us all hanging.

Don't worry - it's OK to collect stamps. Of course I don't myself but some of my best friends do.  

Whatever it is I'm sure it's not that bad.

For someone who traveled around Europe, (s)he do not have much in the form of Euro coins. I'd say the Europe trip never happened?

I've never left Europe and also have very little in the way of euro coins. The collector in question collects the same stuff as me.

Goddammitt it better not be Coinsoldier again.

Haha, pnightingale I laughed so hard when I read your comment. That's a scary thought.

Britannia, I'd say just come out of closet with whatever it is. Specially if it actually does make you feel crap about lying.
If this lie have not harmed anyone here, I'm sure everyone is okay.
And well, if this lie did damage someone, then I guess we take it from there.

Uhh okay - I'm a woman.
Haha lol - I thought all collectors were guys, so - well yeah.  

Ok, well...that is ok. You are in good company with the other female members. I think you should have just come out with it! Well...I am pleased you have "confessed"!

Haha, I knew you were gunna say that. I think I had an idea just from your name to be honest !

Hello, fellow woman collector... including you, I now know of three of us. I didn't feel that being a female required a confession, so people only found out when we were all posting photos of ourselves on another thread awhile back.

I always love seeing more women here!

Quote: Mark240590Haha, I knew you were gunna say that. I think I had an idea just from your name to be honest !

You can't really know, though... my dad's account is named after a female ancestor of ours.

You are a woman?



that's terrible        

Quote: @josephjkYou are a woman?



that's terrible        

I think what you're really trying to say is



:P

Yeah ! thanks ! that's exactly What I was trying to say..      

That's good. It's nicer I think when it's more mixed, not just men or just Europeans or just... anything.

Now, can anybody tell me why a majority of the members of this site are men?
When I started collecting coins, I didn't know anybody else who did that, so had no prejudgement to it which could have had an effect on me. Still it's me writing here and not my wife, who find it extraordinarily boring. Exactly what is it with coin collecting that attracts more to men than (most) women?

Is it the same with other collecting hobbies, like stamps for example?

I have a strange and vast interests from coins to modifying cars and racing them my girl partakes in the cars but no interest atall in the coins ha !

Sorry, we don't want any gross girls in our club.  You'll give us all cooties!!!

Quote: pileborg...or just Europeans...

Already got that covered (USA here).

@pileborg
I would imagine that it has something to do with our nature.
I was thinking about this a lot. Collecting and hoarding are, I believe, mental mind sets.
I have been collecting things for a long time. Men collected and made tools out of stone and then metal to use as weapons for hunting. Women and children gathered berries and other edibles.
So; it is about provision: I think that deep somewhere it is about (in the modern society) hunting value to provide...just it isn't necessary to feed your family.
You come back from the hunt dead chuffed with your catch...your wife isn't chuffed...the kids might be a little...are you going to sell it? Are we going to eat with it?

The magpie collects shiny things...our wonder in nature begins as a hunter gatherer...we pick up conkers, horse chestnuts, blackberries...as children we are wired to do that...in my parents garden there is a tree growing that my sister and I accidentally planted! I digress.

So, we (people) have always collected. Not in a chauvinistic sense but the women were child bearers the Iron Age men would make carvings from bone of these pregnant and voluptuous forms. The men would collect these carvings. Early money bone combs, beads and jewellery that men had worked providing for their family by trading a possession. Like   'I promise to pay the bearer on demand'...it is a promise of gold or silver. I will trade with you.

So, society has moved us on (in the most part) so what can you do with chunks of metal that have no "value". Collect them. iPhone games are all about collection, getting this character, getting that character. Children and adults are wired to collect everything. Then it was food now it is other things.
What do you think?

it must still partially be food for me ben !  

My wife has no trouble collecting handbags, they're bloody everywhere.

Hahaha, it's just clothes for my fiancée !

Ah lol. You know what - when you implied that you are a man in some other thread before I was like... WHAT!?!..... because up until that point I had assumed that you are a woman. In my head I always referred to you as a "she" anyway.
Call it a female instinct, hehe, because I'm one too. Girl power! 8-)

bam777 I think your theory is very interesting and also correct. Most collectors of anything are men, also I do think I am a bit of a tomboy in a lot of my hobbies.
Although with my interest to makeup and my imbeccable nails (lol) people at work were nearly falling off the chair when I they asked what's my plans for long weekend and I said "ah, probably strip off some paint from scooter and respray it or something".

My wife refers to Numismatics as "buying money". Of course she just pretends to be dumb to annoy me, she has two degrees and had a scholarship to Berkley. It's a real buzzkill when I find a very valuable coin (1926ME!!) for a dollar and she says "Good, let's sell it".

I can't afford another divorce, I'm too fond of her to shoot her a-la (name removed by bam777) (she just bought me a shiny black Jaguar) so I've been collecting Lazereto coins. For the unwashed and uneducated amongst you, those are coins made for use in leper colonies. I've put some under her pillow and in her slippers but it doesn't seem to be working.

There are far fewer women in collecting circles apart from such obviously girlie areas as porcelain dolls and vintage jewelry for the reasons Ben outlined above. Where they do participate they are usually very successful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Think of all the dirtbags, whiners, liars, scam artists, hustlers and psycho's infesting Numista..... not a single one of the "problem children" is female. The foremost dealer of US cents is female, locally the best of the coin dealers is an adorable lady called Vera who has an encyclopedic knowledge of coins, stamps, militaria, train sets, old watches... you name it.

Plus they are a lot better to look at than the rest of you ugly neanderthals.

Quote: pnightingaleI'm too fond of her to shoot her a-la (name removed by bam777)

Why on earth would you find it necessary to remove the name of Oscar Pistorius? Please do explain to me how that could possibly be a breach of forum rules while at the same time Shamikb is still making his slanderous accusations which are allowed to remain?

Are you seriously suggesting that naming a high profile defendant in a high profile murder case is forbidden but dear Mr Biswas can repeatedly refer to me as a "big lier and cheat" with no problems whatsoever? Why are you not busy removing his outrageous smears instead of editing innocuous posts such as the above?

If you are wondering why the Numista forum is dying perhaps self contemplation may bring some answers.

I just didn't  think it was appropriate, Phil. I like your writing style but sometimes I don't think the content meets your intelligence. (Also, I would call the case into a controversial topic.)

Your integrity is upheld and Shamikb is not on the forum to slander. None of his words remain; do they?

@Brittania, I apologise to you for the shift of focus. Still glad you are a woman.

Ah well, glad to know there are other female collectors here too    !

A few interesting answers here to my question. Makes me think.

Bam mentioned Magpies and collecting being hardwired. It's the male Magpies that collect things to impress on the female Magpies, right.
And somebody else said his wife collects handbags.
Looking at my wife, she too collects things - things she thinks might be useful in the future, like cardboard boxes and old shoes. It's probably the same with the handbags.
So there must be two different types of hardwired collecting here: survival and good future on the one hand, and useless junk on the other hand.

So could it be, that collecting useless things fills the same psychological purpose for the collector as it does for the Magpies? A proof of our ability to collect and hence to provide as hunter-gatherers, even though it's doubtful with coins it has any attraction on the opposite sex (I might be wrong of course) .

Quote: Mark240590I have a strange and vast interests from coins to modifying cars and racing them my girl partakes in the cars but no interest atall in the coins ha !

That seems funny to me, as I have almost no interest in cars (at least when it comes to modifying), but I love coins.

Quote: ZuluRaptorSpace

Quote: pileborg...or just Europeans...

Already got that covered (USA here).

Truth. We have plenty of North American collectors here and a few Central and South American collectors also. And then there is our beloved Russian collector whose name I can't properly remember...

Quote: bam777@pileborg
I would imagine that it has something to do with our nature.
I was thinking about this a lot. Collecting and hoarding are, I believe, mental mind sets.
I have been collecting things for a long time. Men collected and made tools out of stone and then metal to use as weapons for hunting. Women and children gathered berries and other edibles.
So; it is about provision: I think that deep somewhere it is about (in the modern society) hunting value to provide...just it isn't necessary to feed your family.
You come back from the hunt dead chuffed with your catch...your wife isn't chuffed...the kids might be a little...are you going to sell it? Are we going to eat with it?

The magpie collects shiny things...our wonder in nature begins as a hunter gatherer...we pick up conkers, horse chestnuts, blackberries...as children we are wired to do that...in my parents garden there is a tree growing that my sister and I accidentally planted! I digress.

So, we (people) have always collected. Not in a chauvinistic sense but the women were child bearers the Iron Age men would make carvings from bone of these pregnant and voluptuous forms. The men would collect these carvings. Early money bone combs, beads and jewellery that men had worked providing for their family by trading a possession. Like   'I promise to pay the bearer on demand'...it is a promise of gold or silver. I will trade with you.

So, society has moved us on (in the most part) so what can you do with chunks of metal that have no "value". Collect them. iPhone games are all about collection, getting this character, getting that character. Children and adults are wired to collect everything. Then it was food now it is other things.
What do you think?

It's interesting, because I think this theory holds a lot of merit. I collected EVERYthing as a child; I mostly stopped as I grew older (but never got rid of the coins or the pins -- though it should be noted that I am a pack rat). It was someone else who comes here, who was on a chat room with me, who encouraged me to check this site out, and it made me realize what a depth AND breadth coin collecting has in it inherently, and that it was still just as fascinating as when I was a child. Hence the reason I began to collect in earnest.

Of course, I will admit that I have never been your stereotypical "girly" child or woman, which may partly be because of how I was raised. My father grew up in a family where there were 3 boys and 10 girls, and raised 2 girls himself. He was also a teacher. I was a very intelligent child, and I grew up hearing from him (and probably Mom, too, though I don't remember) that I could do anything I wanted to do, and within that the assumption that I was just as good as any boy. All the things I was interested in were encouraged, including my abilities in math and science, enrichment programs that involved math or logic, the time I did karate from grades 8 to 9, and my interest in computers starting from when I was about 9 or 10. Of course, I also played with Barbies, did well in English and French, and happily wore dresses for parties and things, but my day wear for a very long time was track pants and a shirt, and I've never been the kind of girl who wore a lot of skirts.

So I did end up doing quite a number of things where I found myself in rooms with mostly males, but that didn't bother me one bit, since I could do anything I wanted to, and I was just as good as any of those boys. And that mindset has stayed with me as an adult. Of course, it helps that my actual interests don't tend to lean towards traditionally girly things, either, although in the last few years I've developed fashion sense. You'd never know it in most of what I wear day to day, but I can actually coordinate an outfit now   .

For myself, I find coin collecting satisfying because of the breadth and depth mentioned earlier. There are so many layers to coin collecting: so much to learn, for one thing, and I love to learn. Another part is the history: What was happening in the world when these coins where made, being used? In the countries themselves? Coins that have particularly interesting stories are especially intriguing. The girly part of me likes a lot of the "pretty" coin images, such as animals, and anything in beautiful condition is sure to grab my attention. And, of course, my goal to collect 1 coin from each country has lead to a breadth aspect that has served to educate me in many ways. My knowledge of geography has never been better since I started doing this particular collection, let me tell you.

And then, even within sets of coins, to know about varieties, the excitement of finding something with a double-die strike or other mint "flaws", etc... it seems like there are endless ways in which coins can be interesting. Even their value is a point of interest to me. Unlike certain others *coughmycoindealercough*, I find plenty of value in even the cheapest coins I buy, because it means something TO ME; but I am also fascinated by silver and gold and their inherent value even in a basal state. Which then gets me interested in trade values, which leads to thinking about business and economics. Coin collecting touches on so many different areas of study and work, and it really is a beautiful thing. I love being part of a collecting hobby that yet is in fact very intellectual by times, and does indeed require a lot of study and knowledge to become good at.

Quote: nosouvenirs

Quote: bam777@pileborg
I would imagine that it has something to do with our nature.
I was thinking about this a lot. Collecting and hoarding are, I believe, mental mind sets.
I have been collecting things for a long time. Men collected and made tools out of stone and then metal to use as weapons for hunting. Women and children gathered berries and other edibles.
So; it is about provision: I think that deep somewhere it is about (in the modern society) hunting value to provide...just it isn't necessary to feed your family.
You come back from the hunt dead chuffed with your catch...your wife isn't chuffed...the kids might be a little...are you going to sell it? Are we going to eat with it?

The magpie collects shiny things...our wonder in nature begins as a hunter gatherer...we pick up conkers, horse chestnuts, blackberries...as children we are wired to do that...in my parents garden there is a tree growing that my sister and I accidentally planted! I digress.

So, we (people) have always collected. Not in a chauvinistic sense but the women were child bearers the Iron Age men would make carvings from bone of these pregnant and voluptuous forms. The men would collect these carvings. Early money bone combs, beads and jewellery that men had worked providing for their family by trading a possession. Like   'I promise to pay the bearer on demand'...it is a promise of gold or silver. I will trade with you.

So, society has moved us on (in the most part) so what can you do with chunks of metal that have no "value". Collect them. iPhone games are all about collection, getting this character, getting that character. Children and adults are wired to collect everything. Then it was food now it is other things.
What do you think?

It's interesting, because I think this theory holds a lot of merit. I collected EVERYthing as a child; I mostly stopped as I grew older (but never got rid of the coins or the pins -- though it should be noted that I am a pack rat). It was someone else who comes here, who was on a chat room with me, who encouraged me to check this site out, and it made me realize what a depth AND breadth coin collecting has in it inherently, and that it was still just as fascinating as when I was a child. Hence the reason I began to collect in earnest.

Of course, I will admit that I have never been your stereotypical "girly" child or woman, which may partly be because of how I was raised. My father grew up in a family where there were 3 boys and 10 girls, and raised 2 girls himself. He was also a teacher. I was a very intelligent child, and I grew up hearing from him (and probably Mom, too, though I don't remember) that I could do anything I wanted to do, and within that the assumption that I was just as good as any boy. All the things I was interested in were encouraged, including my abilities in math and science, enrichment programs that involved math or logic, the time I did karate from grades 8 to 9, and my interest in computers starting from when I was about 9 or 10. Of course, I also played with Barbies, did well in English and French, and happily wore dresses for parties and things, but my day wear for a very long time was track pants and a shirt, and I've never been the kind of girl who wore a lot of skirts.

So I did end up doing quite a number of things where I found myself in rooms with mostly males, but that didn't bother me one bit, since I could do anything I wanted to, and I was just as good as any of those boys. And that mindset has stayed with me as an adult. Of course, it helps that my actual interests don't tend to lean towards traditionally girly things, either, although in the last few years I've developed fashion sense. You'd never know it in most of what I wear day to day, but I can actually coordinate an outfit now   .

For myself, I find coin collecting satisfying because of the breadth and depth mentioned earlier. There are so many layers to coin collecting: so much to learn, for one thing, and I love to learn. Another part is the history: What was happening in the world when these coins where made, being used? In the countries themselves? Coins that have particularly interesting stories are especially intriguing. The girly part of me likes a lot of the "pretty" coin images, such as animals, and anything in beautiful condition is sure to grab my attention. And, of course, my goal to collect 1 coin from each country has lead to a breadth aspect that has served to educate me in many ways. My knowledge of geography has never been better since I started doing this particular collection, let me tell you.

And then, even within sets of coins, to know about varieties, the excitement of finding something with a double-die strike or other mint "flaws", etc... it seems like there are endless ways in which coins can be interesting. Even their value is a point of interest to me. Unlike certain others *coughmycoindealercough*, I find plenty of value in even the cheapest coins I buy, because it means something TO ME; but I am also fascinated by silver and gold and their inherent value even in a basal state. Which then gets me interested in trade values, which leads to thinking about business and economics. Coin collecting touches on so many different areas of study and work, and it really is a beautiful thing. I love being part of a collecting hobby that yet is in fact very intellectual by times, and does indeed require a lot of study and knowledge to become good at.

Nice to know, but in contrast, apart from my appreciation of coins, I'm pretty much your sterotypical definition of a girl - I wear skirts or dresses everywhere, (can't remember last time I wore shirt and pants!) and I tend to get nervous in rooms full of men, which is why I had to have three annoying older brothers, and also why I kept my gender hidden so long on here.
Feels good to get it out, though.


Started collecting when we moved to Brighton back when I was 15, and I remember my dad bringing home this massive box from my grandparent's, and there were a couple of old UK and Canadian coins in there, which I kept, and after a while of accidentally coming across old coins, I started buying from dealers, and showing off my collection.

We're a pretty progressive lot here, we'll just judge you on your collection rather than your gender  

why there are more men than women who collect coins?
This is obvious.  

This is the same reason for billiards, ball, video games and any other time consuming passions.
This is obvious because the woman has no time to lose with these trivialities.
You should make food, shopping, working, cleaning the house, taking care of kids, do the accounts, dishes, ironing clothes etc ...

All these healthy pursuits that man delegate to his beloved wife.
And besides, you think they could find time for these vain passions?

If I was being paticularly chauvanistic I'd say it's because men like to save money and women like to spend it  

Quote: neilithic...men like to save money...

Except when buying coins!

Quote: ZuluRaptorSpace

Quote: neilithic...men like to save money...

Except when buying coins!

I was just thinking that

Collecting coins IS saving money is it not?  Coins are money, you collect and save your coins, you're saving money.

Quote: neilithicWe're a pretty progressive lot here, we'll just judge you on your collection rather than your gender  

Actually, that's not a bad idea :p
How is my collection going? Fairly well? You decide

Quote: BrittaniaActually, that's not a bad idea :p
How is my collection going? Fairly well? You decide

You have a pleasing amount of decent New Zealand coins so you're OK in my books, You're going to have to work on that Fiji collection though  

In the very old days males were hunting for food and females were sitting at home taking care of, preparing, fixing stuff together with their female friends to get the latest gossip. If a male wanted to get some time away from his wife, he said he would go "hunting" - if a female wanted to get some time away from her husband, she said her female friends would come over for coffee and a chit chat.

 

Over time people got more spare time and their purpose in life changed. Now, when a male wants to have some time away from his wife he needs to get a hobby, preferably a hobby that she has no interest in. Females hasn't changed much since the very old days.

rubish 

lock thread please