11-25-2019, 08:49 AM
(11-21-2019, 03:08 AM)taramarie Wrote: [quote pid='47263' dateline='1574322270']Some people coin collect not just for the price tag, but for other reasons. I have collected coins for years. I am a designer. So I find old and foreign designs fascinating and as I have a passion for history, the joy those coins gives me is beyond any price tag any of them could give to me in the future.
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Some beautiful coins are available at modest prices at coin dealers, and people can learn things from those, including some aspects of history. My high-school French teacher had some 1943 French coins that, instead of bearing the usual motto of republican France (Liberté, égalité, fraternité) instead bore the motto Travail, famille, patrie (toil, family, and fatherland) as an alternative to the dream of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. There was work, but with no dignity attached; people were afraid of consequences of running afoul of the fascistic dictatorship and its Nazi overlords -- including official punishment of one's family. Brotherhood? If one had the 'wrong' ancestry in Vichy France then the collaborationist government might send one to Nazi camps of mass murder, and the Vichy regime gladly broke up families to 'cleanse' the country of Jews. Although republican France often fell short of its slogan it seemed to try. Vichy was an obvious piece of work because it could never achieve its debased ideals -- ideals that people should reasonably take for granted.
Those who collect minted US coins as series get to know something about the business cycle in America. Scarce dates often indicate a recession or a depression.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.