Things I Don't Buy

Silver is cool, and there are lots of neat things to like about it.

Silver coins used to be the most common way for people to pay for things like groceries and clothes and housing. When you hold a circulated silver coin in your hand, you can see the wear from its history of people passing it one to another, from place to place, probably thousands of times. A coin that handling has left looking better instead of worse (always a matter of opinion) is called a Circulation Cameo.

Today, silver bullion coins come from all over the world in varying weights and with amazingly diverse designs.

You can collect Superheroes, Disney Characters, Star Wars Commemoratives, solid silver coins shaped like giant diamonds, and giant 5-ounce reproductions of the US Quarter, and these are all governmental offerings from different nations, so they also carry a face value in the country of their origin.

Privately-minted/created “silver rounds” and other collectibles like statuary, bars, and fidget toys also make a rich market for all kinds of collectors.

There are a few things I’d like to call out that I prefer not to buy.

First, I find silver rounds with any political figure on them generally distasteful. Naturally, this goes doubly for personalities that I don’t align with myself. I’m talking mainly about rounds featuring a recent former US President, but I also don’t care for queens and kings that are ever-present on coinage from the Commonwealth Countries like Australia and Canada.

I don’t buy Chinese silver. This is mostly because I don’t read any flavor of Chinese text so I have no idea what the words on the coin say, or even if it plainly says, “FAKE” in Chinese. Chinese coins that look close to an ounce are often actually 20 grams instead (with 31.1g/oz). This is not deceptive, 20g is closer to a common cultural standard there, like an ounce is here. Dating is also frequently complicated with older Chinese coins, but several other countries use unusual dating standards as well.

Many reproductions of desirable silver coins come from China and other Asian countries, and they are often passed off by sellers as real. This is particularly problematic on sites where sellers can set up their own stores like Ebay, Walmart.com, and Amazon.com. I avoid those.

I like to shop online at dealers that specialize in bullion and coins, and I also like to buy in-person at pawn shops, coin shops, and antique shops local to me. It’s always best when I can see things in person before I decide whether to take them home.

I’ve been seeing privately produced notes called Silverbacks and Goldbacks. They are made with silver and gold foil, and each note is marked with the weight of the metal that it supposedly contains. I don’t like these, because I think that they will not retain their nominal value. Even if the note does contain the claimed amount of gold or silver, how can the metals be retrieved and used? It would be very difficult to do, and it would take a lot of foil to gather a practically useable amount of metal for say, striking coins or coating a metallic surface.

I think I’ll write about the things that I do like to collect next!

Why I Like Silver

When I was about ten, my Dad gave me a 1 ounce silver round.

He told me a little bit about silver then, how the price is always moving around, and how it is used in lots of industrial processes, and how it's a soft metal, so when it goes in jewelry and coins that are meant to be handled, there's usually some other metal in there as well like copper.

Some time later, I think he followed the thumping noise to my room, to find me banging on that silver round with a claw hammer on the carpet of my bedroom. It was not perfectly round anymore, and though I don't remember what design had been on the face, I do remember that it was pretty messed up by all of the tools that I had tried on that soft, pure silver.

My poor shocked Dad took away the mangled slug and I never saw it again. Looking back, I'm just glad I didn't try that experiment on anything valuable or rare.

It took until after a divorce and a few other life lessons for me to start collecting silver a little more seriously. I hope that I'll have some of the little things I've collected for the rest of my life. But, the bulk of my collection is meant to be converted, at some point, into something better. Like possibly a house. Or maybe other metals. I don't know, but it works at least partially as a diversified savings account.

And, silver will generally keep up with inflation better than cash under your mattress. Silver was around $5.70/ounce around this time in 1987. Today, it's $21.85. I should have kept that ugly slug.

Rivendell and Me

They talk about the difficulty of making the bed right in Basic Military Training. But they're called "hospital corners" for a reason, too.

I lived in an inpatient facility...a psychiatric youth hospital called Rivendell, twice. (You might recognize that place name from Tolkien. It's where the Fellowship of the Ring is convened in "Lord of the Rings", and where Frodo goes later to recover with the elves.) Today it's called Copper Hills Youth Center.

I also served in the Air Force, and the beds in Basic Training were not as good as the ones at Rivendell. They were also easier to make, and inspection was far less intense.

I often wondered what I had done that could be so serious, to put me in that youth hospital. I was told, going in the first time, that my ADD medication caused my heart to beat irregularly, and they wanted to supervise me there.

For some reason the doctors wanted my consent to stay there, and that's what I was told for them to get it. I don't think the other kids there were asked at all.

Then, in group sessions at Rivendell, I was told over and over that I was in denial, and I needed to come clean about the things I'd done. 

The unit I was in housed about thirty children. We ate all of our meals there, in the cafeteria. We went to our one large school class together there every day. We were dutifully searched by the staff any time we were exposed to our parents or visitors. We were let through large double doors with magnetic locks and key switches on the wall by the staff any time we went for a meal, or to class, or to see family, or really anywhere outside of the area with the rooms we lived in.

There was a "Pink Room", there at Rivendell. It had pink rubber walls and floor, and nothing else except a solid door and a video camera where one wall met the ceiling. It was reserved for the worst kids, in their worst times.

Actually there was one step worse than the Pink Room, and that was being strapped to your bed by the staff so they could wait out a bad episode. That never happened to me.

I did go to the Pink Room, once. I don't remember the details. I disagreed with a member of staff, and though I never shouted or misbehaved, they decided to send me in there anyway. It was humiliating for a "good kid" like me, who never had a reason to be tied down or sent to the Pink Room before.

Once another kid stole candy from me, and I reported it.

Staff took it up with him, and after being threatened with the Pink Room he lashed out, and did get strapped down. I regretted having told, and never reported on another kid there again. I felt horrible that it had gone that way.

There were daily inspections, and (at a minimum, if nobody got in trouble) weekly room searches at Rivendell. I quickly learned how to make the bed right, and make my things appear orderly so that they wouldn't all be on the floor after a search for contraband.

Like in prison, we weren't allowed to have money. The one piece of contraband I hid in my room was a $10 bill that was in the spine of my LDS scripture Bible. I liked having that little bit of money to myself, even though there was nowhere to spend it. Sometimes the staff would take us to the commissary and let us spend some of our account money. I only ever had a dollar or two in there.

At Rivendell, I met kids who were criminals. Most of them had hurt people, and after not cooperating with whatever was mandated, they were sent there.

I dug deep in those group therapy sessions. Obviously nobody was there for no reason. What horrible thing had I done?

My two stays at Rivendell both happened before I was caught shoplifting at 13.

Homer Simpson's Birthdate

It's not on Wikipedia (yet), but Homer Simpson's birthdate is May 12 1956, according to Simpsons Season 4, episode 16, called "Duffless."

Now you know.

UPDATE/This Just In:

In the same episode, Homer sings about his first beer, and using a fake ID to buy it. The name on the ID was Brian McGee and Brian's birthdate was August 2 1948, boosting Homer's purported age almost eight years.

Dear PBS Nova: Details Matter

My screen cap of this image is dated April of 2012, and I did in fact send an email to correct the Nova team. Never got a reply.

The image you see is from an episode of PBS' series Nova, and this show was about elements.

The problem is that they use a 1943 United States Cent to illustrate the use of copper. In 1943, the United States was at war, and copper was considered too valuable to the war effort to use in cents. So they made them out of steel. They even stick to a magnet.

People collected the unusual cents in huge quantities, and you can still get a steel cent in pretty good condition at any coin shop for less than a dollar. Steel in 1943, guys. Not copper. Better luck next time.