6/2/08 - because of the unusual situations with both the bullion markets and the USA dollar exchange rate everything (11/16/2008) you should consider ALL of my posted prices to be provisional.  There may be changes in any category.  This notice will be posted on a few other pages but not all.  But this is your official notice. (Renewed 1/4/2010 - this is what low level chaos feels like.)  (6/8/2010 chaos continues to build.  Think before you act.  Think before you think.  Observe before that.  Remember to breathe.)

A. SELLING:
August pricelist
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New (if the background of this page is a different color than last time you looked there is new stuff) - update 7/27/10
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B. BUYING:
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What's It Worth? - numismatic estate handling for live collectors & executors

C. SERVICES:
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D. INFORMATION
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E. OPINIONS & NEWS

7/27/22010
1. MAKE NO MISTAKE - in the next 3 months there will be a lot of blather followed by the election by us USA-ians of various public servants.  About 60-70% of the voters know what they're going to do about that, something between ~20-~70% of us will vote - these are uncertain times.  I seem unable to refrain from giving advice, so here are my recommendations for those who are not committed to an electoral plan:
     -reduce or eliminate TV as your news source.  The visuals get in the way of conceptual thought.  Find other ways to get your news.
     -sample the propaganda of your ideological enemies regularly.  You will always find that they have some good points to make, most of the idealogizing is empty but if there was truly nothing there no one would be interested.
     -get your sample ballot from the Board of Elections & research the candidates.  That's easy to do on the internet, if you don't do computers someone you know does.
         I've been working in elections for 5 years now.  The opposite of elections is dictatorship of some sort.  I like elections.
2. MY LEAST FAVORITE WORD: "just" - Just do this, everything will be fine.  I've always found that to be not true.
3. MY PARENTS - are moving down here in September and I will be involved in the logistics.  We can imagine that this will have some impact on the schedule of the next pricelist, well, we'll see what happens.
4. PEOPLE WANTED me to comment on the oil leak, now its capped, everyone's going to loose interest if it stays capped.  Like what happened to Haiti?  Congo?  Darfur?  I think in Darfur they said they killed all the people they wanted to so its "calmer" now.  Gotta take the long view on these things.  The human layer for future geologists will be the one with the chlorinated hydrocarbons in it.  Keep going.  What's the alternative?
5. NOW I'm on facebook where I make cryptic comments and a blog where I blather.

6/8/2010
1. SO, what's the Gulf disaster like?  Maybe like the destruction by the Soviets of the Aral Sea.  That was when they drained about 60% of it to grow cotton and the rest of it is evaporating leaving a gigantic toxic dustbowl.  Also maybe West Virginia-Kentucky coal country, hundreds of square miles mashed up and remade into truncated pyramids.  This is about lack of attention.  People more interested in what they are thinking than in what they are doing.  I see my son do that.  He's got a thing in his hand, a spoon, when he's done with the spoon he puts it down, before it gets where he's putting it he's turned his head away, on to the next thing.  What do I want to do?  Now what?  Now what?  Uh, oh.  Now what do I want to do?
     Every functionary in the front lines is working under extreme scrutiny, all are excruciatingly human with the usual bunch of mediocrities and redeeming features, they're doing what they think they can (though the thing about not giving the brave fishermen any respirators and moon suits and just letting them go out there and "do stuff" is probably going to end up being one of the criminal negligence aspects that will get them in the end.  The oil is in the gulf stream with that carburetor cleaner stuff they dumped to "disperse" it.  Well, it did indeed disperse it.  Some of it will end up in Europe.  There will be international litigation, BP may die.
    If you are feeling like "doing something" and not that people are rushing down there to help, except for some people from Alaska who are advising in reference to their experience with their disaster, you will undoubtedly find a little miniature environmental disaster probably within walking distance of wherever you are, probably that  rates moonsuit cleanup.  Start working on that.  What can you do?  If its non-hazardous you clean it up yourself or organize a cleanup party.  If its ongoing or hazardous you start a campaign by writing letters to the editor in local paper, calling local authorities about it, etc.  Start a journal on the project, keep records, etc.  Your own little personal environmental campaign.  That's what you can do.
    And you can fund your favorite charity and legal fund.  You fight those me-first-walk-away-from-the-problem guys with money.

3. STAY CALM.  Think things through.  Just because there are excited people all around you doesn't mean you have to get excited.  Look for the exits.

4. OBAMA'S PROBLEM is that he and his wife are young and credulous.  They are impressed with nice clothes, luxurious surroundings, "experts."  There are hints of possible greatness, but some very heavy lifting possibly necessary for him to break through that surface fascination thing.  Time is short, reality is making extraordinary demands.  I have no idea if he will rise to the occasion.  Still waiting.

5. THE SPREADING UNEASE IN THE essentially stagnant "markets" seems to be that there is no new money being made so everyone is being extremely careful with static (ie dwindling) funds.  A bright side view: "we" are "realizing" that we can't call unnecessary production and consumption of junk "growth."  A new paradigm: build to last forever, struggling to be born.

6. GOLD going toward a dollar record, silver stagnating, more or less.  Still doesn't seem like a surge to me.  Is the flow from the public dwindling?  Somebody tell me.  If it blows past $1300 I'll change my mind: China and India will have started serious buying again.

7. WHAT THE OPPOSING "SIDES" have in common: axiomatic thinking, incompetent execution.  Measurement of performance on the defeat-triumph axis.  Tribalism.  One should talk with one's "enemies" at every opportunity.

Mullah retread:
    In Mullah Nasiruddin's home town they did some construction work, the financing of which, and the way the contract was awarded not being the subjects of this story. When the work was done there was a big pile of dirt left over. Inexplicably, it was not removed, and the builders turned out to be out-of-towners who could not be located. Discussions undertaken by the neighborhood association, the permit agencies, and eventually the city council produced no result. The dirt pile remained.
    During the normal drought that summer the dirt blew all over the place. People complained.
    Eventually Mullah decided to take matters into his own hands. Early one morning he showed up at the dirt pile with a shovel and started digging a hole next to it. Operating with his usual trance-like intensity, he soon had a pretty darn big hole. And, not too many days later, his hole was deeper than the pile of dirt next to it.
    Mullah next attacked the pile, enthusiastically shovelling the dirt into the adjacent hole. How a person of that certain age accomplished this without wrecking the back I do not understand.
    But a certain child, idly observing the show, asked one of those setup questions that are constant elements of these stories, to wit:
    "Mullah, what are you going to do with the pile of dirt that you dug out of the hole after you fill up the hole with the old pile of dirt?"
    "Do I have to think of everything?", shouted Nasruddin.

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mail: Bob Reis, POB 26303, Raleigh NC 27611, USA