Knowledge
ipsa scientia potestas est
Know it all….In school when you were called that, it was not a good thing. I find it funny that later in life we sometimes feel we have to know the answers to all of the questions. No one knows all of the info all of the time for everything. Not even Google! And in coin world, I will admit I get stumped quite a bit. There is just so much to know. Sometimes it takes me a long time to find my answer; sometimes the gods answer my prayers and info falls from the sky. Knowledge is power (in Latin even, as quoted above), and sometimes I feel powerless!
Experts
The best part of Facebook, for work, is that you can get help from people all over the world in almost real time. So the strange coins and tokens we come across no longer are research projects that take weeks. I have made many connections at the ANA Summer Seminars (So if you have the time and want to learn a lot about some things and make great friends, I highly advise going to Colorado Springs). These connections have expanded my knowledge base ten fold.
The best past about my ANA connections… I have met people, who KNOW people. These people, in turn, are friends with others, and yes this is the snowball effect. With this in mind, I made the “Cover” of the Blue Sheet on March 3rd. It was a proud moment for this semi coin nerd girl. So the 411: We were cataloging a sale, and I have to say the $15,000 – $20,000 spread for some Peace dollars between the Grey Sheet and Blue Shet made my head spin. A quick post on Facebook later and I had the publisher of the CDN (the Greysheet) as well as Coin World come to my aid and explain all about it. You can read a summary of the post at this link.
Without the knowledge of those connections, I am sure it would have taken me a long time to finish up my catalog. So as a shout out. Thank you to all of those that took the time to answer or comment on my question. I gained a bit of knowledge about that subject and a few others. My mom always tells me that you learn something new every day. I think that in this job is about 100 new things every day. And with coins it is a million little things.