A weekend off?

It is Monday and I arrived early. I have a great deal to do today.

George Cuhaj of the Standard Catalog staff had the same idea.

We sit in the same general area at Krause Publications, but a room divider separates our desks. If I don’t want to get up and walk into the next aisle, I kind of yell loudly and hope he is there to hear me.

I suppose that ranks up there with picking your teeth at a dinner party, but what can I say? I’m not perfect. Besides, at the time there was nobody else here that I was aware of.

After I finished reviewing the emails that have come in since I called it a week last Friday afternoon, I yelled over the wall to George that it was the most pathetic collection of emails I have encountered on a Monday morning.

Lest someone be offended who sent me a message in that time frame, my conclusion is not based on any single email, it is simply a statement that there really isn’t that much there considering the elapsed time.

I expect everyone has had a good summer weekend and only a few took time out to contact me about one thing or another.

The hobby was once used to that, but in recent years the ongoing bullion boom has kept many collectors and dealers riveted to their computers watching prices instead of going away for a little rest and relaxation.

This year is different.

Gold and silver just have not shown any significant summertime oomph this year.

That can change at any time, of course, but perhaps it is safe to conclude that a few days ago many collectors decided that they could get away from it all and no one would notice.

One particular email that did arrive caught my attention. A few weeks back the writer had inquired about some uncirculated coin sets that my firm put together in 1982 and 1983 as subscription premiums. We had done so because there were no official mint sets in those years and it provided readers with a source of uncirculated coins.

The reader had inquired about the whys and wherefores of the two sets he had. I could not remember all of the details, so I forwarded the inquiry to Clifford Mishler, our retired firm President, to see if he had a better recollection than mine.

Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

The first email response to our efforts was a thank you. It said, “I’m going to put the sets from KP on auction at one of my local coin club meetings and see where they go.”

Now, two weeks later, the results have come in. He writes, “I cannot find anyone that is interested in the 1982 ‘mint sets’ from KP so I am going to disassemble them and buy a cup of coffee. Thanks for your help.”

If you wonder why uncirculated rolls of 1982 and 1983 coins have such high prices, part of the reason is that over the last 30 years there have been numerous individual decisions like this one not to save the coins.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."