Paper's the thing – at least for an hour

I must have been about the only person in the United States thinking about the virtues of U.S. paper money Monday.

The financial markets were looking for something of solid value. Wasn’t it paper money and borrowing that got us into this mess? Gold soared.

However, I was preparing an online seminar about U.S. Paper Money. It will be given at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Sign up at the www.NumisMaster.com web page. You can go down the left column and click on "Online Seminars," or you can click on the icon for the “Free Online Coin Collecting Seminars.” That name, of course, reminds me of the old sign on the wall that said, “Plan Ahead,” with the last few letters of “Ahead” all scrunched together because the space was misjudged.

Numismatics includes more than just coins. What if I give a seminar on tokens?

Well, back to paper money.

Financial crises are not new in the United States. The country’s history is a procession of financial crises.

Collecting paper money offers some physical evidence of prior financial problems and how were overcame them, or even solved them.

And like coins, some notes are so scarce that collectors jostle each other to pay millions of dollars for them.

Not a bad outcome for something with no intrinsic value.

So take your mind off gold for an hour and join me on Thursday.