What will future collectors think about us?

It is a typical Monday morning as seen from my desk at Numismatic News in Iola, Wis.
Gold is up a tad, silver is negative by a cent.

My e-mail contains an inquiry from someone who claims to have a 1967-D Lincoln cent and he even concedes that the coin is in rough shape.

So what do you think I will tell the guy who sent me 17 images of the supposed 1967-D coin?

Another e-mail warns of another potential online scam from China.

Still others are responses to our online poll question as to whether the Proof-68 1909 VDB cent that sold for over $200,000 can be fairly said to have displaced the 1909-S VDB as the key to the Lincoln set.

The funny thing about these e-mails is that if you downloaded them all to a disk, put them into a time capsule and marked it with a message to open in 40 years time, it would probably hit collectors who read them in that far off future date like a 40-year-old letters to the editor page of Numismatic News hits me now.

There are things to identify with, or laugh about as to how we could have thought such things, but generally the overall sense is one of feeling at home.

Both are wonderful snapshots of what’s on the minds of coin collectors. One is the present and the other is the past. There is something compellingly interesting about looking backward, then forward and reflecting about what future collectors might think about us, isn’t there?