Conserving the newborn whereas altering the tub water
By Roger W. Burdette, particular to CoinWeek …..
[EDITOR’S NOTE: A portion of this piece was posted by the author on the NGC Grading forum on November 14. –CoinWeek]
Many an Auld Tymer will swear on Granny’s grave that one coin or one other is one thing particular, uncommon, distinctive, or of distinctive provenance. Of their pale eyes, they are going to be proper; for it’s all they know from those that got here earlier than and all they should know to depend among the many mighty.
These Auld Tymers have seen an ocean of rarities, seas of oddities, frozen mirrored lakes reflecting frosted mountains, and nice caverns of golden treasure. All judged, labeled, licensed, attested, calibrated by the most effective previous eyes and the best of judgement as trying like what’s believed.
They’ve finished this for a very long time. They’ve nice experience. They’re specialists – such we imagine and inform others. “The specialists know. The specialists can’t be in error. They beheld the scripted tablets and mysteries of unconsuming fireplace.” Such is the delivered knowledge reduce in sturdy stone.
At the moment’s Auld Tymers are, nevertheless, not the authentics they could as soon as rightly supposed themselves to be. Their experience is created on that of centuries-gone forebearers of various time and place.
Auld Tymers of the Professional Class have a particular functionality–we’ll name it “We all know what we all know!” or “WKWWK.” For Auld Tymers, this can be a excellent factor. It’s coin information on a scale, depth, and density not discovered amongst most.
It says the Professional WKWWK can determine a coin from a distance and instantly attribute and classify it, be it a Proof, uncommon alloy, specimen, particular strike, personal commemorative, or another numismatic primate. That is nice as a result of it additionally provides the Professional common esteem, mental authority, a small earnings, and emotional assurance of their self-worth and standing amongst friends and others.
They don’t have anything to show and little opposition.
However inside the final two or three a long time, WKWWK Consultants have regularly turn out to be uncomfortable. Their information was constructed on a scant thousand pages of direct info, extra of assumed manufacturing, and nonetheless extra of uncooked assumption. Others, attuned to a wider expertise outdoors the Auld Tymers, started to ask questions. Uncomfortable questions.
Over time, the outsiders amassed direct info from authentic sources. First a number of thousand, then tens of hundreds and a whole lot of hundreds, now in hundreds of thousands. To pattern the dimensions of newly official data acquired contemplate that in lower than one month in early 2024, greater than 74,000 pages of authentic United States Mint paperwork have been digitized and added to the Newman Numismatic Portal (NNP). That’s estimated to be extra authentic archival numismatic pages than existed in 1990. All of that is out there to anybody with web entry, and all without cost.
Throughout this transition, Auld Tymers’ WKWWK information base barely modified, whereas new information vastly overwhelmed what was as soon as thought safe.
This variation is just not with out difficulties. Auld Tymers really feel threatened and turn out to be defensive when their authority is questioned. Outsiders are inundated with lots of disorganized information that appear to defy easy WKWWK rules. We’ve already seen appreciable revision of once-sacred dogma, and extra is coming till American Numismatics can aspire to significant scientific understanding.
The long run is to keep away from repeating the rigidity of we-know-what-we-know and overtly settle for requirements and definitions that enable orderly incorporation of latest info.
Simply an opinion.
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