Quarter Infomercial Follow-Up

As a follow-up to my "Commercial Dream Seepage" article a few days ago, I happened to tune in to that same infomercial, in which an obnoxious man was hawking a couple of albums full of American commemorative quarters. In my original article, I dreamed (yes, dreamed) that the asking price was $99: in full consciousness, I observed that the price was TWO payments of $99. However, there were a lot of quarters in this TV offer, and according to the annoying gentleman, they constituted a complete set of all the variants produced not only in the "American States" series, but also the "America the Beautiful" series in the second album. So it finally made sense boasting that the image of Smokey Bear would be on the album cover: it was for that latter album featuring beautiful American scenic places engraved on the quarters.

Watching this, although convincing me that it wasn't really a monumental rip-off after all, gave me pause for reflection. This offer was ostensibly targeted for coin collecting enthusiasts, but was it really so in the final analysis? After all, the fun in any collecting hobby is in the gradual amassing of the "stuff" that the hobby constitutes. That includes starting small, noting the items that are wanted, and investigating various ways to add them to the collection. And a great part of the enjoyment in going over one's collection is recalling how the various items were acquired. This goes for collecting cards, stamps, coins, or anything else. I was an avid card collector as a kid. I envied others who had a larger collection than me and wanted to build up my collection to their level. But if someone just handed me a series' complete collection, then I would get no real satisfaction from possessing it. So that leads me to the probable "real" target of this infomercial.

Investment, pure and simple. People are looking for ways to invest their money into hard, tangible commodities that will appreciate in value over the years. It matters not whether the buyer of these quarter sets is a numismatic enthusiast: collecting coins is (very) secondary to the goal of investment for future financial gain, at least the way I see it...